on which morality and
science are built. The assurance that the future is no arbitrary and changeable
thing, but that like futures will invariably follow like presents, is the
groundwork on which we lay all our plans - the faith on which we do every
conscious action of our lives. If this were not so we should be without a guide;
we should have no confidence in acting, and hence we should never act, for there
would be no knowing that the results which will follow now will be the same as
those which followed before.
    Who would plough or sow if he disbelieved in the fixity of the future? Who
would throw water on a blazing house if the action of water upon fire were
uncertain? Men will only do their utmost when they feel certain that the future
will discover itself against them if their utmost has not been done. The feeling
of such a certainty is a constituent part of the sum of the forces at work upon
them, and will act most powerfully on the best and most moral men. Those who are
most firmly persuaded that the future is immutably bound up with the present in
which their work is lying, will best husband their present, and till it with the
greatest care. The future must be a lottery to those who think that the same
combinations can sometimes precede one set of results, and sometimes another. If
their belief is sincere they will speculate instead of working; these ought to
be the immoral men; the others have the strongest spur to exertion and morality,
if their belief is a living one.
    The bearing of all this upon the machines is not immediately apparent, but
will become so presently. In the meantime I must deal with friends who tell me
that, though the future is fixed as regards inorganic matter, and in some
respects with regard to man, yet that there are many ways in which it cannot be
considered as fixed. Thus, they say that fire applied to dry shavings, and well
fed with oxygen gas, will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought into
contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man running away.
Nevertheless, if there be two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and if
they be subjected in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are
themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect
similarity in the running away, even though a thousand years intervene between
the original combination and its being repeated.
    The apparently greater regularity in the results of chemical than of human
combinations arises from our inability to perceive the subtle differences in
human combinations -