166 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ PT . 11. 



maintained that the results of human volitions can never , 

 become amenable to scientific treatment. Here, it is cried 

 on the threshold of sociology we must take our final stand, 

 and insist, in the interests of religion and morality, that 

 although all other events may occur in regular sequence, 

 nevertheless in human affairs there is no such sequence. 

 The arguments by which it is sought to establish this desperate 

 proposition, are based partly on those facts which are assumed 

 to prove the freedom of the will, partly on the endless 

 diversity and complexity of human affairs. Concerning this 

 latter class of considerations, I may say here that they are at 

 once irrelevant and inconclusive. Irrelevant, since even if it 

 were to be granted which it is not that the extreme intri 

 cacy of social phenomena may prevent our discerning the 

 order of their sequence, this would prove, not that there is no 

 sequence, but that our vision is limited. Inconclusive, because 

 from the nature of the case, other things being equal, com 

 plex phenomena cannot be generalized until the simpler 

 phenomena which they involve have been mentally reduced 

 to orderly succession. As we shall again have occasion to 

 notice, the laws of social life could not be discovered until 

 the sciences of biology and psychology had gone far toward 

 formulating the laws of physical and psychical life in general. 

 But the misconceptions which cluster about this subject are 

 so numerous that they may best be eliminated by a somewhat 

 detailed controversy. Let us examine the argument from 

 complexity, as presented by Mr. Fronde ; and afterwards the 

 argument from the assumed lawlessness of volition, as pre 

 sented by Mr. Goldwin Smith. 



Mr. Froude begins l by dogmatically denying that there 

 is or can be such a thing as a science of history. There is 

 something incongruous, he says, in the very connection of 



briillen alle Ochsen, so oft eine neue &quot;Wahrheit entdeckt wird.&quot; Biichner, 

 Die Darwin sche Tlworic, p. 288. 

 1 Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. L 



