e
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