‘Well, Mr. Morell, I will ask science, and science will yield hope. Science says, take a hundred men and a hundred women, and let them live on a fruitful island and multiply, and in four generations you will have an improved stock—a stock freer from atavism, hysteria, anomalies, and insanities. Science holds out hope; you don't. You say God's will and decrees are eternal, and what they were a thousand ages since they will be a thousand ages to come. Science does eventually point to a new heaven and new earth, but Calvinism throws no light across the gloom.’
The old man quietly shifted his ground by asking his opponent if he ever asked himself why he did, and why he did not, do certain things.
‘I suppose the reason is because of my choice, is it not?’
‘And what governs choice—or, if you like, will?’
‘I do, myself.’
‘Who are you, and what part of you governs it? Will cannot govern Will, can it? And can you divorce will from personality?’
‘Tennyson answers your question, Mr. Morell.
‘“Our wills are ours, we know not how,”
that is the mystery of existence.