our attention to the full-grown man. When he hears of necessity, he is sure to object to it. ‘But that,’ says the believer, ‘is only because he does not understand our terms; by ‘cause’ we mean one thing, and he means another; and so with ‘necessity’ ’. In that case, we may answer, speaking in the place, though not with the words, of our vulgar objector, you really should not go on using these terms, since you must be aware that you generate confusion; and also, in the writings of our necessitarians, we can not see that these terms do signify what they do not signify for the non-philosophical. Where we see that words go on standing for the same matters, it is hard to believe that their meaning is so different. You take phrases, which we apply to the natural world, and you apply them to what we think the non-natural world; you break down our distinction between the physical and the mental. You say, indeed, that this matters not, since your view of the physical world also is different from ours; but we say, in answer, that we are not philosophers, and do not know what they think of it; but when you speak to us of stones, and sticks, and what we understand; and talk of a blow from a stick causing bruises, and the necessity of a stone breaking panes in a window, then your view of nature seems at bottom to be ours, and we believe that you take that common view and transfer it to the human world, and there, so far as we understand you, we do not believe in you. Your theoretical definition of cause and necessity may be different from anything in our minds, but your practical application we see to be, everywhere else, much the same, and we do not trust you, when you tell us that here it is different.
When you speak to us plainly, you have to say that you really understand a man to be free, and free in no other sense than a falling stone, or than running water. In the one case there is as little necessity as in the other, and just as much freedom. And we believe that this is your meaning. But we know that, if these things are so, a man has no more of what we call freedom than a candle or a coprolite, and of that you will never succeed in convincing us. You must persuade us either that the coprolite is responsible, or that we are not responsible; and, with all due respect to you, we are going to believe neither.
