46 THE MISUSE OF METAPHORS IN 



mere antecedent or mere consequent. It trammels up its 

 before and after, and even its environment is potentially 

 within itself, an object of its thought and an element in 

 its volition. Similar confusion marks our treatment of 

 motives, purposes, the relation of the will to the intelli- 

 gence, and so forth. Man's moral nature, which is in its 

 essence a movement, a transition, a becoming, is treated 

 from a static point of view. It is asked whether he is 

 rational or irrational, free or bond, good or bad, as if he 

 ever were " either " the one " or " the other of these. But 

 "either," "or," the reflective categories, cannot explain a 

 process ; and man is a process, his very life is a constant 

 reproduction of itself, a dying-to-live both in knowledge 

 and in conduct. Ethics is also "the playground of 

 analogies." 



And now we come to social science, prepared, if my 

 attempts have not been in vain, to find in this field also 

 the distortion of facts into unintelligible enigmata, and the 

 endless controversies and confusion which mark the pre- 

 sence and activity of metaphorical hypotheses. 



I propose in what remains of this paper to take up one 

 of these controversies one which affects in no superficial 

 way the working faith of the social reformer. I refer to 

 that which turns on the relative significance of " Character " 

 and "Environment." How far, it is asked, are the evils 

 of society capable of being remedied by state or civic 

 enactments which affect the outward circumstances of life ? 

 Or, how far l must all such changes remain futile and the 



1 It may be worth observing in passing that the question "How far" ? 

 is really as much out of place in philosophy as it is in mathematics. 

 Prudence is the most worldly of all the virtues, and is often given to 

 count the cost of being good. In philosophy it is a vice. 



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