THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 303 



of creation that they have come to believe this ; although every 

 great teacher of the principles of science tells them their infe- 

 rence is worthless. We fail, on analysis, to discover any a priori 

 foundation for the law of conservation of energy, the law of the 

 indestructibility of matter, the law of the continuity of motion, the 

 law of natural causation, or any necessary or universal law of 

 nature. If we pass by, for the present, what animal automatism 

 or human automatism would mean if it were established, all the 

 meaning we are able to find in the automatic clock, or in the 

 automatism of nature, for the meaning of the word automaton, as 

 distinguished from instruments and structures, is an orderly mecha- 

 nism which is worthy of confidence and independent of human 

 users, and useful to them who know how to use it. 



Unless sane men doubt whether the mechanism of nature is 

 orderly and worthy of confidence and independent for the most 

 part of human users, and useful to them who know how to use 

 it, no philosopher has as yet found in physical science any basis 

 for a philosophy of nature which is not the common property of 

 all rational beings. I fail to see why any should dread the exten- 

 sion of mechanical conceptions of nature. If life is response to 

 the order of nature, he who dreads or fears natural knowledge 

 seems unworthy of the conscious life- of manhood, and better fitted 

 for that of a turnip or a clam. These things have the benefit of 

 response to mechanical principles without seeming to know anything 

 about it ; and he whom these principles oppress like a nightmare might 

 be more at ease if he were a turnip. He might then have all 

 the benefit of mechanical principles without the horror of physical 

 science which seems as subjective as the horrors of delirium tremens. 

 The sufferer should have our pity, but I cannot put myself in 

 his place, for nothing seems clearer than that the natural common 

 sense of man would preserve him from all horror of mechanics 

 if he were left alone; that it would, on the contrary, assure him 

 that each new discovery in this field is added proof of his sanity 

 and of the value of his common sense. 



If any believe they have evidence of a power outside nature, 

 to which both its origin and its maintenance from day to day are 

 due, physical science tells them nothing inconsistent with this be- 

 lief. If failure to find any sustaining virtue in matter and motion 



