342 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
idea is not everybody's, but it is well in line with recent criti- cism. It sweats and pants with the effort of really modern thinking ; for, apart from the mere complexity of the subject- matter, nothing meets with more of the conflict between sentiment and fact than the problem of will. The evolution hypothesis, never before in the history of man taken so seriously as now, has in the first place made man really one with nature, and then has flooded the study of human conduct with all sorts of dis- turbing facts and theories. Micro-organisms act so and so, but always mechanically ; anthropods show peculiarities of photo- taxis, which is sometimes negative and sometimes positive ; and, the animal world over, tropisms with only mechanical determina- tions, heliotropism perhaps, or some other, are the rule, the law. Inheritance is chemical ; generation and embryonic development and birth, to say no more of the life after birth, are mechanical. And, without wishing to pose as a prophet, I should say that the worst is not yet, for certainly anti-vitalism is today a thriving youth whose future can hardly be behind him. Then what of human conduct, man and nature being one ? And particularly what of will ? Can man by taking thought throw off the weight of all this modern mechanicalism, and so retain the freedom and independence which so often he has claimed for himself ? For the last question I think not decidedly, since, under the same microscopes and under the same methods of inspection gener- ally, man would develop with amazing facility the same tropisms and, in all he did, fall under the same chemistry and the same mechanics ; nay, he has already done so. Some of my scien- tific friends, for an extreme example, would even have it that before science man is positively phototactic ; before philosophy, of course the brighter light, negatively phototactic ; and this is an interesting tropism certainly, and generally true and illus- trative also, since in its case, as in so many other cases, unac- countable exceptions do assert themselves. But, again, with the mechanicalism retained, what of man's will ?
Well, nobody can deny the fact of adaptation, arid no scien- tist, it is certain, could ever wish to deny it, if for no other reason, because mechanicalism requires adaptation. And, sec
