240 HUMANISM 



XIII 



the voluntaristic and humanistic interpretation of experi 

 ence as a whole, and would have found a way to his 

 own associationism blocked or lengthened. 



(3) The argument that the volition-motion sequence 

 is like any other, and explicable in the same way, is. 

 valid enough if Hume s assumption is granted. But if 

 it is not, it is simply a petitio. And voluntarists are in 

 no wise bound to grant it. 1 They may reasonably reply : 

 You must not calmly beg the question of the nature 

 of sequences in a sense favourable to yourself. The real 

 question is which sequences are to be chosen as clues to 

 the interpretation of the rest. As to this we and you 

 differ. We start ab intra from the sequences which we 

 most directly experience, and, treating them as typical, 

 logically arrive at the conceptions of causal efficacy and 

 necessary connexion. We admit, of course, that our 

 method is sheer &quot; anthropomorphism.&quot; But then we are 

 Humanists, and know it. You on the other hand only 

 cripple yourself by trying to ignore the human character 

 of your intelligence, and refusing to acknowledge the 

 validity of your immediate experience. You insist on 

 starting ab extra from the sequences which you observe 

 in the outer world. You assume, that is, that you can 

 know no more about yourself than about any one else. 

 And lo, you have no difficulty in showing that you can 

 know as little about yourself as about any one else ! 

 But what have you gained ? You have only rendered all 

 the happenings in the world opaque to your intelligence. 

 And what have you proved ? Only that the facts are 

 obligingly ambiguous enough to submit to either inter 

 pretation. This we do not dream of denying, and we 

 think your interpretation very clever. But it is quite 

 arbitrary, wrongheaded and superfluous. Moreover, it is 

 vain, because it has not refuted ours, on the advantages 

 of which we forbear to enlarge. 



(4) The assumption that knowing a cause supplies 

 also a priori knowledge of the effect may have been 

 made by rationalists who (more or less inconsistently) 



1 Cp. Studies in Humanism, p. 230. 



