"Yes, if he is endowed with the strength for that."
His fatalism drew from me a gesture of disgust.
"Do you really mean," I asked, "that because you didn't pull that cord, you COULDN'T have pulled it?"
"Yes."
"And it's written in your hands that you couldn't?"
He looked at the palms of his hands.
"They are the hands of a very weak man," he said.
"A man so weak that he cannot believe in the possibility of free will for himself or for any one?"
"They are the hands of an intelligent man, who can weigh evidence and see things as they are."
"But answer me: Was it foreordained that you should not pull that cord?"