# William James's nineteenth-century defence of possibilities

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P023](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P023/#char=15,65): "the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism"

The sweeping 'whole' leaves out an important contemporary dissent. William James's 'The Dilemma of Determinism', first published in the *Unitarian Review* in September 1884 and inspected here in the 1897 *Will to Believe* collection, contrasts determinism with a world containing genuinely unrealized possibilities. He calls the deterministic universe an 'iron block' and argues that the evidence of what happened does not settle whether something else could have happened. See especially pp. 150–153. [Read James's essay](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe_and_Other_Essays_in_Popular_Philosophy/The_Dilemma_of_Determinism).

This is a close conceptual parallel to the leaf that might have been scarlet: each writer resists identifying actuality with the only real possibility. It also makes Chesterton's self-portrait more precise. He is reporting a perceived intellectual atmosphere, not documenting unanimous nineteenth-century opinion. The parallel does not establish borrowing, and James's argument about possibilities does not identify Chesterton's implied chooser.

## Sources

- [William James, The Dilemma of Determinism, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe_and_Other_Essays_in_Popular_Philosophy/The_Dilemma_of_Determinism), pp. 150–153, from 'What does determinism profess?' through the discussion of evidence and possibilities; publication-history footnote
- [James, The Will to Believe (1897), page 151](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Will_to_Believe_and_Other_Essays_(1897).djvu/173), Printed p. 151, scan/transcription page 173, 'actualities seem to float' and 'nothing inchoate'

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