CH. xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 175 



rotten tree, the cry that caused the child to run 

 forward, had no connection with each other. But the 

 child " happened " to be just under the tree as it fell, 

 and was crushed by accident. 



The champion of ethics must not look askance upon 

 the doctrine of chance in this sense. Chance and 

 choice are very closely connected. Man can neither 

 create nor annul force. He can govern it only by 

 determining where one current shall cross another. 

 No contingency in nature, would imply, No free-will in 

 man ! or at least, no power of affecting external nature 

 by his will. 



Moreover, this form of the doctrine of chance, or 

 something very like it, is involved in the logic of 

 science. We call it mechanism. The " finite " sciences 

 take a mechanical view of the universe. They reduce 

 its processes to a few elementary substances (chemical 

 elements, e.g.), actuated by a few elementary forces. 

 Sometimes, as in Mr. Herbert Spencer, we find more 

 fundamental views of evolution proceeding spontaneously 

 from a homogeneous material unity ; but such views are 

 a dreamy speculation ; they have neither the demon- 

 strativeness nor the definiteness which are the glory of 

 science. 1 Science is content to pause where perhaps it 

 thinks that knowledge itself pauses at the discovery of 

 distinct separate substances and distinct separate forces. 

 And so to it the universe is a machine not an 

 organism ; the co-operation of distinct parts explains 



1 This characterisation may seem to ignore the law of the correlation 

 of forces or transmutation of energy. But how far does that law carry 

 us ? What does it affirm ? Different forces are different manifestations 

 of one force, taking their shape under different given conditions. I do not 

 see that science can simplify beyond that statement. Accordingly, the 

 given conditions represent the " ultimate " plurality, with which scientific 

 analysis leaves us. 



