Will and Guidance 153 



It consists in pressing the laws of physics to 

 what may seem their logical and ultimate 

 conclusion, in applying the conservation of 

 energy without ruth or hesitation, and so 

 excluding, as some have fancied, the 

 possibility of free-will action, of guidance, 

 of the self-determined action of mind or 

 living things upon matter, altogether. The 

 appearance of control has accordingly been 

 considered illusory, and has been replaced 

 by a doctrine of pure mechanism, envelop- 

 ing living things as well as inorganic nature. 

 And those who for any reason have felt 

 disinclined or unable to acquiesce in this 

 exclusion of non-mechanical agencies, 

 whether it be by reason of faith and instinct 

 or by reason of direct experience and sensa- 

 tion to the contrary, have thought it 

 necessary of late years to seek to undermine 

 the foundation of Physics, and to show that 

 its much-vaunted laws rest upon a hollow 

 basis, that their exactitude is illusory, 

 that the conservation of energy, for instance, 

 has been too rapid an induction, that there 



