146 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



and we have this freedom the greater in proportion to 

 our native force of character and wisdom. That we have 

 such freedom, the fact of our labouring for distant ends, 

 and of our power of choosing the appropriate means to 

 reach foreseen goals, decisively prove, even though it 

 be shown that each step of our actions falls under the 

 sway of mechanical necessity, and that each item of our 

 deliberations was controlled by motives. There is now 

 less of chance pressing on us ; more of choice allowed us ; 

 less of the fatalistic necessity where we can only bow 

 our heads, and with Stoic or Islamite resignation pas- 

 sively await the event which neither effort nor thought 

 can prevent. There is more room in our age of Science 

 for our thought and will, for purpose and design, to 

 influence the known course of things in our favour. The 

 mighty machinery of the universe, vast and complicated 

 as it is, permits man, through the knowledge of it, which 

 Science gives, to turn to profit the very invariability of 

 the working of the machinery, the rigid uniformity of 

 the laws, which at first sight would seem to crush him 

 under the weight of helpless necessity. By his know- 

 ledge of the uniform behaviour of Nature, he regains the 

 practical freedom which the universal reign of invariable 

 law seems at first to take away. For by this regularity 

 of natural law, and by his knowledge of it, man is able 

 to press the laws into his service so as to aid in the 

 accomplishment of his designs and desires ; and the more 

 completely all Nature, including his own bodily and 

 mental states, passes under the dominion of established 

 scientific laws, the more fully man can avail himself of 

 them, and recover his freedom within their bounds and 

 by their means. The more he knows them and takes 

 account of them, the fuller he secures his own practical 

 freedom. We are free, and the condition of our freedom 



