xvi FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY 305 



takes an ell, and claims the all. He must have all or 

 nothing. He will not compromise with the clearest facts. 

 If the facts confute his favourite theory, he denounces the 

 scepticism of their upholders. So here. A world that 

 is not absolutely determined, he is determined to treat 

 as a chaos. Nothing like our actual world can satisfy 

 any of his demands. For he is never satisfied to use a 

 principle just for what it is worth and in cases where 

 experience shows it to be applicable. He is always 

 wanting to make it absolute, and to apply it to the 

 universe without reservation and discretion, dogmatically 

 and a priori. And it is little enough he knows about 

 the universe ! His metaphysical knowledge is a gigantic 

 bluff. For it is one of his oddities that the less he knows, 

 the more confident he grows. If, for example, there is 

 the least ground in his experience for holding that the 

 world is (in some one) sense one, his imagination will 

 forthwith proclaim it as a universal and necessary truth 

 that the universe is one also in innumerable other senses 

 and is under an a priori pledge to behave itself according 

 to his desires and expectations also in a multitude of 

 other respects, which he has not inquired into and about 

 which he knows nothing ! Those, of course, who love 

 the philosophic type of mind will understand engaging 

 little idiosyncrasies such as these, and make allowance 

 for them. But to the plain man s common sense they 

 must often prove perplexing and alarming. 



In this case, moreover, the metaphysician s logical 

 temper works very unjustly. He refuses to regard the 

 forecasting of human action as a matter of practical con 

 venience and its principle as a matter of scientific method. 

 He insists on taking it as something absolute and meta 

 physical, as an indefeasible revelation of the ultimate 

 nature of things. So he is not only driven to misconceive 

 its meaning and to exaggerate its scope, but is blinded 

 to obvious facts which every one else has no difficulty in 

 seeing, and beguiled into a most outrageous and in 

 defensible travesty of the indeterminist position. 



During the last thirty years quite a number of dis- 



x 



