xvi FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY 303 



easily be less than that of believing our direct experience 

 of Freedom, our immediate consciousness of the reality 

 of choices, to be quite illusory. For, as we saw in 

 the first part, Determinism also, by implying this con 

 sequence, administers a severe shock to our faith in the 

 rationality of existence. 



In point of fact and as things stand, the inconvenience 

 of the belief in Freedom is wholly sentimental from the 

 standpoint of the Determinist, and wholly imaginary 

 from that of the Libertarian. For all practical purposes 

 the belief in Freedom does not cause the slightest 

 inconvenience. For owing to the limitations of our 

 actual knowledge, there is always a great multitude of 

 events which we consider to be theoretically calculable, 

 but either cannot calculate at all in practice, or can 

 calculate only so roughly as to leave extensive scope 

 for what might be free variations. If, therefore, some 

 of these events were really incalculable, it would make no 

 practical, but only a sentimental, difference to us. For, 

 alike whether we thought them true or not, we should 

 of course continue to treat as calculable all of them we 

 wanted to calculate, and so should score as many successes 

 as heretofore. 



Secondly, and this is a still more important mitigation 

 of the alleged inconvenience, we often as it is find our 

 selves in the position of having to deal with what we 

 believe to be fully determined events, but with a know 

 ledge of their nature so imperfect that we cannot but 

 distrust the accuracy of our forecasts. But we do not on 

 this account despair of calculating. For it is often 

 possible, nevertheless, to calculate within what limits the 

 actual result is likely to lie, or again to work out the 

 alternatives which the defects of our knowledge leave 

 open. In both these cases, therefore, all that is affected 

 is, not the deterministic method of calculation, but only 

 the confidence with which we regard its results. 



If now we abstain from conceiving Freedom (wrongly) 

 as an agency which is by nature infinite and unlimited, 

 either in its power of breaking down habit and upsetting 



