The maintenance of the doctrine of liberty, which in view of the facts we are bound to maintain, does away, Guyau insists, with the doctrine of Providence; for him, as for Bergson, there is no _prévision_ but only _nouveauté_ in the universe. Guyau indeed is not inclined to admit even that end which Bergson seems to favour—namely, “spontaneity of life itself.” The world does not find its end in us, any more than we find our “ends” fixed for us in advance. Nothing is fixed, arranged or predetermined; there is not even a primitive adaptation of things to one another, for such adaptation would involve the pre-existence of ideas prior to the material world, together with a demiurge arranging things upon a plan in the manner of an architect. In reality there is no plan; every worker conceives his own. The world is a superb example, not of order, such as we associate with the idea of Providence in action, but the reverse, disorder, the result of contingency and freedom. The supreme emphasis upon the reality of freedom appears, however, in the work of Boutroux and of Bergson at the end of our period. They arrive at a position diametrically opposed to that of the upholders of determinism, by their doctrines of contingency as revealed both in the evolution of the universe and in the realm of personal life. There is thus seen, as was the case with the problem of science, a complete “turn of the tide” in the development since Comte. Boutroux, summing up his thesis _La contingence des Lois de la Nature_, indicates clearly in his concluding chapter his belief in contingency, freedom and creativeness. The old adage, “nothing is lost, nothing is created,” to which science seems inclined to attach itself, has not an absolute value, for in the hierarchy of creatures contingency, freedom, newness appear in the higher ranks. There is at work no doubt a principle of conservation, but this must not lead us to deny the existence and action of another principle, that of creation. The world rises from inorganic to organic forms, from matter to spirit, and in man himself from mere sensibility to intelligence, with its capacity for criticising and observing, and to will capable of acting upon things and modifying them by freedom.