LIFE AND CHANCE 



of the action of irrefragable law. Hence chance in 

 the physical world is but another name for fatalism. 

 The non-living, material bodies are in the grip of 

 irrefragable laws. Toss a stone from yom- hand, and 

 if we knew all the forces acting upon it, we could teU 

 the precise point where it would strike the earth; we 

 may say that it was foreordained from the founda- 

 tions of the world just where it should fall. "Law- 

 less as snowflakes" is a phrase used by Rousseau 

 and then by Whitman, but snowflakes in their for- 

 mation obey their own law of crystallization, and, in 

 their descent to the ground, obey the forces of the 

 air acting upon them. They are lawless to us be- 

 cause we do not see the forces that control them. 

 The same fate or necessity rules throughout all inor- 

 ganic nature, and it rules in the world of living bod- 

 ies, so far as those bodies are in the grip of physical 

 laws. What seems more lawless than the falling 

 leaves of autumn, or the grains of pollen which the 

 flowering trees and plants cast upon the air? But 

 they are all as strictly imder the control of physical 

 forces as are the snowflakes, or the driving drops of 

 rain, or the breaking waves upon the beach. When 

 two celestial bodies collide, as now and then hap- 

 pens, it seems from our point of view purely acci- 

 dental, as much so as when two persons collide upon 

 the sidewalk. In the former case, if the astronomer 

 knew all the forces at work, he could figure out just 

 where and when the collision would occur, as accu- 



