UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



rately as he calculates when an eclipse of the sun or 

 the moon will occur, and where upon the earth's sur- 

 face it will be visible. But in the case of the two 

 persons colliding upon the sidewalk, are any data 

 possible that would enable us to anticipate such a 

 collision? If we knew their past lives to the minutest 

 detail, and their present occupations and their tem- 

 peraments and dispositions, could we foresee when 

 and where the encounter would take place? Huxley, 

 who in his philosophy was a fatalist, and thought 

 that if we had all the data that entered into the 

 problem, purely human events could be forecast as 

 accurately as could physical events, would say yes. 

 M. Bergson and his school, who hold that life adds 

 to matter a psychological principle, — something in- 

 determinate and incalculable that frees it from the 

 fatalism of mechanical laws, — would say no. In 

 human life the material is, in a measure, under the 

 control of the psychical, and the psychical is not 

 bound by the rigid law of causation, as is the physi- 

 cal. This conclusion involves a super-scientific step 

 which the rigidly scientific mind hesitates to take. 

 But Sir Oliver Lodge does not hesitate to take it, 

 though he is one of the leading physicists of his day. 

 Indeed, Sir Oliver takes so many steps in that direc- 

 tion — such tremendous strides, one may say — 

 that he is seriously discredited among his scientific 

 brethren. His conception of a hierarchy of spirits 

 that govern the universe savors of the remote pre- 



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