of the universe? Or is it, on the other hand, anything more than a mode of human thought,' (for this also has been held respecting it), analogous to Time and Space, conditions regulative of all perception of phenomena, yet in a manner unessential, relative, not absolute, the elimination. of which is not beyond conception? Is law more than an act of the mind, a description of its state of expectation in respect of any event? Is it capable of manifestation to aught but the spirit and intelligence of man? Can the order of the material universe be shown to be other than the complement of the human understanding? Does not the

1 6

Long, indeed, will man strive to satisfy the inward querist with the phrase, Laws of Nature. But though the individual may rest content with the seemly metaphor, the race cannot."-Coleridge, Friend, III. 199. "Thought, involving simply the establishment of relations, may be readily conceived to go on, while yet these relations have not been organized into the abstracts we call Space and Time; and so there is a conceivable kind of consciousness which does not contain the truths commonly called a priori, involved in the organization of these forms of relations."-H. Spencer, First Pr., p. 258.

2 The forms in nature which we denominate laws, how do they become ideas in the mind? Only it would seem by a faculty of generalization due to the higher Reason. See Arist., Anal. Post., II. xiv. The facts are objective: "Toute réalité," says Leibnitz, "doit être fondée dans quelque chose d'existant;" but it is the mind which invests them with generality. "What we call a general law is, in truth, a form of expression including a number of facts of like kind. The facts are separate; the unity of view by which we associate them, the character of generality and of law, resides in those relations which are the object of the intellect."-Whewell, B. T., p. 259. See Sir W. Hamilton, Lect., III. 78, and Ueberweg's Logic, §§ 38-44, who, however, does not escape from the circle of employing mathematical, i. e. objective, conceptions, which are themselves only guaranteed by our inner experience.

course of the revelation of law to the mind of man follow the very law or constitution of his mind? Again, the impossibility of all creation might be law a mode argued from the eternity of God, if this attribute operation. were indeed other than the negation of the condi

In what

sense is

of Divine

The uni

versality

yet esta

blished,

tions of Time in the case of an Infinite Being.1 Is the case different in respect of Law as a mode of Divine operation? When it gives rise to similar perplexities, is it to be held incompatible with the notion of Providential action ?

§ 4. Neither can it be assumed, unless rhetori

2

of law not cally, that at present the reign of Law is as wide as the world in which we live. Many an ample demesne of thought and feeling, of social action, nay, of physical processes, is as yet but partially explored, and remains debateable land. M. Comte, in fact, holds that many phenomena will never be brought within the range of definite laws, because each science, as it increases in complexity, admits also of greater variations.3 This is, in effect, to repeat the axiom of Bacon, that "the subtilty of

1 ταῦτα δὲ πάντα μέρη χρόνου, καὶ τό τ ̓ ἦν τό τ ̓ ἔσται, χρόνου γεγονότα εἴδη, ἅ δὴ φέροντες λανθάνομεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀΐδιον οὐσίαν οὐκ opos.-Plato, Timæus, 37, E. Cf. August., Serm. ad Catech., c. viii. : "Natus est ante omnia tempora; natus ante omnia sæcula. Natus ante; ante quid, ubi non est ante?" &c. There was an old view (Id., Civ. D., XI. iv.) that the world was eternal not in time, but in respect of its creation. This savoured too much of a saving clause.

2 "Nothing is that errs from law."-Tennyson. See on this subject the Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, p. 53, and Mozley, B. L., p. 325, and some fine remarks of Dr. Chalmers, Works, VII. 204.

3 See also Littré, Paroles de la Phil. Pos., p. 17.

nature far surpasses the subtilty of the mind of man." Let it, however, be conceded that there is good prospect of their yielding sooner or later to the advance of scientific uniformity. Certainly many effects in nature which have seemed irregular, precarious, lawless, have bowed to the force of inductive analysis and suggestive analogies, until generalization has prevailed in these also, and they have taken their place beside the earlier triumphs of scientific inference. Thus has arisen yet is very generally that habitual recognition of the notion of Law assumed, which, as has been truly said, is a distinguishing characteristic of modern from ancient thought.' It may also be conceded that the Divine Mind, if conceived as projecting its fiat upon natural agents in the form of universal laws, must likewise be apprehended as adequate to sustain them through any limits of time and space. The hand which has so moulded can, and, indeed, must equally uphold them, and enforce their operation." Let us, then, strive to estimate the result of the

1 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, p. 142. Yet an apprehension of laws of nature is undoubtedly very ancient-lying at the foundations of Greek philosophy and poetry. Comp. Soph., Ed. T., 865. Antig., 455. It had also sunk deep into the Hebrew mind and heart. Cf. Ps. 148, 6. Jer. v. 22; xiii. 23. Eccles. i. 4-7.

2 "La conservation de Dieu consiste dans cette influence immédiate, perpétuelle, que la dépendance des créatures demande. Cette dépendance a lieu à l'égard non-seulement de la substance, mais encore de l'action; et on ne sauroit peut-être l'expliquer mieux qu'en disant avec le commun des théologiens et des philosophes, que c'est une création continuée."-Leibnitz, Works, p. 512.

and viewed as the term of know

ledge.

Facts,

however,

state of things supposed. When the physical antecedents of all events shall have been assigned, the tendencies of human nature mapped out and ascertained, will the sum of man's knowledge have been reached, and with it the limits of his belief? Shall we then "know even as we are known"?

§ 5. The attainment of a clear conception of law is by some1 regarded as the highest point attainable by the human understanding. "The sum of all education," says Professor Huxley," "is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature." I do not stay to remark upon the narrowness of such a view of human nature, when we take into account its moral and spiritual capacities; nor again, on its logical insufficiency without some postulate as to the origin and nature of things. But does it correspond, so far as it reaches, with the teaching conveyed by the facts of the external world? Is there no region suggested to us in experience above the level of material causes?

-no law higher than the subsidiary laws which suggest a bind particular forces? Is there no element, no

further

analysis.

1 Buckle, Hist. Civ., II. 343. "La méthode objective ou expérience ne parvient qu'à des lois, c'est son suprême effet, rendant de plus en plus impersonnelle l'idée de Providence il va se perdre d'une façon plus ou moins confuse dans l'immanence des lois qui régissent les choses."Littré, Paroles, p. 18.

2

Lay Sermons, p. 36. See also the magnificent passage commencing, "That man, I think, has had a liberal education," &c. It altogether omits any spiritual element in man. Compare Dr. Westcott's remarks in Cont. Review, VIII. 378.

tion made

"law within the law," required to account for the co-adjustment of phenomena ? It is such an element, if any, which, satisfying this unknown yet necessary coefficient, answers to the notion of Providence, to the movement of a Supreme Free Agent,' of One who is not content to reign and not to govern. The distinction very commonly A distincmade between a general and a special Providence between may prove in some respects misleading. If general and special without being special, it is to the individual soul dence. no Providence at all. While from a scientific point of view, the intercalation of an adjustment of relations between agent and effect, is as necessary for each single event as for any general law of uniform results arising out of the repetition of

2

1 "Is there above the level of material causes a region of Providence? If there is, Nature there is moved by the Supreme Free Agent, and of such a realm a miracle is the natural production."-Mozley, Bamp. Lect., p. 164. Compare also Prof. Goldwin Smith (Lect., II. 47): "This God, Who is to reign over His own world on condition that He does not govern it, what is He-the Supreme Law of Nature?" &c. In his Address at Liverpool, p. 22, Mr. Gladstone writes: "On the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing the world."

2 Leibnitz very justly warns that "il faut considérer aussi que l'action de Dieu conservant doit avoir du rapport à ce qui est conservé, tel qu'il est, et selon l'état où il est ainsi elle ne sauroit être générale ou indéterminée. Ces généralités sont des abstractions qui ne se trouvent point dans la vérité des choses singulières."-Works, p. 511. "The Laws of Nature are the laws which the Divine Being in His wisdom prescribes to His own acts. His universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events; His universal agency the only origin of any efficient force."-Whewell, B. T., p. 311. "Je ne demande ni les aïeules, ni les trisaïcules du phénomène; je me contente de sa mère."-De Maistre, Soirées, p. 190.

general

Provi