But, with due deference to his lordship, this does not contradict the statement in the text, that we are ignorant of any principle on which _such prescience_ can be explained. Assuming, indeed, that any events are contingent, that human actions proceed from freedom, and not from necessity, we cannot deny that they come within the range of infinite knowledge. But the philosophical necessarian does not grant this postulate. He assumes the existence of an infinite mind, to whose knowledge all events are open, and thence infers the _necessity_ of these events. He pleads that omniscience and contingency are incongruous ideas, and, on the ground of pure metaphysics, it would be difficult to refute him. But we demolish his theory by an appeal to facts. We oppose the moral constitution and history of man, to the plausible speculations of philosophy. In other words, the mere metaphysician is a fatalist; and his position, in the present state of our intellectual philosophy, can be successfully attacked only by an appeal to facts and consciousness, and by moral argument. That sound metaphysics and just moral reasoning cannot really be at variance is certain, since there cannot exist contradictory truths. Our metaphysics therefore are wrong, or there must be an unknown _third principle_, by which they are to be reconciled with our moral reasonings. But until we can detect the fallacies of the metaphysician, or supply the _connecting link_ which is now wanting, we must rest in the unsatisfactory conclusion that abstract philosophy is with the necessarian, and that liberty and its ennobling consequences, moral agency, and moral responsibility, rest on the solitary basis of moral argument.