68 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
mistake, however, to confound this mechanical view of the material uni¬ 
verse, as is often done, with Atheism, or, indeed, with impiety of any 
sort. Quite the contrary. Eminently pious believers, such as Gassendi, 
Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibnitz, Priestly, and ever so many others, 
have firmly held the mechanical doctrine. Nay, it may even be confi¬ 
dently asserted that this materialistic doctrine involves the conception 
of an omnipotent deity more stringently than any other view of physical 
nature. For, in the very first cast of the world-constituting atoms, all 
subsequent, occurrences in the universe were thereby, of necessity, pre¬ 
ordained in their minutest details. A mechanically ordered cosmos 
would thus, in all verity, afford the most positive proof of the existence 
of an all-mighty prime moter and designer. 
Now, it is quite evident that in a world where all occurrences are ef¬ 
fected under the undeviating sway of atomic mechanics, where every suc¬ 
ceeding change is rigorously determined by the exact state preceding it, 
that in presence of such an unbroken chain of mechanical causation, 
there is no room whatever for the intervention of consciousness. 
Such mechanical view being at present the generally adopted canon of 
science, it will, I hope, be granted that the question I have proposed to¬ 
day, the question whether we are, indeed, conscious automata, can not 
be deemed as altogether idle, and the time bestowed upon its elucidation 
as utterly wasted. 
To relinquish the firm and fruitful hold on natural phenomena which 
science actually gives us, in order to luxuriate in the facile realm of 
imagination, is a dangerous procedure. To appreciate rightly the incal¬ 
culable debt of gratitude due to the results attained through strict ad¬ 
herence to the science of physical causation, we have not only to consult 
the numerous memorable chapters in the warfare of science against the¬ 
ological superstitions, but also the cabalistic and magic beliefs universal¬ 
ly current in the pre-scientific era — incredibly fantastic beliefs, pro¬ 
pounded with systematic seriousness by such naturalistic wizards and 
medicine-men as Aggrippa and Paracelsus. 
The black art, with its incantations and conjurations, pretending to 
produce extra-natural effects by invoking the assistance of spirits; al¬ 
chemy, with its universal, all-converting, all-healing nostrum and pana¬ 
cea; astrology, with its supposed prediction of natural events—these, and 
other utterly useless and misleading necromantic arts, supplied in those 
benighted times the place of science. 
And let me whisper politely, out of hearing of our present sectarians, 
theosophists and spiritualists, that strict adherence to the methods of 
science affords us still the only safeguard against a precipitous relapse 
into the occult practices that have filled with fiendish tortures and 
death-agonies the mediaeval, goblin-haunted darkness. As late as the 
