But when the would-be optimistic determinist is shown the sheer fatuity of pretending to rejoice in that everything is just as it is--a singular compliment to the "Master Workman"--he executes a _volte-face_ and falls back upon the plea that his doctrine is at any rate a pre-eminently practical one. Instead of vainly deploring imaginary "sins," Determinism would simply have us recognise plain facts: it would arrange for healthy hereditary influences to cradle the coming generations; it would adopt the most enlightened educational, hygienic, reformatory methods; it would provide for all the citizens of the State such an environment as would steadily make for health and beauty and happiness. There are no "sinners," it says, but only the unhappy products of conditions which foster anti-social proclivities as automatically as dirt fosters disease; instead of punishing the products, let us attack the producing conditions, and by sweeping them away bring in the millennium. Such a plea, it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment--and that is our power to alter environment. "But that," protests the determinist, "is just what we hold ought to be done." Certainly; only it is just what, on his presupposition, cannot be done. For if the slum-dweller cannot help being what he is, owing to his environment, neither can the slum-owner, or the legislator, or the community, help being what they are, owing to the self-same cause. In fact, we cannot get the word "ought" from Determinism; it is as much out of place in that connection as a free worker in a slave-compound. But every reform springs from a sense of "oughtness"; and the sense of moral obligation is itself the spontaneous expression of the consciousness of moral freedom. So far as we believe in the duty of reform--or in "duty" itself, _sans phrase_--we have already renounced Determinism, and proclaimed our belief in liberty. Let it be said once more, before we pass from this particular aspect of our subject, that too much may be set down to, or expected from, even environment; everybody knows that from gentle homes, surrounded by what seemed the most favouring influences, {150} there have sprung vicious and depraved characters. We ask ourselves, in encountering such cases, "Wanting is--what?" And the answer must be given in Kant's famous dictum: that which is "the only good thing in the world--_a good will_."