The History of Things 79 



obviously incapable of accounting for? If the 

 letters of a jumbled fount of type or the fragments 

 of a smashed machine were to rise up and arrange 

 themselves in working order, we should have t6 

 revise our mechanical categories; but we do not 

 know of any such phenomena in the ordinary 

 course of inanimate nature. 



It is open to any one to say that there is a spirit 

 in the nebula and a Psyche in the dew-drop — just 

 as Haeckel says that there is a permanent soul in 

 every atom; but if these are supposed to be oper- 

 ative, the scientific analyst must say that he finds 

 no need for the hypothesis, since the laws of mo- 

 tion suffice for him, while, if they are supposed to 

 be inoperative, the scientific analyst usually ap- 

 plies William of Occam's razor without remorse. 



The form in which this line of thought seems 

 most attractive is briefly this. When we consider 

 any particular corner in the inanimate world, say, 

 the making of the Niagara Falls or the making of 

 the frost-flowers on the window, we do not re- 

 quire in our redescription more than mechanical 

 formulae. But when we consider Nature not in 

 isolated pieces but as a harmonious whole, when 

 we recognize the progressive order, the orderly 

 progress, and the beauty of it all, when we go on 

 to recognize the probability that the earth has 

 been the parent of its tenants, then we must read 

 back into the world-egg with which we start a 



