And yet one of the chief activities of home-life consists in
prancing about at random on other people's private lawns. What I say
applies even to the relation between parents and children. And though my
precept is exaggerated, it is purposely exaggerated in order effectively
to balance the exaggeration in the opposite direction.
All individualities, other than one's own, are part of one's
environment. The evolutionary process is going on all right, and they
are a portion of it. Treat them as inevitable. To assert that they are
inevitable is not to assert that they are unalterable. Only the
alteration of them is not primarily your affair; it is theirs. Your
affair is to use them, as they are, without self-righteousness, blame,
or complaint, for the smooth furtherance of your own ends. There is no
intention here to rob them of responsibility by depriving them of
free-will while saddling _you_ with responsibility as a free agent. As
your environment they must be accepted as inevitable, because they _are_
inevitable. But as centres themselves they have their own
responsibility: which is not yours. The historic question: 'Have we
free-will, or are we the puppets of determinism?' enters now.
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