But
nature may be only approximately uniform; and persons in whom
knowledge of the world's past has bred pessimism (or doubts as to
the world's good character, which become certainties if that
character be supposed eternally fixed) may naturally welcome free-
will as a MELIORISTIC doctrine. It holds up improvement as at least
possible; whereas determinism assures us that our whole notion of
possibility is born of human ignorance, and that necessity and
impossibility between them rule the destinies of the world.
Free-will is thus a general cosmological theory of PROMISE, just
like the Absolute, God, Spirit or Design. Taken abstractly, no one
of these terms has any inner content, none of them gives us any
picture, and no one of them would retain the least pragmatic value
in a world whose character was obviously perfect from the start.
Elation at mere existence, pure cosmic emotion and delight, would,
it seems to me, quench all interest in those speculations, if the
world were nothing but a lubberland of happiness already. Our
interest in religious metaphysics arises in the fact that our
empirical future feels to us unsafe, and needs some higher
guarantee. If the past and present were purely good, who could wish
that the future might possibly not resemble them? Who could desire
free-will? Who would not say, with Huxley, "let me be wound up every
day like a watch, to go right fatally, and I ask no better freedom.
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