compel us to assent to something more than they actually warrant. So we foresee; so it happens. We are sucked along. There is no precise moment at which we can pull up, and refuse to go further. We have no objection that we can make good. We cannot deny the pressure of the accumulation. Yet we have no instrument by which to test its exact validity. This type of process lands us in a discomfortable temper in which to face the Eternities. None of us like it. And it is this temper which is associated with Butler's argument from probability.
Now, it is difficult to imagine any temper so remote from what he intended to evoke. He is, in reality, appealing to the downright common-sense certitude with which the plain man accepts solid facts. He proves this by bringing as an instance of what he is thinking of, the expectation that the sun will rise to-morrow, and be seen, when it is seen at all, in the figure of a circle and not of a square. That expectation rests on probability, says Butler. But that does not mean that the plain man is uncertain about the issue. To him, the fact that the sun is sure to rise is a type of all he means by certainty. It is for him the least improbable thing that he can think of. He cannot bring himself to doubt it. He would stake his life on it. Sun-rise, sun-setting—these embody the fixed immutabilities of Nature; they stand for the undeviating persistence of Physical Law; they are the fundamental basis on which he builds his experience as on a rock.
But why, then, identify this certitude with probability? Why call it by a name which so strongly belies its character?
Because Butler wants to drive it home to the plain man, that the convictions and the experiences on which he gaily and confidently grounds his most familiar actions are of a character which does not admit of logical proof. Tried by the standard of the metaphysician, they are mere probabilities. Yet they include the deepest motives
