288 NATURE AND MAN. 



thinker in his closet, in dominating the action of an entire nation, 

 is utterly disproportioned to any conceivable play of molecular 

 forces that can be excited by the physical agency of the thinker in 

 putting his idea into speech or writing. The moral power of the 

 " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn " in the utterances 

 of the poet, cannot be correlated, like the mechanical energy 

 exerted by his muscles in the writing of his verse, with the quantity 

 of food he may have consumed in their production. And the new 

 direction that may be given to the whole course of two lives, by 

 the faintest expression of emotion in a tone, a look, or a touch, 

 cannot be brought to any common measure, either with those 

 muscular contractions, or with those molecular changes in nervous 

 matter, which are the physical causes of its manifestation. 



But to this it may be replied that, even when we look at human 

 action from its mental side, without any regard to physical ante- 

 cedents, we cannot help recognizing in it the principle of causation 

 by character and circumstances ; and that without the power of 

 prediction which we derive from organized experience, as is well 

 stated by Mr. Sidgwick {op. at. p. 48), social life would be im- 

 possible. But while everyone admits the existence of uniformities 

 in human action which constitute the basis of our social fabric, 

 every one also admits that the closest observation of these uni- 

 formities, and the most sagacious analysis of their conditions, does 

 not justify anything more than a " forecast " of the course of action, 

 either of individuals or of communities, in any given contingency. 

 "Who would have thought that he would have done such a 

 " thing ? " is our frequent exclamation in regard to some one of 

 whom we considered that we had a most intimate knowledge : that 

 "the unexpected [in politics] is what always happens," has passed 

 into a proverb. It is, of course, open for the automatist to assert 

 that the element of uncertainty here arises, as in the case of 

 weather-forecasts, from the complexity of the conditions, and 

 from our imperfect acquaintance with them ; and he might fairly 

 urge, on general grounds, that if we could grasp the whole of the 

 antecedents, and measure the potency of each, no " unconditioned" 

 or self-originating element would be found to have interfered with 

 the regular sequence of cause and effect. But he has no right 

 whatever to assume this. The whole history of science shows that 



