MISCELLANY. 



12? 



eessity for a God, since Nature can do very 

 well without one. 



" 4. That, if there be a God, he is lim- 

 ited in his action just as man is by the 

 ' laws of matter,' which he can no more 

 control than man can ; and that he is, 

 therefore, in his relation to Nature, only a 

 higher kind of man. 



"Now, my object was to show : 



"1. That what we call ' laws of Nature ' 

 are simply our own expressions of the or- 

 derly sequence which we discern in the 

 phenomena of the universe ; and that, as 

 all the history of science shows how erro- 

 neous these have been in the past, so we 

 have no right to assume our present con- 

 ceptions of that sequence to be either uni- 

 versally or necessarily true. 



" 2. That these so-called ' laws ' are of 

 two kinds, one set being mere generaliza- 

 tions of phenomena, of which Kepler's 

 1 laws of planetary motion ' or the ' laws of 

 chemical combination ' are examples, while 

 another set express the conditions of the 

 action of a force, of which the existence is, 

 or may be, made known to us by the direct 

 and immediate evidence of our own con- 

 sciousness our cognition of matter being 

 indirectly formed through the medium of 

 force. 



" 3. That ' laws ' of the first kind (which 

 we may for convenience term phenomenal) 

 do not really explain or account for any 

 thing whatever. Nothing is more common 

 than to hear scientific men speaking of 

 such laws as ' governing phenomena,' or of 

 a phenomenon being ' explained ' when it 

 is found to be consistent with some one of 

 such laws ; though the fact is that the law 

 is a law merely because it is a generalized 

 expression of a certain group of phenom- 

 ena ; and to say that any new phenomenon 

 is 'explained,' by its being shown to be in 

 conformity to a 'law' is merely to say (as 

 Prof. Clifford well put in his lecture) that 

 a thing previously unknown is ' explained ' 

 by showing it to be like something pre- 

 viously known. 



"4. That, on the other hand, every 

 'law 'of the second kind (which we may 

 distinguish as dynamical) is based on the 

 fundamental conception of a force or pow- 

 er; so that if the existence of such a force 

 (as that of gravity or electricity) be ad- 



mitted, and the conditions of its action can 

 be accurately stated, then the law which 

 expresses them may be said to ' govern ' 

 the phenomenon; and any phenomenon, 

 which can be shown to be necessarily de- 

 ducible from it, may be said to be ' ex- 

 plained,' so far as science can explain it. 

 But the utmost that science can positively 

 do, as I stated toward the conclusion of 

 my address, is to demonstrate the unity of 

 the power of which the phenomena of Na- 

 ture are the diversified manifestations, and 

 to trace the continuity of its action through 

 the vast series of ages that have been occu- 

 pied in the evolution of the universe. 



" 5. I expressed the opinion that science 

 points to (though at present I should be 

 far from saying that it demonstrates) the 

 origination of all power in mind ; and this 

 is the only point in my whole address 

 which has any direct theological bearing. 

 When metaphysicians, shaking off the bug- 

 bear of materialism, will honestly and cou- 

 rageously study the phenomena of the 

 mind of man in their relation to those of 

 his body, I believe that they will find in 

 that relation their best arguments for the 

 presence of infinite mind in universal Na- 

 ture. 



" Now, the only expression I have ever 

 met with, in our own language, of the phi- 

 losophy which (as I have said) worships 

 the order of Nature as itself a God, was ut- 

 tered by Miss Martineau, in the book on 

 ' Man's Nature and Development,' which 

 she produced some twenty years ago in 

 conjunction with Mr. Atkinson. Not hav- 

 ing the book at hand, I cannot cite any 

 passage from it ; but I well remember the 

 general drift of its argument (putting aside 

 mesmerism, phrenology, etc.) to have been 

 that, whereas mankind formerly believed 

 the phenomena of Nature to.be expressions 

 of the will of a Personal God, modern sci- 

 ence, by reducing every thing to ' laws,' 

 had given a sufficient ' explanation ' of 

 these phenomena, and made it quite un- 

 necessary for man to seek any further ac- 

 count of them. 



" This is precisely Dr. Buchner's posi- 

 tion ; and it seems to me a legitimate in- 

 ference from the very prevalent assumption 

 (which is sanctioned by the language of 

 some of our ablest writers) that the so- 



