The Higher Usefulness of Science 73 



It will be worth while to exhibit the implications of this 

 argument in their historic and general setting. This 

 can be done to good advantage by seeing how it accords 

 with the usual mechanistic view concerning the pre- 

 dictability of natural phenomena. Huxley's famous 

 statement of that view will serve our purpose well. "If 

 the fundamental proposition of evolution is true," 

 Huxley says, "that the entire world, living and not 

 living, is the result of mutual interaction, according 

 to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules 

 of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was 

 composed, it is no less certain that the existing world 

 lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapor, and that a suffi- 

 cient intellect could, from a knowledge of the proper- 

 ties of the molecules of that vapor, have predicted, 

 say, the state of the fauna of Great Britain in 1869, 

 with as much certainty as one can say what will happen 

 to the vapor of the breath in a cold winter's day." 



If we have correctly described the course of inter- 

 pretation of natural genesis in the above instances, 

 and if these instances are typical for all such inter- 

 pretation, then there is much to criticize in such a mech- 

 anistic view of the constitution and evolution of the 

 world. First of all, there is much ground for question- 

 ing the assumption of a condition of "primitive nebu- 

 losity" for the entire universe; a condition, that is, 

 in which only molecular forces, as we now understand 

 them were operative. For example, what is the evi- 

 dence that gravitation, which presupposes considerable 



