It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty , if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth.
Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice.
Determinism is not inconsi stent with the cruel treatment of criminals. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself.