There can be little doubt that there is a tendency on the part of men of science at the present day so to regard it.  It should, of course, be frankly admitted that no one is in a position to prove that, from the cosmic mist, in which we grope for the beginnings of our universe, to the organized whole in which vegetable and animal bodies have their place, there is an unbroken series of changes all of which are explicable by a reference to mechanical laws.  Chemistry, physics, and biology are still separate and distinct realms, and it is at present impossible to find for them a common basis in mechanics.  The belief of the man of science must, hence, be regarded as a faith; the doctrine of the mechanism of nature is a working hypothesis, and it is unscientific to assume that it is anything more.

There can be no objection to a frank admission that we are not here walking in the light of established knowledge.  But it does seem to savor 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.