matter, you can do it here, gives you no right to say that, in respect of another subject-matter, you can do it there. And as to ‘science of tendencies,’ what has science to do with such loose phrases? If ‘tendencies’ mean abstractions, there is no objection to that in itself. The question to be answered is, ‘Are the abstractions possible?’; and we have answered that in the negative, so far as the science of character is concerned. Its ‘laws’ are ‘empty opinions;’ [1] there is not one sphere in which they hold good. If they are not, they ought to be false outside the character, because they profess to be specially laws of the character; and inside the character they are false, because they abstract from the character; and where they happen to be right, it is only because they happen not to be wrong. And what applies to the individual man, applies mutatis mutandis to a stage in historical progress.
If the above be in any way correct, then the rational prediction of human character is a sheer impossibility; and to maintain it to be possible, may not be to jar with the plain man’s feelings and beliefs, but it is to collide with his notion of accountability; because, as we saw, that notion contains the idea of an individual self, and because, unless that idea be not real, rational prediction is out of the question. So much for rational prediction: but how far, and whether, irrational prediction strikes at the root of individuality, is a question we can not enter into here.
At the cost of a somewhat lengthy digression, we are now, I hope, in a better position to ask how far responsibility, as it exists for the vulgar, agrees with the teaching of the expounders of Necessity. We saw that the plain man did not think himself accountable, for the reason that he never could be counted on; and if Necessity meant no more than the regularity of his volitions, the possibility of telling, from his character, his action in a given position, then, I believe, no objection would be made to it. But we saw as well that, if necessity means the theoretical developement of the characterized self, then necessity collides with popular morality.
But this last point need not at present engage us; let us confine
- ↑ The reader will be enlightened here by Hegel, Werke, ii. 218-24, but Hegel must not be considered responsible for everything I say.
