The difficulty has arisen from our forgetting that contradiction in terms lies at the foundation of all our thoughts as a condition and _sine qua non_ of our being able to think at all. We imagine that we must either have all free-will and no necessity, or all necessity and no free-will, and, it being obvious that our free-will is often overridden by force of circumstances while the evidence that necessity is overridden by free-will is harder to find (if indeed it can be found, for I have not fully considered the matter), most people who theorise upon this question will deny in theory that there is any free-will at all, though in practice they take care to act as if there was. For if we admit that like causes are followed by like effects (and everything that we do is based upon this hypothesis), it follows that every combination of causes must have some one consequent which can alone follow it and which free-will cannot touch. (Yes, but it will generally be found that free-will entered into the original combination and the repetition of the combination will not be exact unless a like free-will is repeated along with all the other factors.) From which it follows that free-will is apparent only, and that, as I said years ago in _Erewhon_, we are not free to choose what seems best on each occasion but bound to do so, being fettered to the freedom of our wills throughout our lives. But to deny free-will is to deny moral responsibility, and we are landed in absurdity at once—for there is nothing more patent than that moral responsibility exists. Nevertheless, at first sight, it would seem as though we ought not to hang a man for murder if there was no escape for him but that he must commit one. Of course the answer to one who makes this objection is that our hanging him is as much a matter of necessity as his committing the murder. If, again, necessity, as involved in the certainty that like combinations will be followed by like consequence, is a basis on which all our actions are founded, so also is freewill. This is quite as much a _sine qua non_ for action as necessity is; for who would try to act if he did not think that his trying would influence the result? We have therefore two apparently incompatible and mutually destructive faiths, each equally and self-evidently demonstrable, each equally necessary for salvation of any kind, and each equally entering into every thought and action of our whole lives, yet utterly contradictory and irreconcilable. Can any dilemma seem more hopeless? It is not a case of being able to live happily with either were t’other dear charmer away; it is indispensable that we should embrace both, and embrace them with equal cordiality at the same time, though each annihilates the other. It is as though it were indispensable to our existence to be equally dead and equally alive at one and the same moment.