CH. xvii.] SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL. 171 



the effects which certain kinds of legislation are likely to 

 produce, so as to hasten a desired result or avert social mis- 

 chief. Upon this possibility are based all our methods of 

 government and of education. And, as in biology, this ability 

 to modify the phenomena proves that the phenomena occur in 

 some fixed order of sequence. Eor if there were phenomena 

 without any definite order of sequence, we could neither 

 predict nor modify them ; and where there is a definite order 

 of sequence, there is, or may be, a science. 



Now in denying that there is or can be a science of 

 history, IMr. Froude, if he means anything, means that 

 social affairs have no fixed order of sequence, but are the 

 sport of chance. Either Law or Chance — these are the 

 only alternatives, unless we were to have recourse, like the 

 Mussulman, to Destiny, an illegitimate third idea, made up 

 of the other two misconceived and mutilated in order to fit 

 together. But for the modern thinker there is no middle 

 course. It is either symmetry or confusion, law or chance, 

 and between the two antagonist conceptions there can be no 

 compromise. If the law of causation is universal, we must 

 accept the theory of law. If it has ever, in any one instance, 

 been violated, we may be excused for taking up with the 

 theory of chance. Now we know that all the vast bodies in 

 this sidereal universe move on for untold ages in their orbits, 

 in strict conformity to law. In conformity to law, the solar 

 system in all its complexity has grown out of a homogeneous 

 nebula ; and the crust of the cooling earth has condensed 

 into a rigid surface fit for the maintenance of organic life. 

 Out of plastic materials furnished by this surface and the 

 air and moisture by which it is enveloped, organic life has 

 arisen and been multiplied in countless differing forms, aU in 

 accordance with law. Of this aggregate of organic existence, 

 man, the most complex and perfect type, lives and moves 

 and has his being in strict conformity to law. His periods 

 of activity and repose are limited by planetary rotations. 



