446 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



be held responsible. To a great extent this 

 view of freedom and responsibility is the basis 

 of present systems of government, education, 

 ethics and religion. 



II. THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION or NA- 

 TURE AND OF PERSONALITY 



As contrasted with this voluntaristic view 

 of nature and of man consider the scientific 

 conception of nature as a vast mechanism, an 

 endless chain of causes and effects. Science 

 deals with "the unfailing order of immortal 

 nature," with the universality of cause and 

 effect, with the eternal stability and inevita- 

 bility of natural processes. Natural phe- 

 nomena are not the result of volitions big or 

 little, good or bad, but of all the events which 

 have gone before. To the man of science na- 

 ture is not the mere caprice of god or devil, to 

 be lightly altered for a child's whim; nature 

 is, as Bishop Berkeley said, "stated, fixed, set- 

 tled," eternal process moving on, the same yes- 

 terday, to-day and forever. 



From sands to stars, from the immensity of 

 the universe to the minuteness of the electron, 

 in living things no less than in lifeless ones, 



