174 Life and Matter [chap. ix. 



can be used to contradict freedom of the will, under 

 generalised conditions, in the Universe as a whole. 



Nevertheless there are things which may 

 perhaps be usefully said, even on the larger and 

 much-worn topic of the present note. If we still 

 endeavour to learn as much as possible from 

 human analogies, examples are easy : 



An architect can draw in detail a building that 

 is to be ; the dwellers in a valley can be warned 

 to evacuate their homesteads because a city has 

 determined that a lake shall exist where none 

 existed before. Doubtless the city is free to 

 change its mind, but it is not expected to ; and 

 all predictions are understood to be made subject 

 to the absence of disturbing, i.e. unforeseen, causes. 

 Even the prediction of an eclipse is not free from 

 a remote uncertainty, and in the case of the return 

 of meteoric showers and comets the element of 

 contingency is not even remote. 



But it will be said that to higher and super- 

 human knowledge all possible contingencies would 

 be known and recognised as part of the data. 

 That is quite possibly, though not quite certainly, 

 true : and there comes the real difficulty of re- 

 conciling absolute prediction of events with real 

 freedom of the actors in the drama. I anticipate 

 that a complete solution of the problem must 

 involve a treatment of the subject of time, and a 



