"Yes."

"And there, if I may say so, you are a little unjust. It isn't my fault
that I was born weak."

"But a man may conquer his weakness."

"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