are especially
advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will.
The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call
their law the "chain" of causation. It is the worst chain that ever
fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty,
if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this
is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when
applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like,
that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is
surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg
he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette.
Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist
speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will.
But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not
free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish,
to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions,
to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank you"
for the mustard.

In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer
fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way
favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or
punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth.
It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference
at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend
exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it
stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not
prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion.
Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain
to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the
cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent
with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to
their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle.
The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does
believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner,
"Go and sin no more," because the sinner cannot help it. But he
can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment.
Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic
outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up a position
at once unanswerable and intolerable.