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 your hand, and 
if we knew all the forces acting upon it, we could tell 
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 under 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- 
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