EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



terious power of the free-will, set apart from the nat- 

 ural laws of his environment, with his own little sub- 

 jective world cutting through the objective universe, 

 now using the forces of nature and again opposing 

 them; the objective and subjective worlds become 

 one. His body is a machine subject to biologico-phys- 

 ical laws and his mind is another machine whose laws 

 can be derived objectively by psychologico-physical 

 laws. Thus, Fiske devotes one of the most important 

 chapters in his Cosmic Philosophy to demolishing the 

 idea of free-will or volition. Human beings, as indi- 

 viduals or as grouped in societies, conform to fixed 

 and, ascertainable laws and "the fundamental law to 

 which they conform is the Law of Evolution, which 

 has now been proved to hold sway among inorganic 

 and organic phenomena, as well as among those su- 

 perorganic phenomena which we distinguish as psy- 

 chical."^ So it is the custom for psychologists and so- 

 ciologists, who hope to formulate rigorous laws for 

 the human machine, to tell physicists that it is ex- 

 tremely necessary for their students to study physics. 

 It is easy to agree with them, because it would un- 

 doubtedly be good for them to exercise their minds 

 on, at least, one subject which requires a rather large 

 element of exact and rigorous thinking. But experi- 

 ence teaches me, at least, that these new theorists are 

 content with a very small dose of the exact sciences; 

 this half-knowledge merely adds to their confusion of 



* Cosmic Philosophy, vol. Ill, p. 241. 



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