In fact, the criminal--or the saint--being what he is as the result of the inter-action of possibly calculable factors is the essential condition towards making "the prediction of all things" ideally, if not actually possible. In saying, then, that a man ought not to do wrong, we are only saying that our ideal of a perfect man eliminates the idea of wrong-doing, and that our imagination is powerful enough to construct a human character to which wrong-doing shall be alien. The fallacy here is due to a confusion of the actual with the desirable. If we are looking to the past we are bound to say that "ought" is meaningless, because what has been is the only thing that could have been. Thus it is meaningless to say that a piece of string capable of withstanding a strain of half a hundredweight ought to have withstood a strain of half a ton. It is equally absurd to say that a man ought to have withstood the germ of malarial fever, when his constitution rendered him susceptible to attack. Both of these instances will be readily admitted. Is it, then, any more reasonable to say that a man ought to have withstood a temptation to drunkenness, or theft, or cruelty--in the sense that given his nature he _could_ have withstood it--when all the circumstances of character, heredity, and environment made for his downfall? We say that certain considerations "ought" to have restrained Jones because they were enough to restrain Smith. Are we, then, to conclude that Smith and Jones are so much alike--are, in fact, identical in character--that the same forces will influence each in the same manner and to the same degree? The assumption is obviously absurd. What ought to have happened with Smith and Jones, bearing in mind all the conditions of the problem, is what did happen. What ought to happen to Smith and Jones in the future will be equally dependent upon the extent to which the character of the two becomes modified. In this sense our conception of what "ought" to be in the future will guide us as to the nature of the influences we bring to bear upon Smith and Jones. We believe that good actions may be possible in the future where bad ones occurred in the past, because we see that a change of conditions may produce the desired result. The "moral postulate," therefore, does not contain anything, or imply anything, in favour of Indeterminism. It does assert that certain things ought to be, but it can only realize this by recognizing, and acting upon the recognition, that just as certain forces in the past have issued in certain results, so a modification in the nature or incidence of these forces will produce a corresponding modification of conduct in the future. Whatever else there appears to be in the "ought" is a mere trick of the imagination; and the surprising thing is that a writer of the calibre of Professor James should not have been perfectly alive to this.