If the scientists who think thus are right, still could it be said that the laws of nature are contingent, even though each law, taken in particular, may be qualified as contingent? Or must one require, before concluding the contingence of the natural laws, that this progress have an end, that the scientist finish some day by being arrested in his search for a closer and closer approximation, and that, beyond a certain limit, he thereafter meet in nature only caprice?
In the conception of which I have just spoken (and which I shall call the scientific conception), every law is only a statement imperfect and provisional, but it must one day be replaced by another, a superior law, of which it is only a crude image. No place therefore remains for the intervention of a free will.
It seems to me that the kinetic theory of gases will furnish us a striking example.
You know that in this theory all the properties of gases are explained by a simple hypothesis; it is supposed that all the gaseous molecules move in every direction with great velocities and that they follow rectilineal paths which are disturbed only when one molecule passes very near the sides of the vessel or another molecule. The effects our crude senses enable us to observe are the mean effects, and in these means, the great deviations compensate, or at least it is very improbable that they do not compensate; so that the observable phenomena follow simple laws such as that of Mariotte or of Gay-Lussac. But this compensation of deviations is only probable. The molecules incessantly change place and in these continual displacements the figures they form pass successively through all possible combinations. Singly these combinations are very numerous; almost all are in conformity with Mariotte's law, only a few deviate from it. These also will happen, only it would be necessary to wait a long time for them. If a gas were observed during a sufficiently long time it would certainly be finally seen to deviate, for a very short time, from Mariotte's law. How long would it be necessary to wait? If it were desired to calculate the probable number of years, it would be found that this number is so great that to write only the number of places of figures employed would still require half a score places of figures. No matter; enough that it may be done.
I do not care to discuss here the value of this theory. It is evident that if it be adopted, Mariotte's law will thereafter appear only as contingent, since a day will come when it will not be true. And yet, think you the partisans of the kinetic theory are adversaries of determinism? Far from it; they are the most ultra of mechanists. Their molecules follow rigid paths, from which they depart only under the influence of forces which vary with the distance, following a perfectly determinate law. There remains in their system not the smallest place either for freedom, or for an evolutionary factor, properly so-called, or for anything whatever that could be called contingence. I add, to avoid mistake, that neither is there any evolution of Mariotte's law itself; it ceases to be true after I know not how many centuries; but at the end of a fraction of a second it again becomes true and that for an incalculable number of centuries.
And since I have pronounced the word evolution, let us clear away another mistake. It is often said: Who knows whether the laws do not evolve and whether we shall not one day discover that they were not at the Carboniferous epoch what they are to-day? What are we to understand by that? What we think we know about the past state of our globe, we deduce from its present state. And how is this deduction made? It is by means of laws supposed known. The law, being a relation between the antecedent and the consequent, enables us equally well to deduce the consequent from the antecedent, that is, to foresee the future, and to deduce the antecedent from the consequent, that is, to conclude from the present to the past. The astronomer who knows the present situation of the stars can from it deduce their future situation by