112

G126

of nature, and, indeed, all experiential laws, have been results of evolution, being (such was my original hypothesis,) developments out of utterly causeless determinations of single events, under a certain universal tendency toward habit-forming, conjoined with a survival of the fittest; the fitness of habits, or "laws," of things consisting in their growth not essentially tending to produce characters which would necessarily remove any objects that should come to possess them from the sphere of experience. The supposed tendency to take habits, that is to say, to repeat former modes of action would itself grow by virtue of itself into a stronger habit of habit-forming.