another than the mere arbitrary
juxtaposition which now phenomenally appears? It is as much an altar
to an unknown god as the one that Saint Paul found at Athens. All our
scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
Uniformity is as much so as is free-will. If this be admitted, we can
debate on even terms. But if any one pretends that while freedom and
variety are, in the first instance, subjective demands, necessity and
uniformity are something {148} altogether different, I do not see how
we can debate at all.[3]

To begin, then, I must suppose you acquainted with all the usual
arguments on the subject. I cannot stop to take up the old proofs from
causation, from statistics, from the certainty with which we can
foretell one another's conduct, from the fixity of character, and all
the rest. But there are two words which usually encumber these
classical arguments, {149} and which we must immediately dispose of if
we are to make any progress. One is the eulogistic word _freedom_, and
the other is the opprobrious word _chance_. The word 'chance' I wish
to keep, but I wish to get rid of the word 'freedom.' Its eulogistic
associations have so far overshadowed all the rest of its meaning that
both parties claim the sole right to use it, and determinists to-day
insist that they alone are freedom's champions. Old-fashioned
determinism was what we may call _hard_ determinism. It did not shrink
from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and
the like. Nowadays, we have a _soft_ determinism which abhors harsh
words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination,
says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity
understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
Even a writer as little used to making capital out of soft words as Mr.
Hodgson hesitates not to call himself a 'free-will determinist.'

Now, all this is a quagmire of evasion under which the real issue of
fact has been entirely smothered. Freedom in all these senses presents
simply no problem at all. No matter what the soft determinist mean by
it,--whether he mean the acting without external constraint; whether he
mean the acting rightly, or whether he mean the acquiescing in the law
of the whole,--who cannot answer him that sometimes we are free and
sometimes we are not? But there _is_ a problem, an issue of fact and
not of words, an issue of the most momentous im