vor
of dogmatism for a man to insist that no increase in our knowledge can
ever reveal that the physical world is an orderly system throughout, and
that all the changes in material things are explicable in terms of the
one unified science. Earnest objections have, however, been made to the
tendency to regard nature as a mechanism. To one of the most curious of
them we have been treated lately by Dr. Ward in his book on "Naturalism
and Agnosticism."

It is there ingeniously argued that, when we examine with care the
fundamental concepts of the science of mechanics, we find them to be
self-contradictory and absurd. It follows that we are not justified in
turning to them for an explanation of the order of nature.

The defense of the concepts of mechanics we may safely leave to the man
of science; remembering, of course, that, when a science is in the
making, it is to be expected that the concepts of which it makes use
should undergo revision from time to time. But there is one general
consideration that it is not well to leave out of view when we are
contemplating such an assault upon the notion of the world as mechanism
as is made by Dr. Ward. It is this.

Such attacks upon the conception of mechanism are not purely destructive
in their aim. The man who makes them wishes to destroy one view of the
system of things in order that he may set up another. If the changes in
the system of material things cannot be accounted for mechanically, it is
argued, we are compelled to turn for our explanation to the action and
interaction of minds. This seems to give mind a very important place in
the universe, and is believed to make for a view of things that
guarantees the satisfaction of the highest hopes and aspirations of man.

That a recognition of the mechanical order of nature is incompatible with
such a view of things as is just above indicated, I should be the last to
admit. The notion that it is so is, I believe, a dangerous error. It is
an error that tends to put a man out of sympathy with the efforts of
science to discover that the world is an orderly whole, and tempts him to
rejoice in the contemplation of human ignorance.

But the error is rather a common one; and see to what injustice it may
lead one. It is concluded that the conception of _matter_ is an obscure
one; that we do not know clearly what we mean when we speak of the _mass_
of a body; that there are disputes as to proper significance to be given