“Never; although I fool myself into thinking that I am making a decision. Do you think, for instance, that you could stand on that trunk and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the top of your lungs?”
She shuddered at the thought.
“I could if I wanted to.”
“Ah! But you can’t want to! I won’t ask you to sing; but I defy you to want to.... There! You can’t want to. It is predestined that you couldn’t want to.... Now, what next am I?”
“Do you mean to say,” Geraldine was intent on this old problem of free-will versus determinism; “do you mean to tell me that I cannot choose between, say, simpering at a man—like that fool of a girl over there—oh, she knows what she is doing, all right, and why she is doing it!—or being just myself?”
“I tell you simply that you cannot choose but be just yourself. Vain persons choose vanity; greedy persons choose to be greedy; simpering female adolescents”—he turned to look at the young girl who was flashing herself at the young man—“do their best to choose a healthy male. And Easter lilies choose to grow tall and slender and water chooses to run downhill. Oh, Presbyterianism is a great faith for an indolent chap like me—you cease to worry about the whirligig of time; you didn’t make it nor set it agoing; and you can’t direct it nor stop it. You leave it to the Maker and go about your blessed selfish business free of all responsibility.”
“I don’t believe you half believe all your beliefs.”
At some hour in the day or week, he assured her, he believed many of them. He wobbled about a lot and had a good time wobbling. The only fixed belief he had was the belief that he should always be open to a new belief.
Walter leaped to his feet; he had discovered a Wells trunk, and was as delighted as a child.
“’At’s one!” he shouted.