God and my Neighbour Part 25

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d) 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 n.o.bler 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 pa.s.sed. 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.