7 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ture which we cull " laws," we are led to the conclusion that they are 

 human conceptions subject to human fallibility, and that they may or 

 may not expiess the ideas of the Great Author of Nature. To set up 

 these laws as self-acting, and as either excluding or rendering un- 

 necessary the power which alone can give them effect, appears to me 

 as arrogant as it is unphilosophical. To speak of any law as " regu- 

 lating" or "governing" phenomena is only permissible on the assump- 

 tion that the law is the expression of the modus operandi of a govern- 

 ing power. I was once in a great city which for two days was in the 

 hands of a lawless mob. Magisterial authority was suspended by 

 timidity and doubt ; the force at its command was paralyzed by want 

 of resolute direction. The " laws " were on the statute-book, but 

 there was no power to enforce them. And so the powers of evil did 

 their terrible work, and fire and rapine continued to destroy life and 

 property without check, until new power came in, when the reign of 

 law was restored. 



And thus we are led to the culminating point of man's intellectual 

 interpretation of Nature his recognition of the unity of the power 

 of which her phenomena are the diversified manifestations. Toward 

 this point all scientific inquiry now tends. The convertibility of the 

 physical forces, the correlation of these with the vital, and the inti- 

 macy of that nexus between mental and bodily activity which, ex- 

 plain it as we may, cannot be denied, all lead upward toward one and 

 the same conclusion ; and the pyramid of which the philosophical con- 

 clusion is the apex has its foundation in the primitive instincts of hu- 

 manity. 



By our own remote progenitors, as by the untutored savage of the 

 present day, every change in which human agency was not apparent 

 was referred to a particular animating intelligence. And thus they 

 attributed not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, but all the 

 phenomena of Nature, each to its own deity. These deities were in- 

 vested with more than human power ; but they were also supposed 

 capable of human passions and subject to human capriciousness. As 

 the uniformities of Nature came to be more distinctly recognized, 

 some of these deities were invested with a dominant control, while 

 others were supposed to be their subordinate ministers. A serene 

 majesty was attributed to the greater gods who sit above the clouds ; 

 while their inferiors might " come down to earth in the likeness of 

 men." With the growth of the scientific study of Nature, the con- 

 ception of its harmony and unity gained ever-increasing strength. 

 And so, among the most enlightened of the Greek and Roman philoso- 

 phers, we find a distinct recognition of the idea of the unity of the 

 directing mind from which the order of Nature proceeds ; for they 

 obviously believed that, as our modern poet has expressed it 



" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 

 "Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul." 



