ABSTRACT
There are various kinds or stages of liberty in the growth of things. Logically the most primitive and profound groundlessness lies in the essential contingency of existence. This world is only one of a numberless multitude of possible worlds. Even if in the vain 50effort to impose reason on fact we suppose that the universe is absolutely infinite and realises all logical possibilities—a horrible night-mare—that monstrous universe would still be contingent. It might have been less indiscriminate, more selective, or as we might say, more moral. To have arranged all conceivable facts in all conceivable orders would be itself an arbitrary freak, an insane fatality. No logical necessity compelled that infinite plenitude of being to exist, or any part of it. Existence itself, on this analysis, is thus necessarily wedded to chance, which may also be called contingency or logical freedom.
