ality
and science are built. The assurance that the future is no arbitrary and
changeable thing, but that like futures will invariably follow like
presents, is the groundwork on which we lay all our plans--the faith on
which we do every conscious action of our lives. If this were not so we
should be without a guide; we should have no confidence in acting, and
hence we should never act, for there would be no knowing that the results
which will follow now will be the same as those which followed before.

"Who would plough or sow if he disbelieved in the fixity of the future?
Who would throw water on a blazing house if the action of water upon fire
were uncertain? Men will only do their utmost when they feel certain
that the future will discover itself against them if their utmost has not
been done. The feeling of such a certainty is a constituent part of the
sum of the forces at work upon them, and will act most powerfully on the
best and most moral men. Those who are most firmly persuaded that the
future is immutably bound up with the present in which their work is
lying, will best husband their present, and till it with the greatest
care. The future must be a lottery to those who think that the same
combinations can sometimes precede one set of results, and sometimes
another. If their belief is sincere they will speculate instead of
working: these ought to be the immoral men; the others have the strongest
spur to exertion and morality, if their belief is a living one.

"The bearing of all this upon the machines is not immediately apparent,
but will become so presently. In the meantime I must deal with friends
who tell me that, though the future is fixed as regards inorganic matter,
and in some respects with regard to man, yet that there are many ways in
which it cannot be considered as fixed. Thus, they say that fire applied
to dry shavings, and well fed with oxygen gas, will always produce a
blaze, but that a coward brought into contact with a terrifying object
will not always result in a man running away. Nevertheless, if there be
two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and if they be subjected
in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are themselves
perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity
in the running away, even though a thousand years intervene between the
original combination and its being repeated.

"The apparently greater regularity in the re