424 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



small deviations from the typical motions (i.e., the perturba- 

 tions), the confidence in the sufficiency of this theory must 

 have been extraordinarily strengthened. What was then 

 more likely than the expectation that the theory which had 

 shown itself so perfectly adapted to represent the motions 

 of the great bodies of the Universe, must be the correct, 

 nay, the only means of bringing the events of the little 

 world of atoms under the sway of science ? So arose the 

 mechanical conception of nature according to which all 

 phenomena (at first of inorganic nature) were to be finally 

 referred simply to the motions of atoms according to the 

 same laws which had been recognised to hold for heavenly 

 bodies. That this conception should be immediately carried 

 over from the region of inorganic to that of animated nature, 

 was a necessary consequence when it was once perceived that 

 the same laws which hold in the former, claim here also 

 their inviolable rights. This conception of the universe 

 found its classical expression in Laplace's idea of the 

 "Universe-Formula" by means of which every past and 

 future event was to be capable of deduction by rigid analysis 

 applied to mechanical laws. For this purpose an intellect 

 was to be required which though far beyond the human 

 mind in power was not essentially of a different nature. 



We do not generally notice in what an extraordinary 

 degree this widespread view is hypothetical, nay, meta- 

 physical ; on the contrary we usually regard it as the most 

 exact expression for the actual relations. Nevertheless it 

 must be remarked that a confirmation of the natural deduc- 

 tion from this theory, namely, that all non-mechanical 

 phenomena such as heat, radiation, electricity, magnetism and 

 chemical action are actually mechanical, has in no single case 

 been obtained. In no single case has the attempt to re- 

 present the actual relations by means of a mechanical 

 system so far succeeded that nothing remained over to 

 explain. I grant that for many individual phenomena, the 

 mechanical analogues have been given with more or less 

 success. But all attempts to completely represent the 

 whole of the known facts in any department by means of 

 some such mechanical analogue have resulted without 



