LIFE; BODY AND MIND 217 



been thrown into doubt but for a conflict with 

 one of those absolutes to which we have clung, 

 and still cling, so tenaciously. 



Determinism is a great principle. It fits every 

 known fact of inorganic nature ; but like arith- 

 metic or geometry we need not ask if it is true, 

 but only how far it is applicable to the world 

 of nature. In a previous chapter I suggested 

 that in the game of chance played by the atoms 

 and the molecules, even the simplest organisms 

 are playing with loaded dice. The element of 

 choice, which we allowed to living organisms, 

 represents a departure — which may also exist 

 in other cases, though not yet detected — from 

 the simplest laws, of which the first is that the 

 past determines the future. What we there 

 called the element of choice we may now call 

 free will. 



He would indeed be bold who would attempt 

 to estimate the degree of that departure from 

 determinism which we call free will. The curva- 

 ture of the earth is too small even to be detected 

 by a person whose measurements are confined to 

 the surface of a small lake, and the departure 

 from our flat geometry of space-time which is 

 necessary to account for the whole phenomenon 

 of gravitation amounts to but one part in a thou- 



