 Berlin based these assertions on empirical grounds – on ‘the world that we encounter in ordinary experience’, in which ‘we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally  absolute,[16]  the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others’ (2002b, 213–14). Yet he also held that the doctrine of pluralism reflected logically necessary rather than contingent truths about the nature of human moral life and the values that are its ingredients. The idea of a perfect whole or ultimate solution is not only unattainable in practice, but also conceptually incoherent. To avert or overcome conflicts between values once and for all would require the transformation, which amounted to the abandonment, of those values themselves. It is not clear that this logical point adds anything significant to the empirical point about human ends recorded in the last quotation, but we do not pursue this doubt here.