And yet the freedom of the human will and the
sense which cannot be eradicated of the responsibility attaching to all
human conduct, perpetually retorts that this world in which we live
contains an element which cannot be subdued to obedience to the
scientific law, but will have a course of its own. The sense of
responsibility is a rock which no demand for completeness in Science
can crush. All attempts at reconciling the mechanical firmness of an
unbroken law of uniformity with the voice within that cannot be silenced
telling us that we must answer for our action, have failed, and we know
that they will for ever fail.
If indeed it could be said that the progress of Science was really
barred by this inability to make the induction complete, and to assert
the unbroken uniformity of all nature; if it could be said that any
uncertainty was thus cast over scientific conclusions, or any false or
misleading lights thus held up to draw inquirers from the true path, it
would undoubtedly become a duty to examine, and to examine anxiously,
whether indeed it could be true that our faculties were thus hopelessly
at variance with each other, the scientific faculty, imposing on us one
belief, and the spiritual faculty another, and the two practically
irreconcileable.
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