PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xli 



of the Oxford Essayists,^ on the other. The point 

 that absorbed the attention of my Nature reviewer is 

 thus only a subordinate step in my procedure : there, 

 I am simply showing what genuine freedom must 

 really mean ; pointing out that the freedom necessary 

 and sufficient for moral responsibility, — sucJl respon- 

 sibility and sjich freedom, of course, standing or falling 

 together, — though it excludes predestination, cannot 

 and must not be identified with empty indeterminism, 

 but must be construed z.^ self -determination ; and that 

 determinism, on the other hand, need not be taken 

 to mean predestination, but has its conception satis- 

 fied rather by definiteness simply, as against the bare 

 indefinite or indeterminate, which is in truth only 

 another name for the unreal, the non-existent. In 

 short, my object in that passage, quite preparatory, is 

 to state in the sharpest way the question of the pos- 

 sible harmonisation of freedom and determinism, and 

 to show that this is clearly possible if (but 07ily if) the 

 two are read off, respectively, as the obverse and the 

 reverse of the conception Self-determination, reduced 

 to identity with Self -definition ; by this path I pass 

 to the conception of a pluralistic and libertarian 

 rationalism, as transcending the monistic and neces- 



^ Though the official manifesto of these Oxford writers had not then 

 appeared, I was familiar with their views through personal intercourse 

 as well as acquaintance with certain of their previous publications, and 

 I had them constantly in mind. 



