Then, this "power to choose" is of God's making and of God's gift.
Man has only one will, therefore he has only one "power of choice."
Therefore he has no power of choice but the power God gave him. Then,
Man can only choose by means of that power which God gave him, and he
cannot choose by any other means.
Then, if Man chooses evil, he chooses evil by means of the power of
choice God gave him.
Then, if that power of choice given to him by God makes for evil,
it follows that Man must choose evil, since he has no other power of
choice.
Then, the only power of choice God gave Man is a power that will choose
evil.
Then, Man is unable to choose good because his only power of choice will
choose evil.
Then, as Man did not make nor select his power of choice, Man cannot be
blamed if that power chooses evil.
Then, the blame must be God's, who gave Man a power of choice that would
choose evil.
Then, Man cannot sin against God, for Man can only use the power God
gave him, and can only use that power in the way in which that power
will work.
The word "will" is a misleading word. What is will? Will is not a
faculty, like the faculty of speech or touch. The word will is a symbol,
and means the balance between two motives or desires.
Will is like the action of balance in a pair of scales. It is the
weights in the scales that decide the balance. So it is the motives in
the mind that decide the will. When a man chooses between two acts
we say that he "exercises his will"; but the fact is, that one motive
weighs down the other, and causes the balance of the mind to lean to the
weightier reason. There is no such thing as an exterior will outside the
man's brain, to push one scale down with a finger. Will is abstract, not
concrete.
A man always "wills" in favour of the weightier motive. If he loves
the sense of intoxication more than he loves his self-respect, he will
drink. If the reasons in favour of sobriety seem to him to outweigh the
reasons in favour of drink, he will keep sober.
Will, then, is a symbol for the balance of motives. Motives are born of
the brain. Therefore will depends upon the action of the brain.
God made the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the
brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the will.
Therefore Man is not responsible for the action of the will. Therefore
Man cannot sin against God.
Christians speak of the will as if it were a kind of separate soul, a
"little cherub who sits up aloft" and gives the man his course.
Let us accept this idea of the will. Let us suppose that a separate soul
or faculty called the will governs the mind. That means that the "little
cherub" governs the man.
Can the man be justly blamed for the acts of the cherub?
No. Man did not make the cherub, did not select the cherub, and is
obliged to obey the cherub.
God made the cherub, and gave him command of the man. Therefore God
alone is responsible for the acts the man performs in obedience to the
cherub's orders.
If God put a beggar on horseback, would the horse be blamable for
galloping to Monte Carlo? The horse must obey the rider. The rider was
made by God. How, then, can God blame the horse?
If God put a "will" on Adam's back, and the will followed the beckoning
finger of Eve, whose fault was that?
The old Christian doctrine was that Adam was made perfect, and that he
fell. (How could the "perfect" fall?)
Why did Adam fall? He fell because the woman tempted him.
Then Adam was not strong enough to resist the woman. Then, the woman had
power to overcome Adam's will. As the Christian would express it, "Eve
had the stronger will."
Who made Adam? God made him. Who made Eve? God made her. Who made the
Serpent? God made the Serpent.
Then, if God made Adam weak, and Eve seductive, and the Serpent subtle,
was that Adam's fault or God's?
Did Adam choose that Eve should have a stronger will than he, or that
the Serpent should have a stronger will than Eve? No. God fixed all
those things.
God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist
Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the Serpent. He need
not have made the Serpent at all.
God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the Serpent
He knew that Adam and Eve _must_ fall. And if God knew they _must_ fall,
how could Adam help falling, and how _could_ he justly be blamed for
doing what he _must_ do?
God made a bridge--built it _Himself_, of His own materials, to His own
design, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was.
If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing
strain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?
The doctrine of Free Will implies that God knowingly made the Serpent
subtle, Eve seductive, and Adam weak, and then damned the whole human
race because a bridge He had built to fall did not succeed in standing.
Such a theory is ridiculous; but upon it depends the entire fabric of
Christian theology.
For if Man is not responsible for his acts, and therefore cannot sin
against God, there is no foundation for the doctrines of the Fall, the
Sin, the Curse, or the Atonement.
If Man cannot sin against God, and if God is responsible for all Man's
acts, the Old Testament is not true, the New Testament is not true, the
Christian religion is not true.
And if you consider the numerous crimes and blunders of the Christian
Church, you will always find that they grew out of the theory of
Free Will, and the doctrines of Man's sin against God, and Man's
responsibility and "wickedness."
St. Paul said, "As in Adam all men fell, so in Christ are all made
whole." If Adam did not fall St. Paul was mistaken.
Christ is reported to have prayed on the cross, "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do."
That looks as if Jesus knew that the men were not responsible for their
acts, and did not know any better. But if they knew not what they did,
why should God be asked to _forgive_ them?
But let us go over the Determinist theory again, for it is most
important.
_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's
acts_.
The Christians say Man sinned, and they talk about his freedom of
choice. But they say God made Man, as He made all things.
Now, if God is all-knowing, He knew before He made Man what Man would
do. He knew that Man could do nothing but what God had enabled him to
do. That he could do nothing but what he was foreordained by God to do.
If God is all-powerful, He need not have made Man at all. Or He could
have made a man who would be strong enough to resist temptation. Or He
could have made a man who was incapable of evil.
If the All-powerful God made a man, knowing that man would succumb to
the test to which God meant to subject him, surely God could not justly
blame the man for being no better than God had made him.
If God had never made Man, then Man never could have succumbed to
temptation. God made Man of His own divine choice, and made him to His
own divine desire.
How, then, could God blame Man for anything Man did?
God was responsible for Man's _existence_, for God made him. If God had
not made him, Man could never have been, and could never have acted.
Therefore all that Man did was the result of God's creation of Man.
All man's acts were the effects of which his creation was the cause: and
God was responsible for the cause, and therefore God was responsible for
the effects.
Man did not make himself. Man could not, before he existed, have asked
God to make him. Man could not advise nor control God so as to influence
his own nature. Man could only be what God caused him to be, and do what
God enabled or compelled him to do.
Man might justly say to God: "I did not ask to be created. I did not ask
to be sent into this world. I had no power to select or mould my nature.
I am what You made me. I am where You put me. You knew when You made
me how I should act. If You wished me to act otherwise, why did You not
make me differently? If I have displeased You, I was fore-ordained to
displease You. I was fore-ordained by You to be and to do what I am
and have done. Is it my fault that You fore-ordained me to be and to do
thus?"
Christians say a man has a will to choose. So he has. But that is only
saying that one human thought will outweigh another. A man thinks with
his brain: his brain was made by God.
A tall man can reach higher than a short man. It is not the fault of the
short man that he is outreached: he did not fix his own height.
It is the same with the will. A man has a will to jump. He can jump over
a five-barred gate; but he cannot jump over a cathedral.
So with his will in moral matters. He has a will to resist temptation,
but though he may clear a small temptation, he may fall at a large one.
The actions of a man's will are as mathematically fixed at his birth as
are the motions of a planet in its orbit.
God, who made the man and the planet, is responsible for the actions of
both.
As the natural forces created by God regulate the influences of Venus
and Mars upon the Earth, so must the natural forces created by God have
regulated the influences of Eve and the Serpent on Adam.
Adam was no more blameworthy for failing to resist the influence of Eve
than the Earth is blameworthy for deviating in its course around the
Sun, in obedience to the influences of Venus and Mars.
Without the act of God there could have been no Adam, and therefore no
Fall. God, whose act is responsible for Adam's existence, is responsible
for the Fall.
_If God is responsible for man's existence, God is responsible for all
Man's acts._
If a boy brought a dog into the house and teased it until it bit him,
would not his parents ask the boy, "Why did you bring the dog in at
all?"
But if the boy had trained the dog to bite, and knew that it would bite
if it were teased, and if the boy brought the dog in and teased it until
it bit him, would the parents blame the dog?
And if a magician, like one of those at the court of Pharaoh,
deliberately made an adder out of the dust, knowing the adder would
bite, and then played with the adder until it bit some spectator, would
the injured man blame the magician or the adder?
How, then, could God blame Man for the Fall?
But you may ask me, with surprise, as so many have asked me with
surprise, "Do you really mean that no man is, under any circumstances,
to be blamed for anything he may say or do?"
And I shall answer you that I do seriously mean that no man can, under
any circumstances, be justly blamed for anything he may say or do. That
is one of my deepest convictions, and I shall try very hard to prove
that it is just.
But you may say, as many have said: "If no man can be justly blamed
for anything he says or does, there is an end of all law and order, and
society is impossible."
And I shall answer you: "No, on the contrary, there is a beginning of
law and order, and a chance that society may become civilised."
For it does not follow that because we may not blame a man we may not
condemn his acts. Nor that because we do not blame him we are bound to
allow him to do all manner of mischief.
Several critics have indignantly exclaimed that I make no difference
between good men and bad, that I lump Torquemada, Lucrezia Borgia,
Fenelon, and Marcus Aurelius together, and condone the most awful
crimes.
That is a mistake. I regard Lucrezia Borgia as a homicidal maniac, and
Torquemada as a religious maniac. I do not _blame_ such men and women.
But I should not allow them to do harm.
I believe that nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil acts
are due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man who
calls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he is
ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I am sorry for him.
Socrates, as reported by Xenophon, put my case in a nutshell. When a
friend complained to Socrates that a man whom he had saluted had not
saluted him in return, the father of philosophy replied: "It is an odd
thing that if you had met a man ill-conditioned in body you would not
have been angry; but to have met a man rudely disposed in mind provokes
you."
This is sound philosophy, I think. If we pity a man with a twist in his
spine, why should we not pity the man with a twist in his brain? If we
pity a man with a stiff wrist, why not the man with a stiff pride? If we
pity a man with a weak heart, why not the man with the weak will? If we
do not blame a man for one kind of defect, why blame him for another?
But it does not follow that because we neither hate nor blame a criminal
we should allow him to commit crime.
We do not blame a rattlesnake, nor a shark. These creatures only fulfil
their natures. The shark who devours a baby is no more sinful than the
lady who eats a shrimp. We do not blame the maniac who burns a house
down and brains a policeman, nor the mad dog who bites a minor poet.
But, none the less, we take steps to defend ourselves against snakes,
sharks, lunatics, and mad dogs.
The _Clarion_ does not hate a cruel sweater, nor a tyrannous landlord,
nor a shuffling Minister of State, nor a hypocritical politician: it
pities such poor creatures. Yet the _Clarion_ opposes sweating and
tyranny and hypocrisy, and does its best to defeat and to destroy them.
If a tiger be hungry he naturally seeks food. I do not blame the tiger;
but if he endeavoured to make his dinner off our business manager, and
if I had a gun, I should shoot the tiger.
We do not hate nor blame the blight that destroys our roses and our
vines. The blight is doing what we do: he is trying to live. But we
destroy the blight to preserve our roses and our grapes.
So we do not blame an incendiary. But we are quite justified in
protecting life and property. Dangerous men must be restrained. In cases
where they attempt to kill and maim innocent and useful citizens, as,
for instance, by dynamite outrages, they must, in the last resort, be
killed.
"But," you may say, "the dynamiter knows it is wrong to wreck a street
and murder inoffensive strangers, and yet he does it. Is not that free
will? Is he not blameworthy?"
And I answer that when a man does wrong he does it because he knows no
better, or because he is naturally vicious.
And I hold that in neither case is he to blame: for he did not make
his nature, nor did he make the influences which have operated on that
nature.
Man is a creature of Heredity and Environment. He is by Heredity what
his ancestors have made him (or what God has made him). Up to the
moment of his birth he has had nothing to do with the formation of his
character. As Professor Tyndall says, "that was done _for_ him, and not
_by_ him." From the moment of his birth he is what his inherited nature,
and the influences into which he has been sent without his consent, have
made him.
An omniscient being--like God--who knew exactly what a man's nature
would be at birth, and exactly the nature of the influences to which he
would be exposed after his birth, could predict every act and word of
that man's life.
Given a particular nature; given particular influences, the result will
be as mathematically inevitable as the speed and orbit of a planet.
Man is what heredity (or God) and environment make him. Heredity gives
him his nature. That comes from his ancestors. Environment modifies his
nature: environment consists of the operation of forces external to
his nature. No man can select his ancestors; no man can select
his environment. His ancestors make his nature; other men, and
circumstances, modify his nature.
Ask any horse-breeder why he breeds from the best horses, and not from
the worst. He will tell you, because good horses are not bred from bad
ones.
Ask any father why he would prefer that his son should mix with good
companions rather than with bad companions. He will tell you that evil
communications corrupt good manners, and pitch defiles.
Heredity decides how a man shall be bred; environment regulates what he
shall learn.
One man is a critic, another is a poet. Each is what heredity and
environment have made him. Neither is responsible for his heredity nor
for his environment.
If the critic repents his evil deeds, it is because something has
happened to awake his remorse. Someone has told him of the error of his
ways. That adviser is part of his environment.
If the poet takes to writing musical comedies, it is because some
evil influence has corrupted him. That evil influence is part of his
environment.
Neither of these men is culpable for what he has done. With nobler
heredity, or happier environment, both might have been journalists; with
baser heredity, or more vicious environment, either might have been a
millionaire, a Socialist, or even a Member of Parliament.
We are all creatures of heredity and environment. It is Fate, and not
his own merit, that has kept George Bernard Shaw out of a shovel hat and
gaiters, and condemned some Right Honourable Gentlemen to manage State
Departments instead of planting cabbages.
The child born of healthy, moral, and intellectual parents has a
better start in life than the child born of unhealthy, immoral, and
unintellectual parents.
The child who has the misfortune to be born in the vitiated atmosphere
of a ducal palace is at a great disadvantage in comparison with the
child happily born amid the innocent and respectable surroundings of a
semi-detached villa in Brixton.
What chance, then, has a drunkard's baby, born in a thieves' den, and
dragged up amid the ignorant squalor of the slums?
Environment is very powerful for good or evil. Had Shakespeare been born
in the Cannibal Islands he would never have written _As You Like
It_; had Torquemada been born a Buddhist he never would have taken to
roasting heretics.
But this, you may say, is sheer Fatalism. Well! It seems to me to be
_truth_, and philosophy, and sweet charity.
And now I will try to show the difference between this Determinism,
which some think must prove so maleficent, and the Christian doctrine of
Free Will, which many consider so beneficent.
Let us take a flagrant instance of wrong-doing. Suppose some person
to persist in playing "Dolly Grey" on the euphonium, or to contract a
baneful habit of reciting "Curfew shall not Ring" at evening parties,
the Christian believer in Free Will would call him a bad man, and would
say he ought to be punished.
The philosophic Determinist would denounce the offender's _conduct_, but
would not denounce the _offender_.
We Determinists do not denounce _men_; we denounce _acts_. We do not
blame men; we try to teach them. If they are not teachable we restrain
them.
You will admit that our method is different from the accepted method.
I shall try to convince you that it is also materially better than the
accepted, or Christian, method.
Let us suppose two concrete cases: (1) Bill Sikes beats his wife; (2)
Lord Rackrent evicts his tenants.
Let us first think what would be the orthodox method of dealing with
these two cases?
What would be the orthodox method? The parson and the man in the street
would say Bill Sikes was a bad man, and that he ought to be punished.
The Determinist would say that Bill Sikes had committed a crime, and
that he ought to be restrained, and taught better.
You may tell me there seems to be very little difference in the
practical results of the two methods. But that is because we have not
followed the two methods far enough.
If you will allow me to follow the two methods further you will, I hope,
agree with me that their results will not be identical, but that our
results will be immeasurably better.
For the orthodox method is based upon the erroneous dogma that Bill
Sikes had a free will to choose between right and wrong, and, having
chosen to do wrong, he is a bad man, and ought to be punished.
But the Determinist bases his method upon the philosophical theory that
Bill Sikes is what heredity and environment have made him; and that he
is not responsible for his heredity, which he did not choose, nor for
his environment, which he did not make.
Still, you may think the difference is not effectively great. But it is.
For the Christian would blame Bill Sikes, and no one but Bill Sikes.
But the Determinist would not blame Sikes at all: he would blame his
environment.
Is not that a material difference? But follow it out to its logical
results. The Christian, blaming only Bill Sikes, because he had a "free
will," would punish Sikes, and perhaps try to convert Sikes; and there
his effort would logically end.
The Determinist would say: "If this man Sikes has been reared in a slum,
has not been educated, nor morally trained, has been exposed to all
kinds of temptation, the fault is that of the social system which has
made such ignorance, and vice, and degradation possible."
That is _one_ considerable difference between the results of a good
religion and a bad one. The Christian condemns the man--who is a victim
of evil social conditions. The Determinist condemns the evil conditions.
It is the difference between the methods of sending individual sufferers
from diphtheria to the hospital and the method of condemning the drains.
But you may cynically remind me that nothing will come of the
Determinists' protest against the evil social conditions. Perhaps not.
Let us waive that question for a moment, and consider our second case.
Lord Rackrent evicts his tenants. The orthodox method is well known. It
goes no further than the denunciation of the peer, and the raising of a
subscription (generally inadequate) for the sufferers.
The Determinist method is different. The Determinist would say: "This
peer is what heredity and environment have made him. We cannot blame him
for being what he is. We can only blame his environment. There must be
something wrong with a social system which permits one idle peer to ruin
hundreds of industrious producers. This evil social system should be
amended, or evictions will continue."
That Determinist conclusion would be followed by the usual inadequate
subscription.
And now we will go back to the point we passed. You may say, in the case
of Sikes and the peer, that the logic of the Determinist is sound, but
ineffective: nothing comes of it.
I admit that nothing comes of it, and I am now going to tell you _why_
nothing comes of it.
The Determinist cannot put his wisdom into action, because he is in a
minority.
So long as Christians have an overwhelming majority who will not touch
the drains, diphtheria must continue.
So long as the universal verdict condemns the victim of a bad system,
and helps to keep the bad system in full working order, so long will
evil flourish and victims suffer.
If you wish to realise the immense superiority of the Determinist
principles over the Christian religion, you have only to imagine what
would happen if the Determinists had a majority as overwhelming as the
majority the Christians now hold.
For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personal
responsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with no
visible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a few
coals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolition
of lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery.
There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world.
That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and the
Christian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality,
and the Christian does not.
For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in the
environment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongs
which society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongs
which the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to an
imaginary "free will."
Some Free-Willers are fond of crying out: "Once admit that men are not
to be blamed for their actions, and all morality and all improvement
will cease." But that is a mistake. As I have indicated above, a good
many evils now rife would cease, because then we should attack the
evils, and not the victims of the evils. But it is absurd to suppose
that we do not detest cholera because we do not detest cholera patients,
or that we should cease to hate wrong because we ceased to blame
wrong-doers.
Admit the Determinist theory, and all would be taught to do well, and
most would take kindly to the lesson. Because the fact that environment
is so powerful for evil suggests that it is powerful for good. If man is
what he is made, it behoves a nation which desires and prizes good men
to be very earnest and careful in its methods of making them.
I believe that I am what heredity and environment made me. But I know
that I can make myself better or worse if I try. I know that because I
have learnt it, and the learning has been part of my environment.
My claim, as a Determinist, is that it is not so good to punish an
offender as to improve his environment. It is good of the Christians to
open schools and to found charities. But as a Determinist I am bound to
say that there ought to be no such things in the world as poverty and
ignorance, and one of the contributory causes to ignorance and poverty
is the Christian doctrine of free will.
Take away from a man all that God gave him, and there will be nothing of
him left.
Take away from a man all that heredity and environment have given him,
and there will be nothing left.
Man is what he is by the act of God, or the results of heredity and
environment. In either case he is not to blame.
In one case the result is due to the action of his ancestors and
society, in the other to the act of God.
Therefore a man is not responsible for his actions, and cannot sin
against God.
_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's
acts._
A religion built upon the doctrine of Free Will and human responsibility
to God is built upon a misconception and must fall.
Christianity is a fabric of impossibilities erected upon a foundation of
error.
Perhaps, since I find many get confused on the subject of Free Will from
their consciousness of continually exercising the "power of choice," I
had better say a few words here on that subject.
You say you have power to choose between two courses. So you have, but
that power is limited and controlled by heredity and environment.
If you have to choose between a showy costume and a plain one you will
choose the one you like best, and you will like best the one which your
nature (heredity) and your training (environment) will lead you to like
best.
You think your will is free. But it is not. You may think you have power
to drown yourself; but you have not.
Your love of life and your sense of duty are too strong for you.
You might think I have power to leave the _Clarion_ and start an
anti-Socialist paper. But I know I have not that power. My nature
(heredity) and my training and habit (environment) are too strong for
me.
If you knew a lady was going to choose between a red dress and a grey
one, and if you knew the lady very well, you could guess her choice
before she made it.
If you knew an honourable man was to be offered a bribe to do a
dishonourable act, you would feel sure he would refuse it.
If you knew a toper was to be offered as much free whisky as he could
drink, you would be sure he would not come home sober.
If you knew the nature and the environment of a man thoroughly well,
and the circumstances (_all_ the circumstances) surrounding a choice
of action to be presented to him, and if you were clever enough to work
such a difficult problem, you could forecast his choice before he made
it, as surely as in the case of the lady, the toper, and the honourable
man above mentioned.
You have power to choose, then, but you can only choose as your heredity
and environment _compel_ you to choose. And you do not select your own
heredity nor your own environment.