joke lying in the incongruity of such things with persuasion. In persuasion consequences to come from the persuader may be the fact we are to be persuaded of; but all that that means is that persuasion may be used in threat. Mere persuasion is the mere bringing home the fact as a fact, and in abstraction from what the fact is, and from the relation of it to the will of the party persuading and the party persuaded. Further, in persuasion there must be reflection and reasoning of some kind. Jacob did not persuade Esau with the mess of pottage; he might have done so if he had argued the point. I should be glad, did space permit me, to develope this against possible objections; but as it is, I must ask the reader to pardon the digression, on the ground that want of clearness here must mean want of clearness in some of the first principles of politics.
Thoroughly to understand what character means is to know what individuality in general means, and in what sense a man’s self is individual. And to understand this (need we say it?) is to be clear on some of the most difficult questions. This we do not for a moment pretend to be; and all that we are going to say must be looked on as more or less superficial remark.
‘Given such a character and such a stimulus, such an act must follow.’ This is the view which certainly is making its way. To prove it by particular experiences is from the very nature of the case impossible; nevertheless, when we understand it so—‘Supposing you have the self-same character and the self-same stimulus, and nothing else, must not what follows be also the same?’—it seems quite impossible to refuse our assent to it, or possible only if we are prepared to question the truth of any and every general proposition. But before we assent, we should see that the statement is not true except in the abstract. It is true only if you have nothing but the same character and stimulus.
This suggests the inquiry, Is the abstraction any more than idle? The whole statement stands and falls with the ‘given.’ No doubt, hypothetical conclusions from a fiction may be useful, but it is not well to forget the fictitious character of the starting-point. So we must ask, Do we ever have such a supposed ‘given’? (1) Is there such a thing as a character which remains the same? and (2) In all action are we not forced to recognize something beside character and stimulus?
There is a view which supposes character to be inborn and unalterable. Here we may say that what solicits the character to
