39 2 Heredity. 



But it is difficult to admit that everything is reducible to 

 mechanism. To us it seems impossible to see in mechanism any- 

 thing else than the sum of the bare conditions and purely logical 

 possibilities of existence : so that to accept mechanism is to accept 

 the form instead of the reality. We firmly believe that wherever 

 there are facts, of whatever kind, there is ' determinism ; that 

 wherever there is determinism there is science ; and that science 

 can neither go beyond determinism nor fall short of it. But is 

 there not beyond science a something that does not come under 

 its law, high above all that science can know, by processes peculiar 

 to it. To do away with it would be a contradiction, to explain it 

 would be only to offer an hypothesis. It is impossible alike to 

 deny and to determine it, for it comes to us at once as necessary 

 and as unknowable. At most we can only say that this unknown 

 is the reality that lies concealed beneath psychological determinism 

 the end towards which the vital processes tend in every being, 

 and the obscure tendency which is manifested even in the absolute 

 determinism of inorganic matter. 



This supreme antithesis between free-will and mechanism, which 

 underlies the antithesis of science and art, of the individual and 

 the general, is insoluble to us. 



At times we are inclined to believe that all reality is in the 

 person, that perfection consists in the most complete individuation, 

 and that the general is but an ephemeral form of existence, pro- 

 duced by what is common to the individuals ; that beneath the 

 veil of universal mechanism there exists in nature, as it were, a 

 dispersed thought, which is unconscious of itself in inorganic 

 matter, seeks itself in the animal, and finds itself in man. 



At another time we are inclined to the belief that individuality 

 is but the transitory product of the interaction of eternal laws; 

 that, lost in a little nook in the universe, the best thing for us is 

 to regard personality as an illusion, and to look with disdain on 

 our griefs, which are so vain, and on our pleasures, which are so 

 brief, to enter into communion with nature, and share in the 

 imperturbable serenity of her laws. 



At times, too, we are disposed to think that this supreme anti- 

 thesis might be resolved without sacrificing either free-will to 

 mechanism, or mechanism to free-will; that, were we to occupy a 



