I QO FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD TART in 



No contingency in nature, would imply, No free will 

 in man ! or at least, no power of affecting external 

 nature by his will. 



Moreover, this form of the doctrine of chance, or 

 something very like it, is involved in the logic of 

 science. We call it mechanism. The " finite " sciences 

 take a mechanical view of the universe. They reduce 

 its processes to a few elementary substances (chemi- 

 cal elements, e.g.), actuated by a few elementary 

 forces. Sometimes, as in Mr. Herbert Spencer, we 

 find more fundamental views of evolution proceeding 

 spontaneously from a homogeneous material unity ; 

 but such views are a dreamy speculation ; they have 

 neither the demonstrativeness nor the definiteness 

 which are the glory of science. 1 Science is content 

 to pause where perhaps it thinks that knowledge 

 itself pauses at the discovery of distinct separate 

 substances and distinct separate forces. And so to 

 it the universe is a machine not an organism ; the 

 co-operation of distinct parts explains the cosmos; 

 its unity is not (as in an organism) prior to the dis- 

 tinction of parts from each other. May we take it 

 that, as long as we are thinking in terms of matter, 

 this view is correct ? That such a mechanical view 

 of the universe is the ideal goal of (finite) science ? 

 Speculative thinkers will ask for more. The mind 



1 This characterisation may seem to ignore the law of the correlation 

 of forces or transmutation of energy. But how far does that law carry 

 us ? What does it affirm ? Different forces are different manifesta- 

 tions of one force, taking their shape under different given conditions. 

 I do not see that science can simplify beyond that statement. Accord- 

 ingly, the given conditions represent the " ultimate " plurality, with 

 which scientific analysis leaves us. 



