Naturalism And Religion Part 2

We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely a.s.sociated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be "teleology," the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are a.s.sociated with and precede it.

For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling-a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form-as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question "Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?" that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely G.o.dless, but absolutely reason and G.o.d enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.

But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures, "I that am dust and ashes," that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad. "Let a man examine himself." Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them.

And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.

It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice "No Room" of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulae, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds "heaven" out of the world, but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.

Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.

There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the "feeling of absolute dependence," and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal G.o.d-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.

But while religion must inquire of itself into the reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.

All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.

The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.

1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion-the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,-has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p. 35).

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of "explanation" and "description" to one another, and on what is meant by "establis.h.i.+ng laws" and "understanding" in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.

But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.

But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrences _a_ and _b_ are given, or what _a_ and _b_ must have been when _c_ occurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that "that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way." But this is a nave idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which "govern" them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question "Why?"

Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions "merely historical," and it desires to supplement these with aetiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the "reductions" of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation, "explanation" will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the "law" would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point "explanation" begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.

But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes "explanation"

when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the "why" is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pus.h.i.+ng back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.

But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this h.o.m.ogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?

But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can "attraction," influence at a distance, _vis a fronte_, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? a.s.suredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual "forces" and reducing all movement, and therewith all "action," to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even a.s.suming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces-all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute "world-riddle." From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.

But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be "reduced." Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena.

Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the "whence" and the "how" of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the "energies" of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the "ether" and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of ma.s.ses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense "comprehended," and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.

Evolution and New Beginnings.

All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,-evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of "energy," contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be "explained" by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence "evolution," and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quant.i.tative sense, according to which the "more highly evolved" is nothing more than an addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher a.n.a.logue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.

It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a "natural" a.s.sumption to "derive" the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence-undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity-of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.

Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of "evolution," not in our sense but in its own, that is "to explain" everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the a.s.sertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature-apart from mind-we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.

All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding a.s.suredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether-unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law-the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.(1)

The Dependence of the Order of Nature.

(2 and 3). The "dependence" of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words "creation" and "being created," because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to be _creatures_.

The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and a.s.sured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned. "I believe that G.o.d has created me together with all creatures." (Luther.)

This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was "nothing" and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.

We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great ma.s.ses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago.

It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.

We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon G.o.d. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.

Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated a.s.sociations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more "dependent," more "conditioned" than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would a.s.suredly furnish me with none. For, a.s.suming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of G.o.d.

Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in G.o.d, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon G.o.d. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon G.o.d, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that G.o.d could not be read out of nature, that the idea of G.o.d could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world.

The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon G.o.d. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:

The great Creator We see not-He conceals himself within His own eternal laws. The sceptic sees Their operation, but beholds not Him, "Wherefore a G.o.d!" he cries, "the world itself Suffices for itself!" and Christian prayer Ne'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.

G.o.d's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.

But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall find that the a.s.sertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of "entropy." We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, a _perpetuum mobile_. Let us however leave aside the idea of a _perpetuum mobile_, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ...

and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous "system." How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repet.i.tion, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Herac.l.i.tian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulae form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many aeons through s.p.a.ce, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.

All this was well enough in the days of navely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.

How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency?

How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol "in the beginning"? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite.

And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.

The "Contingency" of the World.