LIFE AND CHANCE 
scientific ages. But the belief that the mystery of 
life involves other forces than the purely material 
ones — forces whose action cannot be foreseen or 
measured — is a proposition that exact science has 
not rendered and probably never can render in- 
credible. 
The more by searching we find out the true in- 
wardness of matter, the nearer we find ourselves to 
the borderland of the unknowable, the transcen- 
dental, the incalculable. It appears more and more 
as if we might still be men of science and yet keep 
the words “soul,” “spirit,” “creation,” “spon- 
taneity,” and the like as standing for real truths in 
the total scheme of things. I do not think those per- 
sons overcredulous who hold that human life in its 
most material aspects is not entirely a matter of 
chemical reactions and mechanical transpositions. 
We apply the word “chance’’ to those events or 
happenings in our lives that were not designed or 
foreseen. In our good luck and bad luck our wills 
are not consciously concerned. The famous apple 
that fell upon Newton’s head was a chance hit, 
though its falling was the result of the action of 
immutable law; but Newton’s position in the line of 
the apple’s fall was, so far as his will was concerned, 
a matter of chance. Here a new factor comes in, the 
incalculable behavior of a living body. We cannot 
bring its activities to book as we can the movements 
of a non-living body. Yet up to a certain point 
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