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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XL VII 



strate that in some of the configurations shown by living 

 things, the particles move differently from their move- 

 ments in the configurations dealt with hitherto in me- 

 chanics. This would simply show that the theory was 

 in error which held that all possible effectively different 

 configurations had in principle been experienced. It 

 would leave us in the same condition that science would 

 have been in if men had tried to predict the results of all 

 configurations before the effects produced when two 

 forces act at right angles had been experienced. To 

 make the experience fuller, so that prediction would be 

 possible, would require merely the extension of the same 

 process used in getting the fundamental data of mechan- 

 ics. The fact that some men supposed that they had 

 gotten all the possible different sorts of experience when 

 they had not seems no ground for dividing science into 

 two contrasted parts ; particularly when the second sup- 

 posed part is built by a continuation of the process that 

 produced the first. 



32. While the considerations just set forth appear the 

 decisive ones, certain other points may be noticed. The 

 mechanical theory that from our knowledge of inorganic 

 particles, their combinations and movements, we could 

 predict behavior under all conditions that can be stated 

 is one that, as matter of fact, can not be verified either 

 for the inorganic or the organic. It may be held that 

 perhaps the reason for this is that we do not yet know 

 the conditions accurately enough to apply the laws of 

 mechanics. But this answer can be given with equal 

 force for the organic and the inorganic. To make excep- 

 tions to the mechanical theory largely destroys its raison 

 d'etre; for it is commonly held, not because it can be 

 demonstrated, but because it furnishes a theoretically 

 universal formula. If we fall back on the empirical evi- 

 dence, we find difficulties of exactly the same character 

 in applying the mechanical view to chemistry as to biol- 

 ogy. There appears in the evident fact that the mechan- 

 ical theory is as yet equally inadequate in the two fields 



