296 HUMANISM 



XVI 



adopt it, or not, as he pleases. Whatever view any one 

 adopts, he was fated to adopt. Whatever the moral 

 degeneration or dissolution the future may have in store 

 for us, it was preformed and predestined by the immutable 

 order of the universe. Hence it must seem idle to a 

 Determinist to deprecate or to deplore what no skill or 

 thought could have averted. It is silly to resent the 

 inevitable, and this does not become less silly if we 

 perceive also that our very resentment was inevitable 

 too. 



We come, therefore, finally upon one of the most 

 remarkable peculiarities of the Free-Will controversy, 

 namely the fact that an argument which is valid and 

 cogent for those who have adopted one set of assumptions 

 has no cogency at all for those who have adopted the 

 other. Superficially this seems a paradox which lends 

 itself to sceptical conclusions : and these have accordingly 

 been drawn by most of the philosophers who observed this 

 singularity. But this is really a mistake : the true signi 

 ficance of the fact is quite different. In the end it turns 

 out to be a legitimate consequence of the reality of choices. 

 It merely means that, when we have chosen, we can abide 

 (up to a certain point) by the consequences of our choice, 

 and keep at bay the interpretations which would stultify 

 it. Hence we must expect to find that in a sense a con 

 sistent Determinism cannot strictly be refuted, refuted 

 that is by the purely, or merely, intellectual considerations 

 which it would itself accept as a conclusive refutation. 

 But we shall also find that the demand for such refutation 

 is itself an error, and that the possibility of a wilful (and 

 not necessitated) Determinism is quite consistent with the 

 reality of our Freedom. We shall also strive to vindicate 

 the plain man s faith in Freedom by explaining what is 

 the real nature of our Freedom, and by showing how it 

 may be conceived as a rational doctrine. 



