But metaphors are not arguments--Statistics prove the determinism of human actions, which always reappear in the same way and in the same quantity whenever certain actual circumstances appear.--But Statistics, if they collect and simplify facts and construct views and tables that are more or less useful, do not thus prove anything; for neither are the instances that they give as equivalent, really so, nor the relation that they declare between certain facts a real relation. If we turn from artificial formulæ to the immediate observation of the real, we find ourselves confronted with nothing but individuated volitional acts, resulting from necessity and liberty.--The individual has a constant character, of which action is the consequence: _operari sequitur esse._--But the constant character is nothing but the abstraction of the single acts done by the individual. It is therefore natural that the actions should appear to be referable to the character which is derived from them; but it is not correct to say that there is equivalence, for abstraction is not equivalent to concretion.--The individual, even if he can be conceived as free in respect to his external environment, would be always subject to the law of his own nature.--But the law of his own nature is not a contingent thing, but the law itself of the Spirit, or, precisely, freedom, and it is quite clear that freedom is not free not to be free.--The social organism has its natural laws, which govern the action of the individual.--The social organism is also an abstraction, which is turned into a being only by the false interpretation of a metaphor. In all these examples, and in the many others that could be brought forward, the error is always the same as has been said: the substitution of the naturalistic for the speculative construction, Physic for Metaphysic. And since physical or naturalistic construction has no material other than given historical facts, the doctrines above mentioned, when they are not false, are always tautological and lead to the affirmation that the volitional fact is a fact, or that in it is the moment of necessity. [Sidenote: _The mysticism of arbitrarism._]