COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



and insist, in the interests of religion and moral- 

 ity, that although all other events may occur in 

 regular sequence, nevertheless in human affairs 

 there is no such sequence. The arguments 

 by which it is sought to establish this desper- 

 ate proposition are based partly on those facts 

 which are assumed to prove the freedom of the 

 will, partly on the endless diversity and com- 

 plexity of human affairs. Concerning this latter 

 class of considerations, I may say here that they 

 are at once irrelevant and inconclusive. Irrel- 

 evant, since even if it were to be granted — 

 which it is not — that the extreme intricacy. of 

 social phenomena may prevent our discerning 

 the order of their sequence, this would prove, 

 not that there is no sequence, but that our vi- 

 sion is limited. Inconclusive, because from the 

 nature of the case, other things being equal, 

 complex phenomena cannot be generalized until 

 the simpler phenomena which they involve 

 have been mentally reduced to orderly succes- 

 sion. As we shall again have occasion to notice, 

 the laws of social life could not be discovered 

 until the sciences of biology and psychology 

 had gone far toward formulating the laws of 

 physical and psychical life in general. But the 

 misconceptions which cluster about this sub- 

 ject are so numerous that they may best be 

 eliminated by a somewhat detailed controversy. 

 Let us examine the argument from complexity, 

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