ence there are perhaps few attitudes so entirely irrational as that
which affects to see in a determinist interpretation of man's {145}
nature a special reason for optimism. Occasionally one is invited to
rejoice in the "great and glorious thought that every man is wholly a
product of the Master Workman"; it is even urged that such a conception
cannot change our appreciation of what is fine in human thought and
action, just as "we do not admire a rose the less because we know that it
could no more help being what it is than could a stinging nettle or a
fungus." We can only say that such a superficial optimism seems
infinitely more open to objection than the temper which, in the face of
so much suffering and sin, has to struggle hard sometimes to preserve its
faith in the Father's love, and half-wonders if some personal power of
evil is not actively engaged in marring God's workmanship. Anyone who
can believe that every man, just as he is, represents the Divine
intention in concrete form--anyone who can believe this, and glory in the
thought--must inhabit a strange world, remote from reality. He can never
have learned anything of the greed which condemns myriads of human beings
to sunless and degraded lives; he can never have been inside a
police-court; he can never have seen hapless womanhood flaunting its
be-rouged and be-ribboned shame under the electric light of West End
thoroughfares--he can never even have reflected upon any of these things,
and rejoiced in the thought that every human being was "wholly the {146}
product of the Master Workman." If such a thought does not produce
something like despair, it ought to do so; if it does not, then it
represents not a conviction but a pose.

As a matter of fact, the determinist creed, with all its professions of
charitableness towards the transgressor, and while pretending to soothe
us by absolving us from responsibility for wrong-doing, fatally paralyses
our endeavours. It is a message, not of liberation from guilt, but of
despair. Christianity, even while condemning sin, in its very
condemnation speaks of hope; it says to the sinner: "You are guilty--you
ought to have done better, and you know it; you are guilty--you ought
still to do better, _and you can_." That is a rousing, vitalising call:
the very censure implies the possibility of better things. But
Determinism says to the moral wreck: "Not only are you a wreck, but that
is all you ever could have been; you