312 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



m 



the substitution of disorderly for freely would make the reasoning 

 so simple as to be almost ludicrous ; yet I am not able to find any 

 antithesis to order except disorder. 



Nor can I discover what bearing proof that our actions are what 

 might have been expected of us has on the question whether we are 

 free to do as we choose, unless we choose to do and succeed in doing 

 utterly inconsequent and irrational things. 



Since the discovery that the phenomena of nature do take place 

 in order does not show why they take place in order, or even 

 why they should take place at all, is it not plain that the discovery 

 of the order of nature has no bearing on the origin or on the 

 reality of anything in nature .' 



Is it not equally clear that the reduction of all the phenomena 

 of nature, including those of life and mind, to mechanical princi- 

 ples, would not disprove the reality or the value of any one thing 

 we discover in our nature.' 



Many will, no doubt, receive with incredulity the assertion that 

 the ultimate establishment of mechanical conceptions of life has 

 no bearing, either positively or negatively, upon the validity of 

 such beliefs as the doctrine of immortality, for example. The 

 opinion that life may be deducible from the properties of protoplasm 

 has, by almost universal consent, been held to involve the admission 

 that the destruction of the living organism is, of necessity, the anni- 

 hilation of life. Yet it seems clear that this deduction is utterly 

 baseless and unscientific ; for if the views I have set forth in this 

 lecture — views held by many thoughtful men of science; views in 

 no way original with me — are accepted, and if it be admitted that 

 we find in nature no reason why events should occur together except 

 the fact that they do, is it not clear that we can give no reason 

 why life and protoplasm should be associated except the fact that 

 they are .' And is it not equally clear that this is no reason why 

 they may not exist separately 1 



Berkeley tells us it is to all intents and purposes atheistical 

 "to make man a necessary agent"; but they who agree with 

 him that while ideas which are observed to be connected are, 

 vulgarly considered under the relation of cause and effect, they are, 

 in strict and philosophic truth, known to be related only as the 



