15 
and not from 
the law of his 
nature “ oblig- 
ing;,” 
and therefore of himself determines nothing, is to contradict the 
broad fact that we all treat one another as real beings. What 
seem to be men’s actions depend on the existence of the men. 
It is on this and on no narrow or insulated details that we can 
found our philosophy ; it must stand, if at all, on facts of 
such extent and scope as to belong to the human ah the facts 
race. And this is broad enough. All the pheno- of internal 
mena of human praise and blame in all human decision » 
intercourse support the assertion that the conscious agent is 
a real being who makes the internal decision which precedes 
certain actions. — And, that his noi^aig is analogous to creating 
— i. e., a going forth of action from the agent himself, without 
essential change in the agent, — is but another statement of 
the same truth. 
It may be further said in opposition to this, 
that there may be some law of the inner nature of 
the agent himself, not simply allowing, but wholly 
obliging or necessitating all his actions ab initio. 
And we reply, first, that such a supposition rests, as far as we 
know, on no facts ; and secondly, if proved, it would hinder 
our justly blaming or praising, or holding any to which iQ _ 
bq accountable. It would convert every Person ^diction 0011 " 
into a Thing, which is a contradiction, reversing all 
the phenomena. 
25. Concede to us the possibility of our ever abstaining from 
that which we are about to do, and you may rightly praise or 
blame us for doing it. Deny it, and you deny the facts of all 
human social existence. Say of a proposed act of a conscious 
agent, “ It may be, or it may never be,” and you are saying 
what the whole world accepts and acts upon, so fully that 
our treatment of each other depends on it as on an axiom. 
But to say this is to admit “ contingency,” which 
is no more than an abstract term to express this 
general fact. Whatever of the “ calculable ” or 
the “ fore-know able ” may be pleaded by any 
philosophy, or any system hereafter, it must never 
be of a kind (§ 5) which will clash with the possibility of 
some acts being entirely contingent a priori; for that rests 
on the facts of human nature throughout. 
26. If, indeed, any one would still wish to persuade himself 
that the phenomena of sensation contain the sum of all 
reality in the universe, and that the conscious agent is 
himself only a kind of subtler mechanism, and determines 
nothing for himself, what can be said to him but that he 
simply speculates? Facts are all on our side; while they 
assure us also that a conscious agent is a being such as 
Contingency 
as involved in 
conscious 
agency an 
axiom of so- 
cial life. 
