200 ON THE RECEPTION OF 



" chance." Do they believe that anything in this universe 

 happens without reason or without a cause ? Do they really 

 conceive that any event has no cause, and could not have 

 been predicted by any one who had a sufficient insight into 

 the order of Nature? If they do, it is they who are the 

 inheritors of antique superstition and ignorance, and whose 

 minds have never been illumined by a ray of scientific 

 thought. The one act of faith in the convert to science, is 

 the confession of the universality of order and of the absolute 

 validity, in all times and under all circumstances, of the law 

 of causation. This confession is an act of faith, because, 

 by the nature of the case, the truth of such propositions is 

 not susceptible of proof. But such faith is not blind, but 

 reasonable ; because it is invariably confirmed by experi- 

 ence, and constitutes the sole trustworthy foundation for all 

 action. 



If one of these people, in whom the chance-worship of our 

 remoter ancestors thus strangely survives, should be within 

 reach of the sea when a heavy gale is blowing, let him betake 

 himself to the shore and watch the scene. Let him note the 

 infinite variety of form and size of the tossing waves out at 

 sea ; or of the curves of their foam-crested breakers, as they 

 dash against the rocks ; let him listen to the roar and scream 

 of the shingle as it is cast up and torn down the beach ; or 

 look at the flakes of foam as they drive hither and thither 

 before the wind ; or note the play of colours, which answers 

 a gleam of sunshine as it falls upon their myriad bubbles. 

 Surely here, if anywhere, he will say that chance is supreme, 

 and bend the knee as one who has entered the very penetralia 

 of his divinity. But the man of science knows that here, as 

 everywhere, perfect order is manifested ; that there is not a 

 curve of the waves, not a note in the howling chorus, not a 

 rainbow-glint on a bubble, which is other than a necessary 

 consequence of the ascertained laws of nature ; and that with 

 a sufficient knowledge of the conditions, competent physico- 



