Mr P. F. Strawson's book Individuals is subtitled An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. ‘Descriptive metaphysics’, he writes (p. 9), ‘is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world’, whereas ‘revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure’; it is distinguished from logical or conceptual analysis in scope and generality, rather than in fundamental intention. The book is divided into two parts; in Strawson's words (pp. 11–12), ‘the first part aims at establishing the central position which material bodies and persons occupy among particulars in general. … In the second part of the book the aim is to establish and explain the connexion between the idea of a particular in general and that of an object of reference or logical subject.’

‘Let us not forget this: when “I raise my arm”;, my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from that fact that I raise my arm?’

In his Memoir of Wittgenstein Professor Malcolm describes the occasion on which, as far as he knows, the idea that as an activity language is a game, or that ‘games are played with words’, first occurred to Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was passing a playing field where there was a game of football in progress. As he watched the game, the thought suddenly flashed into his mind, ‘We play games with words!’ This account may be compared with that given by Professor von Wright, on the basis of Wittgenstein's own report, of the way in which he was with equal suddenness struck with the thought that a proposition is a ‘picture’. He was looking at a diagram which showed the positions of certain persons and vehicles involved in an accident—‘That is a proposition!’ was the thought which on this earlier occasion darted into Wittgenstein's mind. Thus, it seems, was germinated the theory developed in the Tractatus that propositions, that is to say, meaningful propositions, are ‘pictures of reality’ (Tractatus, 4.01).

It is quite commonly held nowadays that universalizability is a purely formal feature of moral terms, or perhaps of moral rules.To say that something is good, it is asserted, implies (in some sense of “implies”) that anything else with the same (relevant) characteristics is also good; to say that Jones ought to do X is to commit oneself to saying that, in the same circumstances, Smith ought to do X. In pointing this out, it is suggested, one is not oneself taking up a moral position, or laying down a particular moral rule, but simply making it clear what a moral utterance is. The principle ofuniversalizability is thus a principle of meta-ethics, not of morality itself. That moral judgments are universalizable, Hare tells us, is an analytic statement: “analytic by virtue of the meaning of the word moral”.

It has in recent years been argued, by Professors Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, that God could have created men wholly good. For, causal determinism being compatible with free will, men could have been made in such a way that, without loss of freedom, they would never have fallen (and would never fall) into sin. This if true would constitute a weighty anti-theistic argument. And yet intuitively it seems unconvincing. I wish here to uncover the roots of this intuitive suspicion.