SCIENCE NOT INVALID BUT INCOMPLETE.--This line of criticism of scientific method--i.e. that it deals with abstractions and analogies rather than with _things_, for the sake of economy and convenience of thought--does not deprive science of validity, but only invalidates that superficial dogmatism which had crept into so many investigations. A critical estimate of scientific methods makes it evident how much and how little we have the right to expect from them. They will enable us to give a simple description of _phenomena_ as they are seen when reduced to their simplest terms of matter and motion; but of ultimate and final causes they will tell us nothing. "The system of conceptions by which the exact sciences try to describe the phenomena of nature ... is symbolic, a kind of shorthand, unconsciously invented and perfected for the sake of convenience and for practical use ... the leading principle is that of Economy of Thought" (Merz, Vol. III, p. 579). BOUTROUX.--This criticism of the mechanical method of dealing with reality was seconded by Boutroux's criticism of the principle of Natural Law. Emile Boutroux (1845-1918)--Professor at the Sorbonne--in two important treatises, examines with great minuteness this aspect of the scientific method. In the earlier of these works, _The Contingency of the Laws of Nature_ (1879) he suggests that these laws only give, so to speak, the _habits_ which things display. They constitute, as it were, "the bed in which the stream of occurrence flows, which the stream itself had hollowed out, although its course has come to be determined by this bed" (Hoeffding, _Modern Philosophers_, p. 101). In his _Natural Law in Science and Philosophy_ (1895), Boutroux lays it down that the laws of nature, as science describes them, may indeed represent, but are by no means identical with, the laws of nature as they really are. The laws of science are true, not absolutely but relatively, i.e. are not elements in, but symbols of, reality. The notion that everything is "determined" (i.e. the opposite of "contingent"), though absolutely indispensable to the mechanical theory, is nevertheless a way of looking at things rather than a faithful picture of reality--a way in which we see things rather than the way things exist in themselves. As Boutroux himself puts it in his final chapter: "That which we call the 'laws of nature' is the sum total of the methods we have discovered for adapting things to the mind, and subjecting them to be moulded by the will." RESULTS.--Here we have Boutroux approaching very closely to the standpoint of Mach; indeed the theories of the two men are complementary to one another. For Mach, the mechanical view is a way of looking at things, distinctly useful for understanding and using them--an "economy of thought." For Boutroux, the determinist view is also a way of looking at things that is useful for the same purposes.