104 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



positive philosopher has probably never existed. 

 He went as far as it was possible for a human 

 thinker to go toward a philosophy which should 

 take no note of anything beyond the content of 

 observed facts. He always kept the razor of 

 Occam uncased and ready for use, and was espe 

 cially fond of applying it to such entities as &quot; sub 

 stance &quot; and &quot; force,&quot; the very names of which, 

 he thought, might advantageously be excluded 

 from philosophical terminology. Sometimes he 

 described himself as a positivist, but more often 

 called himself a Lucretian, the difference be 

 tween the two designations being, perhaps, not 

 great. As a champion of Lucretius, I remember 

 his once making a sharp attack upon Anaxagoras 

 for introducing creative design into the universe 

 in order to bring coherence out of chaos. What 

 need, he argued, to imagine a supernatural agency 

 in order to get rid of primeval chaos, when we 

 have no reason to believe that the primeval chaos 

 ever had an existence save as a figment of the 

 metaphysician ! To assume that the present or 

 derly system of relations among things ever 

 emerged from an antecedent state of disorder is, 

 as he justly maintained, a wholly arbitrary and un 

 warrantable proceeding. No one could ask for a 

 simpler or more incisive criticism upon that crude 



