THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 313 



sign and the thing signified, will fail to see how proof that man 

 is mechanical and automatic could show that he is a necessary 

 agent; for science knows no necessity except the logical necessity 

 for stopping where the evidence stops. 



I fail to see why any one should find, in the extension of me- 

 chanical conceptions of nature, any evidence " that right deductions 

 from true principles should ever end in consequences which cannot 

 be maintained or made consistent." 



So far as the word necessity means anything to us, as living 

 beings, it is synonymous with the blindness of ignorance. The 

 crab that finds and uses a house does nothing that might not 

 have been expected ; and since natural responses often mislead and 

 prove injurious or even destructive, actions that are due to nature 

 are commonly said to be blind or necessary; but our own con- 

 scious experience does not change our nature ; for it only " unravels 

 our prejudices and mistakes, untwisting the closest connections, dis- 

 tinguishing things that are different, instead of confused and per- 

 plexed, giving us distinct views, gradually correcting our judgment, 

 and reducing it to a philosophical exactness." 



Since this is so, does not each new discovery in the province 

 of zoology give added meaning to the declaration that it is the 

 truth that shall make us free? 



