Boutroux inclines to a doctrine of finalism somewhat after the manner of Ravaisson. The world he conceives as attracted to an end; the beautiful and the good are ideals seeking to be realised; but this belief in finality does not, he expressly maintains, exclude contingency. To illustrate this, Boutroux uses a metaphor from seamanship: the sailors in a ship have a port to make for, yet their adaptations to the weather and sea en route permit of contingency along with the finality involved in their making for port. So it is with beings in nature. They have not merely the one end, to exist amid the obstacles and difficulties around them, “they have an ideal to realise, and this ideal consists in approaching to God, to his likeness, each after his kind. The ideal varies with the creatures, because each has his special nature, and can only imitate God in and by his own nature.”[20] [20] _La Contingence des Lois de la Nature_, p. 158. Boutroux’s doctrine of freedom and contingency is not opposed to a teleological conception of the universe, and in this respect he stands in contrast to Bergson, who, in the rigorous application of his theory of freedom, rules out all question of teleology. With Renouvier and with Bergson, however, Boutroux agrees in maintaining that this freedom, which is the basis of contingency in things, is not and cannot be a datum of experience, directly or indirectly, because experience only seizes things which are actually realised, whereas this freedom is a creative power, anterior to the act. Heredity, instinct, character and habit are words by which we must not be misled or overawed into a disbelief in freedom. They are not absolutely fatal and fully determined. The same will, insists Boutroux, which has created a habit _can_ conquer it. Will must not be paralysed by bowing to the assumed supremacy of instincts or habits. Habit itself is not a contradiction of spontaneity; it is itself a result of spontaneity, a state of spontaneity itself, and does not exclude contingency or freedom. Metaphysics can, therefore, according to Boutroux, construct a doctrine of freedom based on the conception of contingency. The supreme principles according to this philosophy will be laws, not those of the positive sciences, but the laws of beauty and goodness, expressing in some measure the divine life and supposing free agents. In fact the triumph of the good and the beautiful will result in the replacement of laws of nature, strictly so called, by the free efforts of wills tending to perfection—that is, to God.