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 " sub- 

 stance " and " force," 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 



