1 8 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



penology; free will is non-existent, blame and 

 punishment are unjust and unreasonable. Nothing 

 then remains to be done except to change the en- 

 vironment and so overcome the taint of heredity. 

 He plainly says : 



If our heredity and environment be good, we must act well, 

 we cannot help it; if it be ill, we must act ill, we cannot 

 help it. Suppose a tramp has murdered a child on the highway, 

 has robbed her of a few coppers and has thrown her body into 

 a ditch: Do you mean to say that tramp could not help doing 

 that? Do you mean he is not to blame not to be punished? 

 Yes, I mean to say all these things, and if all these things are 

 not true, this book is not worth the paper it is written on.* 



Admirably logical ! And if all this is not true 

 then neither is materialistic evolution worth being 

 taught in our universities. Free will, as Haeckel 

 himself clearly admits, and as every materialistic 

 evolutionist must admit, is made impossible by it, 

 since human thoughts, our supposed resolutions 

 and outward actions can then be no more than the 

 result of physical laws and chemical actions, which 

 are not free but necessary in the strictest sense. 

 No fine-spun explanations can change this con- 

 clusion. For, says Haeckel, "The various phen- 

 omena of nature [whether those we are accus- 

 tomed to call mental or those we know to be ma- 

 terial] differ in the degree of complexity only in 

 which the different forces work together." * No 

 degree of complexity in a chemical reaction can 



* "Not Guilty." 



*"The Evolution of Man." 



