234 The Bible of Nature 



prediction is possible, but which are none the less 

 fictions of his own creation. Science tells us that 

 when counters A, B, C move in such and such a 

 way, counters D, E, F move in an equally definite 

 way. But what makes the moves, or how is it ex- 

 actly that A, B, C lead to D, E, F, what combines 

 the tactics into a strategy, why should there be a 

 strategy at all? Science cannot tell us. 



Professor Ray Lankester^ puts the position 

 clearly. 



"The whole order of nature, including living and life- 

 less matter — from man to gas — is a network of mechan- 

 ism,2 the main features and many details of which have 

 been made more or less obvious to the wondering intel- 

 ligence of mankind by the labor and ingenuity of scientific 

 investigators. But no sane man has ever pretended, 

 since science became a definite body of doctrine, that we 

 know or ever can hope to know or conceive of the possi- 

 bility of knowing, whence this mechanism has come, why 

 it is there, whither it is going, and what there may or may 

 not be beyond and beside it which our senses are incapable 

 of appreciating. These things are not 'explained' by 

 science, and never can be." 



The Death of the Earth. — Another riddle that gives 

 us pause is the suggestion that comes from various 



^See Times, May 17, 1903, and "The Kingdom of 

 Man," 1907, p. 62. 



2 From our point of view mechanism is an inadequate 

 term for the redescription of hving creatures, but it may 

 be used in a wide sense to include all arrangements of 

 natural causes. 



