For some comments upon the “mechanical view” in the narrower and more special sense, see Chapter VI. of the present Book. It may be convenient, for the sake of precision, to call this more special form of the mechanical view the “mechanistic” theory of nature. Footnote 139: Psychology ought probably to be excluded from the sciences for which the mechanical view is fundamental. But Psychology does not deal with any part of the physical order. See the present writers review of Münsterberg’s “Grundzüge der Psychologie” in _Mind_ for April 1902; and cf. _infra_, Bk. IV. chaps. 1, 2. Footnote 140: Compare with the argument of this chapter, Royce, “Nature, Consciousness, and Self-consciousness,” in _Studies of Good and Evil_; and “Mind and Nature,” by the present writer in _International Journal of Ethics_, October 1902. The inveterate prejudice that “laws of nature,” to be of scientific use, must be rigidly exact uniformities is so strong, that it may be worth while, even after the preceding discussion of general principles, to assist the reader by reminding him of the elementary fact that the most familiar quantities involved in our scientific formulæ (π, _e_, the vast majority of second and third roots, of logarithms of the natural numbers, of circular functions of angles, etc.) are incapable of exact evaluation. This of itself renders a scientific law, in the form in which it can be applied to the determination of actual occurrences, merely approximate, and thus shows that _exact_ uniformity is unnecessary for the practical objects of the empirical sciences. ----- CHAPTER IV SPACE AND TIME