Footnote 129: Our ordinary calculations as to the behaviour of our fellow-men, beyond the circle of our own intimates, seem to involve a mixture of the two types. We base our conclusions partly on conjectures drawn from the observed past acts of our fellows as to their special interests and purposes, partly on generalisations as to the purposes and interests which are most widely operative in human life. Practical men never allow themselves to forget that the conclusions thus obtained are problematical in the highest degree. The whole course of our investigation will go to show that the notion of a deductive science of human nature, by which the concrete conduct of an individual man might be inferred with certainty from physiological and psychological generalities, is a ridiculous chimera. See _infra_, Bk. IV. chap. 4. Footnote 130: It will be recollected that the approximate constancy of such social statistics has been, foolishly enough, brought forward as an alleged disproof of moral freedom. The more vulgar forms of the necessitarian argument have even been pushed to the inference that, if the number of suicides up to December 31 has been one less than the average in some given year, some one _must_ kill himself before the day is out to make up the percentage. What must happen if the number has been one _more_ than the average we are never told. Footnote 131: Compare Mach, _Science of Mechanics_, p. 280 ff. (Eng. trans.); Jevons, _Principles of Science_, chaps. 13, 14. Footnote 132: Compare Lotze, _Metaphysic_, bk. i. Introduction X., chap. 3, § 33 (Eng. trans., vol. i. pp. 18, 90-93); bk. i. chap. 7, § 208 ff. (Eng. trans., vol ii. pp. 88-91). Footnote 133: See the full exposition of this view in Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. i. lecture 4, on which the present paragraph is founded. Cf. J. T. Merz, _History of European Thought_, vol. i. pp. 437-441. Footnote 134: My remark is founded more particularly upon the methods by which quantitative uniformities are obtained in the investigations of Psychophysics. I have no direct acquaintance with first-hand experimentation in other spheres, but the method by which it is made to yield general uniformities seems to be of the same kind. Footnote 135: Cf. Mr. H. G. Wells’s tale, _The New Accumulator_. Footnote 136: Compare once more the passage already quoted from Lotze, _Metaphysic_, i. 3. 33. Footnote 137: See _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. i. lecture 2, and compare the elaborate proof given by Mach, _Science of Mechanics_, pp. 9-23, that all the so-called demonstrations of the general theory of the lever are mere reductions of the more complicated to the simplest cases of a relation which ultimately depends for its recognition on nothing more cogent than the evidence of the senses. Footnote 138: