42 WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 



and an error or illusion, is to be looked on as a useful response 

 that has been acquired through selection. Man's knowledge, 

 then, is of the peculiar kind that is useful to him. He may not 

 yet know as much as is good for him, but he at least has acquired 

 a store of the kind of knowledge that preserves him in the struggle 

 for existence. 



Viewing man thus from the biological standpoint Brooks at- 

 tempts to deal with two human characteristics, the consciousness 

 that the will is free and that the individual carries a moral respon- 

 sibility. These, like all other vital characteristics, he thinks, 

 may possibly sometime be shown to be part of the order of 

 nature and in that sense mechanical . ' ' Rational action may some- 

 time prove to be reflex from beginning to end." And yet in the 

 face of this possibility, Brooks would still maintain that the will 

 is free and moral responsibility real. To some this will seem a 

 difficult thesis. 



Underlying the scientific inquiry as to the character of our 

 present knowledge and of that which possibly we may acquire 

 about nature, is the metaphysical question, "what is nature? 1 ' 

 This question Brooks does not attack in the fashion of construc- 

 tive technical philosophy. He makes no attempt to define reality. 

 His purpose in dealing with the matter is plainly the practical 

 one of showing us what we need not believe. He says in effect, 

 if then our knowledge of all nature is and will continue to be of one 

 sort, viz., that phenomena follow one another regularly and 

 (supposing the future to be like the past) in predictable fashion, 

 but without our ever learning why they so follow one another, 

 there is not now nor will there be in the future any necessity drawn 

 from science to believe in a fixed, necessary, determinate nature. 

 If in any quarter it is imagined that the progress of science neces- 

 sitates or may necessitate such a belief, this is a grave error: in 

 his own words, "The belief that the establishment of scientific- 

 conceptions of nature shows that after the first creative act, 

 the Creator has remained subject, like a human legislator, to 

 his own laws, is based upon utter misapprehension of science, and 

 upon absurd and irrational notions of natural law." In the second 

 place we are in nowise forced to believe by anything in science that 



