2i 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Newton assuredly lent no shadow of support to the modern pseudo- 

 scientific philosophy which confounds laws with causes. I have not 

 taken the trouble to trace out this commonest of fallacies to its first 

 beginning ; but I was familiar with it in full bloom, more than forty 

 years ago, in a work which had a great vogue in its day the " Vesti- 

 ges of the Natural History of Creation " of which the first edition 

 was published in 1844. 



It is full of apt and forcible illustrations of pseudo-scientific real- 

 ism. Consider, for example, this gem serene : When a boy who has 

 climbed a tree looses his hold of the branch, " the law of gravitation 

 unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and then he is hurt," whereby 

 the Almighty is quite relieved from any responsibility for the acci- 

 dent. Here is the " law of gravitation " acting as a cause, in a way 

 quite in accordance with the Duke of Argyll's conception of it. In 

 fact, in the mind of the author of the " Vestiges," " laws " are exist- 

 ences intermediate between the Creator and his works, like the " ideas" 

 of the Platonizers or the Logos of the Alexandrians.* I may cite a 

 passage which is quite in the vein of Philo : 



We have seen powerful evidences that the construction of this globe and its 

 associates, and, inferentially, that of all the other globes in space, was the result, 

 not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natu- 

 ral laws which are the expression of his will. "What is to hinder our supposing 

 that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws which are in like man- 

 ner an expression of his will? (p. 154, first edition). 



And creation " operating by law " is constantly cited as relieving the 

 Creator from trouble about insignificant details. 



I am perplexed to picture to myself the state of mind -which ac- 

 cepts these verbal juggleries. It is intelligible that the Creator should 

 operate according to such rules as he might think fit to lay down for 

 himself (and, therefore, according to law) ; but that would leave the 

 operation of his will just as much a direct personal act as it would be 

 under any other circumstances. I can also understand that (as in 

 Leibnitz's caricature of Newton's views) the Creator might have made 

 the cosmical machine, and, after setting it going, have left it to itself 

 till it needed repair. But then, by the supposition, his personal re- 

 sponsibility would have been involved in all that it did, just as much 

 as a dynamiter is responsible for what happens when he has set his 

 machine going and left it to explode. 



The only hypothesis which gives a sort of mad consistency to the 

 Vestigiarian's views is the supposition that laws are a kind of angels 

 or demiurgoi, who, being supplied with the Great Architect's plan, 

 were permitted to settle the details among themselves. Accepting 

 this doctrine, the conception of royal laws and plebeian laws, and of 

 these more than Homeric contests in which the big laws " wreck " the 



* The author recognizes this in his " Explanations." 



