Debate about free will diffused through intellectual life. Sometimes it was explicit, prompted by the kind of concern voiced by T. H. Green: once ‘the moral sentiment has been explained on the principles of natural science, free-will is not likely to be regarded as presenting any serious obstacle to the same mode of treatment’. More often, as in the writings of historians and social reformers, in this respect including Huxley, belief in the capacity of people to will change was embedded in other thoughts and propositions. Beyond the intellectual exchanges there was a large public interest, even anxiety – and, in Shaw's plays, parody: ‘We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an illusion. We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the Unalterable, the Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.’ Belief was enacted in daily life and not necessarily the subject of reflection. This was as much the case for academics as for other people, as Huxley's or Clifford's call to arms and the historians' descriptions of historical actors shows.