Passing from these psychological considerations, Renouvier calls our attention to some of a moral nature, no less important, in his opinion, for shedding light upon the nature of freedom. If, he argues, all is necessary, if all human actions are predetermined, then popular language is guilty of a grave extravagance and appears ridiculous, insinuating, as it does, that many acts might have been left undone and many events might have occurred differently, and that a man might have done other than he did. In the light of the hypothesis of rigorous necessity, the mention of ambiguous futures and the notion of “being otherwise” (_le pouvoir être autrement_) seem foolish. Science may assert the docrine of necessity and preach it valiantly, but the human conscience feels it to be untrue and will not be gainsaid. The scientist himself is forced to admit that man does not accept his gospel of universal predestination or fatalism. This Renouvier recognises as an important point in the debate. Strange, is it not, he remarks, that the mind of the philosopher himself, a sanctuary or shrine for truth, should appear as a rebellious citadel refusing to surrender to the truth of this universal necessity. We believe ourselves to be free agents or, at least beings who are capable of some free action. However slight such action, it would invalidate the hypothesis of universal necessity. If all things are necessitated, then moral judgments, the notions of right and of duty, have no foundation in the nature of things. Virtue and crime lose their character; the sentiments and feelings, such as regret, hope, fear, desire, change their meaning or become meaningless. Renouvier lays great stress upon these moral considerations. Again, if everything be necessitated, error is as necessary as truth. The false is indeed true, being necessary, and the true may become false. Disputes rage over what is false or true, but these disputes cannot be condemned, for they themselves are, by virtue of the hypothesis, necessary, and the disputes are necessarily absurd and ridiculous from this point of view. Where then is truth? Where is morality? We have here no basis for either. Looking thus at history, all its crimes and infamies are equally lawful, for they are inevitable; such is the result, Renouvier shows, of viewing all human action as universally predetermined. The objections thus put forward by Renouvier against the doctrine of universal necessity are powerful ones. They possess great weight and result in the admission, even by its upholders, that “the judgment of freedom is a natural datum of consciousness and is bound up with our reflective judgments upon which we act, being itself the foundation of these.”