e-eminently
practical one. Instead of vainly deploring imaginary "sins," Determinism
would simply have us recognise plain facts: it would arrange for healthy
hereditary influences to cradle the coming generations; it would adopt
the most enlightened educational, hygienic, reformatory methods; it would
provide for all the citizens of the State such an environment as would
steadily make for health and beauty and happiness. There are no
"sinners," it says, but only the unhappy products of conditions which
foster anti-social proclivities as automatically as dirt fosters disease;
instead of punishing the products, let us attack the producing
conditions, and by sweeping them away bring in the millennium.

Such a plea, it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern
tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a
fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power
of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that
we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum
or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than
heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment--and that
is our power to alter environment. "But that," protests the determinist,
"is just what we hold ought to be done." Certainly; only it is just what,
on his presupposition, cannot be done. For if the slum-dweller cannot
help being what he is, owing to his environment, neither can the
slum-owner, or the legislator, or the community, help being what they
are, owing to the self-same cause. In fact, we cannot get the word
"ought" from Determinism; it is as much out of place in that connection
as a free worker in a slave-compound. But every reform springs from a
sense of "oughtness"; and the sense of moral obligation is itself the
spontaneous expression of the consciousness of moral freedom. So far as
we believe in the duty of reform--or in "duty" itself, _sans phrase_--we
have already renounced Determinism, and proclaimed our belief in liberty.
Let it be said once more, before we pass from this particular aspect of
our subject, that too much may be set down to, or expected from, even
environment; everybody knows that from gentle homes, surrounded by what
seemed the most favouring influences, {150} there have sprung vicious and
depraved characters. We ask ourselves, in encountering such cases,
"Wanting is--what?" And the answer must be given i