LIFE AND CHANCE 



scientific ages. But the belief that the mystery of 

 life involves other forces than the purely material 

 ones — forces whose action cannot be foreseen or 

 measured — is a proposition that exact science has 

 not rendered and probably never can render in- 

 credible. 



The more by searching we find out the true in- 

 wardness of matter, the nearer we find ourselves to 

 the borderland of the unknowable, the transcen- 

 dental, the incalculable. It appears more and more 

 as if we might still be men of science and yet keep 

 the words "soul," "spirit," "creation," "spon- 

 taneity," and the like as standing for real truths in 

 the total scheme of things. I do not think those per- 

 sons overcredulous who hold that human life in its 

 most material aspects is not entirely a matter of 

 chemical reactions and mechanical transpositions. 



We apply the word "chance" to those events or 

 happenings in our lives that were not designed or 

 foreseen. In our good luck and bad luck our wills 

 are not consciously concerned. The famous apple 

 that fell upon Newton's head was a chance hit, 

 though its falling was the result of the action of 

 immutable law; but Newton's position in the line of 

 the apple's fall was, so far as his will was concerned, 

 a matter of chance. Here a new factor comes in, the 

 incalculable behavior of a living body. We cannot 

 bring its activities to book as we can the movements 

 of a non-living body. Yet up to a certain point 



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