Conclusion. 389 



theoretic considerations which follow, it must be borne in mind 

 that they are independent of our investigations of the facts : they 

 give completeness to the facts, but they do not alter them. We 

 have nowhere confounded proof with hypothesis. 



If we except cut-and-dry solutions and certain narrow partisan 

 views, we may say that contemporary investigation in England, 

 France, and Germany, manifests one common tendency conscious 

 in some writers, unconscious in others to hold that, whatever we 

 know, and consequently whatever exists for us, whether in the 

 physical or in the moral order, is reducible under one or other 

 head of this antithesis : mechanism and spontaneity ; determinism 

 and free-will. 



In the view of one school, mechanism explains, or will one day 

 explain, everything, and any other hypothesis does but mask our 

 ignorance. For another school, universal mechanism is only the 

 empty form of existence, the totality of its conditions, not existence 

 itself the appearance of things, not the reality. They cannot 

 conceive of a mechanism without a primum movens to give it im- 

 pulse and vitality. The absolute determinism of phenomena is 

 incontestable; the end of all science is to study it; the office of all 

 science is to ascertain it ; the progress of the human mind to detect 

 it where all seems fortuitous and lawless. Every science must 

 accept determinism at least, so far as regards its empiric conditions 

 its constitution as a science depends on this. Even those sciences 

 which most resist it will be compelled to accept it We have 

 applied this principle to psychological phenomena under a peculiar 

 aspect, that of hereditary transmission for heredity is one form 

 of determinism. Mental activity is subject to divers laws, which 

 are but divers forms of determinism, of which the most general is 

 the law of association or of habit. With this subject we did not 

 concern ourselves. From the complicated laws, each one of which 

 performs its part in binding on us the yoke of necessity, we have 

 selected one. It now remains for us to show that it is in fact a 

 form of mechanism. 



In the order of physico-chemical phenomena it is universally 

 admitted that everything may be explained by ^motion and its 

 transformations, and that consequently the most absolute deter- 

 minism reigns in the inorganic world. 



