" The kinetic theory of gas is an assertion of
ultimate chaos. In plain words, Chaos was the law of nature;
Order was the dream of man.
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean,
for words are slippery and thought is viscous; but since Bacon
and Newton, English thought had gone on impatiently protesting
that no one must try to know the unknowable at the same time that
every one went on thinking about it. The result was as chaotic as
kinetic gas; but with the thought a historian had nothing to do.
He sought only its direction. For himself he knew, that, in spite
of all the Englishmen that ever lived, he would be forced to
enter supersensual chaos if he meant to find out what became of
British science -- or indeed of any other science. From
Pythagoras to Herbert Spencer, every one had done it, although
commonly science had explored an ocean which it preferred to
regard as Unity or a Universe, and called Order. Even Hegel, who
taught that every notion included its own negation, used the
negation only to reach a "larger synthesis," till he reached the
universal which thinks itself, contradiction and all. The Church
alone had constantly protested that anarchy was not order, that
Satan was not God, that pantheism was worse than atheism, and
that Unity could not be proved as a contradiction. Karl Pearson
seemed to agree with the Church, but every one else, including
Newton, Darwin and Clerk Maxwell, had sailed gaily into the
supersensual, calling it: --
"One God, one Law, one Element,
And one far-off, divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
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