MS 472 (1903) - Lowell Lecture VI

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of the separate stars have deranged it.” While this dialogue has been going on a adherent of the sect of A's has koined the group. He now says, “But you surely will admit that if the original perfect symmetry of arrangement has been broken up, probably in it passage into some different form of symmetry, the present apparently irregular arrangement must have been fully intended by the creator.” B replies, “I do not quite know that I am prepared to admit that the world ever was created. But even if it was, while the positive intentions of the Creator must have been fulfilled, we need not suppose that he expressly intended every relation between facts. If the Dowager Empress of China

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happens to have a fit of coughing and just at that moment I on the other side of the globe happen to take a piece of hoarhound candy, we need not suppose that this coincidence was any part of the Creator's plan.” A replies “I believe that Providence over-rules every fact and relation however trivial; and even if I were in your state of scepticism, I should still hold it to be inconceivable that any state of facts should fail to conform to some law. You cannot shuffle a pack of cards so that there is no mathematically exact relation between the arrangement before shuffling and the arrangement after shuffling.”

So there you have the three commonest

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forms of necessitarianism. A holds that every feature of all facts conforms to some law. B holds that the law fully determines every fact, but thinks that some relations of facts are accidental. C holds that law uniformity within its jurisdiction is perfect, but confines its application to certain elements of phenomena.

The party of the D's, of which I am myself a member, holds that all uniformities are never absolutely exact, so that the variety of the universe is forever increasing. At the same time we hold that even these departures from law are subject to a certain

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law of probability, and that in the present state of the universe they are for too small to be detected by our observations. We adopt this hypothesis as the only possible escape from making the laws of nature monstrous abitrary elements. We wish to make the laws themselves subject to law. For that purpose that law of laws must be a law capable of developing itself. Now the only concievable law of which that is true is an evolutionary law. We therefore suppose that all law is the result of evolution, and to suppose this is to suppose it to be imperfect.

Finally, there are those who suppose nature to be subject to freaks, who believe in

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in miracles, not simply as manifestations of superhuman power, but as down right violations of the laws of nature, absolutely abnormal. Professor Newcomb, for example, in a series of articles which he contributed to the Independent, suggests that the human will has a power of deflecting the motions of particles, in plain violation of the third law of motion. I do not think, by the way, that it is generally known that some of the early Fathers of the Church refused to believe in physical miracles; and apparently attributed them to a superhuman hypnotic power, reminding one of what the Hindoo jugglers have made British officers think they