GENETICS AND ETHICS 475 



the individual has little or no control, and this 

 is certainly true, personality is as inevitably de- 

 termined by its antecedents as is any other 

 natural phenomenon. This is, I believe, a 

 conclusion from which there is no escape. 

 How then is it possible to believe in freedom 

 and responsibility? Is there not justification 

 for the view so often expressed of late that 

 man is never free and that responsibility and 

 duty are mere delusions? 



III. Determinism and Responsibility 



Many persons who have thought upon these 

 subjects have felt, apparently, that there was 

 no tenable middle ground between extreme 

 voluntarism and extreme mechanism ; man has 

 been regarded as a "free agent" or a mere 

 "automaton," absolutely free or absolutely 

 bound, wholly indeterminate or wholly prede- 

 termined. But these extreme views are unreal, 

 unscientific and unjustifiable, for they contra- 

 dict the facts of experience. We have the as- 

 surance of experience that we are not abso- 

 lutely free nor absolutely bound, but that we 



