In the foregoing essays, therefore, I have not scrupled to
maintain that the ultimate datum of science is destructive of teleology as
a scientific argument for Theism; because, unless we deny the possibility
of any such ultimate datum, and so land ourselves in hopeless scepticism,
we must conclude that there can be no datum more ultimate than
this--Permanent Existence; and this is just the datum which we have seen to
be destructive of teleology as a scientific argument for Theism.
It may be well to point out that from this ultimate datum of science--or
rather, let us say, of experience--there follows a deductive explanation of
the law of causation. For this law, when stripped of all the metaphysical
corruptions with which it has been so cumbersomely clothed, simply means
that a given collocation of antecedents unconditionally produces a certain
consequent. But this fact, otherwise stated, amounts to nothing more than a
re-statement of the ultimate datum of experience--the fact that energy is
indestructible. For if this latter fact be granted, it is obvious that the
so-called law of causation follows as a deductive necessity--or rather, as
I have said, that this law becomes but another way of expressing the same
fact. This is obvious if we reflect that the only means we have of
ascertaining that energy is _not_ destructible, is by observing that
similar antecedents _do_ invariably determine similar consequents.
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