1 76 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



the cosmos ; its unity is not (as in an organism) prior 

 to the distinction of parts from each other. May we 

 take it that, as long as we are thinking in terms of 

 matter, this view is correct ? That such a mechanical 

 view of the universe is the ideal goal of (finite) science \ 

 Speculative thinkers will ask for more. The mind 

 itself may demand some deeper or fuller unity. Are 

 not the different substances in some way calculated or 

 adjusted or related to each other ? Is their coexistence 

 purely casual ? Is the quantity of each (so far as we 

 can speak of quantity in the whole universe so far as 

 we can treat the universe as finite) purely casual, or is 

 it determined by some obscure law ? These questions 

 lie beyond the range of the special sciences, which 

 carry on their business quite successfully apart from 

 such researches, finishing their own work upon the 

 crude assumptions of mechanism a few substances ; 

 arbitrarily given quantities of each ; a few elementary 

 laws. Possibly, as we have said, you cannot reason- 

 ably go further unless you quit the logic of science for 

 philosophy unless you exchange matter for some 

 frankly idealist conception of reality. 



Within science, then, there seems to be a doctrine 

 of coexistence closely analogous to what we mean in 

 ordinary speech by chance. It differs in one respect ; 

 " chances " are occasional interferences, while science 

 details the habitual co-operation of law with law. The 

 difference supplies science with one excuse for declining 

 to endorse an appeal to mere " chance " on the part of 

 Darwinism. But the conceptions of scientific mechanism 

 and of chance coexistence are identical at heart. Both 

 take as given several independent substances and pro- 

 cesses, without asserting or believing in any wider law 

 connecting them with each other. 



