Here let us stop. Our discussion shows signs of falling into the abstract and mathematical, and one may wonder whether anything practical can come of it. One will recall the unhappy disciple of Adrien Sixte, and will ask oneself: What answer, after all, are we return to his cry, “De profundis!” Can we offer him any solace in his wretchedness? I think we can, only it is not the kind of solace he asks for, nor can it come from the direction in which he seeks it. I should be inclined to say to him, to Fichte in his Spinozistic mood, to any other over whom the mechanical ideal hangs heavily: This ideal is a safe guide in all thinking for which it has a meaning; no atom in your body nor out of it, but what is determined by mechanical necessity; but the sum of these atoms is not you; there is a difference between the whole we call a man, and the sum of the atoms that make up the machine that is to him. These atoms may come and go, the man remains. What constitutes his nature as a living being, an animal, a man, can receive no definition in terms of the atoms now in his body, nor those that may later take their place. You as living, as animal, as man, can be defined only in terms of the ends common to the individuals of these classes. In so far as thus natured, you fall under laws not of a mechanical order. They are laws of average which determine not you, but your chances of accomplishing the ends that define your being. In so far as you accomplish such ends, you are good of your kind; in so far as you fail, you are evil,--and if you fail egregiously enough, you are a monster. The most your self-analysis could have made out by the way of excuse is that the chances were against you. And this indeed you may have made out, for who could maintain that all men have equal chances in this world? But to have had the chances against you, is not to have been determined as a falling rock is determined; there is no chance for it.