SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 85 



vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the pop- 

 ular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of 

 natural things. By science, in the physical world, mir- 

 acles are wrought, while philosophy is forsaking its an- 

 cient metaphysical channels, and pursuing others which 

 have been opened, or indicated by, scientific research. 

 This must become more and more the case as philosoph- 

 ical writers become more deeply imbued with the meth- 

 ods of science, better acquainted with the facts which 

 scientific men have established, and with the great the- 

 ories which they have elaborated. 



If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour 

 and minute hands, and possibly also a second hand, mov- 

 ing over the graduated dial. Why do these hands move ? 

 and why are their relative motions such as they are ob- 

 served to be? These questions cannot be answered with- 

 out opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and 

 ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this 

 is done, we find that the observed motion of the hands 

 follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch 

 when acted upon by the force invested in the spring. 

 The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon 

 of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena of 

 nature. These also have their inner mechanism and 

 their store of force to set that mechanism going. The 

 ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this 

 mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that, from 

 the combined action of both, the phenomena of which 

 they constitute the basis, must, of necessity, flow. 



I thought an attempt to give you even a brief and 

 sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific 

 thinkers regard this problem would not be uninteresting 



