Accordingly, we cannot agree with Mr. Peirce that the occurrence of chance "calls for no particular explanation." There is no chance, if chance means absence of law. Chance, if the word be admissible, is a mere subjective conception produced by limited knowledge and signifying a state of things not determinable with the means of knowledge at our disposal. Law once recognised is the death of chance (in the objective sense of the word); and chance, or sport, or chaos, or indeterminacy, or whatever one may call the absence or at least the imperfect cogency of law, far from "calling for no particular explanation," must be classed _prima facie_ among those theories that are _per se_ impossible: These conceptions whether applied to the world at large or to special processes of nature are in contradiction to those interpretations and systematised statements of facts which are most fundamental, most reliable, most indispensable and universal. Whatever generalisation the theory of evolution may be capable of, it is certainly not capable of being applied to law. The formal order of Nature and especially the mechanical laws of physics cannot be thought of as having been developed out of a state of sportive chance; they must be considered as having always been the same as they are now: they are eternal.[57] [57] Mr. Peirce seems to define Mind as sportive chance; for according to his theory, as soon as sportiveness assumes fixed habits, it settles into the mechanical motions which physical science observes in gravitating masses; and matter is thus defined as "effete mind." In stating this difference of opinion, I apprehend a possibility that although Mr. Peirce has stated his case with most admirable and I should say unequivocal clearness, I have misunderstood his views. In a former article of his, Mr. Peirce makes a statement concerning Nature considered as a possible chaos, which seems to concur rather with my views on the subject than with his own. Mr. Peirce says in his fourth Paper on the "Illustrations of the Logic of Science":