But I am going to prove to my readers, by appeals to their common sense and common knowledge, that the will is not free; and that it is ruled by heredity and environment. To begin with, the average man will be against me. He knows that he chooses between two courses every hour, and often every minute, and he thinks his choice is free. But that is a delusion: his choice is not free. He can choose, and does choose. But he can only choose as his heredity and his environment cause him to choose. He never did choose and never will choose except as his heredity and his environment--his temperament and his training--cause him to choose. And his heredity and his environment have fixed his choice before he makes it. The average man says "I know that I can act as I wish to act." But what causes him to wish? The free will party say, "We know that a man can and does choose between two acts." But what settles the choice? There is a cause for every wish, a cause for every choice; and every cause of every wish and choice arises from heredity, or from environment. For a man acts always from temperament, which is heredity, or from training, which is environment. And in cases where a man hesitates in his choice between two acts, the hesitation is due to a conflict between his temperament and his training, or, as some would express it, "between his desire and his conscience." A man is practising at a target with a gun, when a rabbit crosses his line of fire. The man has his eye and his sights on the rabbit, and his finger on the trigger. The man's will is free. If he press the trigger the rabbit will be killed. Now, how does the man decide whether or not he shall fire? He decides by feeling, and by reason. He would like to fire, just to make sure that he could hit the mark. He would like to fire, because he would like to have the rabbit for supper. He would like to fire, because there is in him the old, old hunting instinct, to kill. But the rabbit does not belong to him. He is not sure that he will not get into trouble if he kills it. Perhaps--if he is a very uncommon kind of man--he feels that it would be cruel and cowardly to shoot a helpless rabbit. Well. The man's will is free. He can fire if he likes: he can let the rabbit go if he likes. How will he decide? On what does his decision depend? His decision depends upon the relative strength of his desire to kill the rabbit, and of his scruples about cruelty, and the law. Not only that, but, if we knew the man fairly well, we could guess how his free will would act before it acted. The average spoiling Briton would kill the rabbit. But we know that there are men who would on no account shoot any harmless wild creature. Broadly put, we may say that the sportsman would will to fire, and that the humanitarian would not will to fire. Now, as both their wills are free, it must be something outside the wills that makes the difference.