THE PROBLEM OF THE WILL 



89 



partners in the crime. In a certain real sense 

 men do what they must do, for they have abso- 

 lutely no option as to what forces they shall in- 

 herit ; and hardly more voice in determining what 

 influences shall mould them in the plastic period 

 of life. On the other hand, quite opposite facts 

 are equally evident. Men actually do antagonize 

 and overcome their vital inheritance, defy their 

 environment, and, without dependence upon either, 

 choose to live as if they were the children of a 

 virtuous ancestry and subject only to refined con- 

 ditions. These truths are apparently contradic- 

 tory, and yet one is as evident as the other. 

 Two boys are the children of drunken parents ; 

 their home is one room of a tenement in which a 

 dozen other persons eat and sleep ; their school is 

 the street. All that bad blood and evil conditions 

 can do for them is done. Some day the elder 

 in a fit of drunken fury strikes a murderous blow. 

 He is arrested, arraigned, tried, condemned, ex- 

 ecuted ; he alone, though at the bar of God he 

 has many accomplices. Equally, and possibly 

 still more culpable, are the society which makes 

 it possible for such degraded creatures to be born ; 

 the State, which allows saloons on every corner, 

 and permits such wretched tenements as the child- 

 hood home of these boys ; and the men who own 



