90 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



they suggest the type of fallacy into which we fall by ill- 

 defined use of the term natural law.^ In the first place 

 these philosophers start from the conception of natural 

 law as the mere concatenation of phenomena, the succes- 

 sion or routine of sense-impressions. In the next place 

 as materialists they project these sense-impressions into a 

 real outside world, unconditioned by and independent of 

 man's perceptive faculty. Then they infer reason behind 

 the concatenation of phenomena. Now reason is known 

 to us only in association with consciousness, and we find 

 consciousness only with the accompaniment of a certain 

 type of nervous organism. Thus to infer reason in what 

 has been previously postulated as outside and independent 

 of this type of nervous organism is unjustifiable ; it may 

 be dogma, but it is not logic. It makes little difference 

 whether, with the Stoic, we assert that reason is inherent 

 in nature, or, like Hooker, place the lawgiver outside 

 nature as at once its creator and director. Both asser- 

 tions lie completely outside the field of knowledge, and, 

 as we have said of the like statements before, they logic- 

 ally refer to an unmeaning x existing among an unthink- 

 able y and z {i.e. " realities " unconditioned by man's per- 

 ceptive faculty). 



S 7. — TJie Reason behind Nature 



But how, it may be asked, has the conception that 

 reason exists behind phenomena become so widespread ? 

 Why have so many philosophers and theologians, nay, 

 even scientists,^ used the " argument from design " ? The 



1 The study of fallacy in concrete examples ought to play a greater part in 

 our educational curriculum. Certain works have a permanent value in this 

 respect. I can conceive no better exercises for a student of logic or juris- 

 prudence than an analysis of the paralogisms in Book I. of Hooker's Ecclesi- 

 astical Polity ; for a student of physics than a discovery of the fallacies in Mr. 

 Grant Allen's Force and Energy ; or for both than a critical study of Drum- 

 mond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World ; while a more difficult study in 

 pseudo-science will be found in the first part of J. G. Vogt's Das Wcsen der 

 Elektrizitdt tind des Magnetisnms. The power of criticism and the logical 

 insight thus attainable are in many respects as advantageous as the apprecia- 

 tion of method which results from the perusal of genuine science. 



2 E.g. Sir G. G. Stokes, in his otherwise most suggestive and masterly 

 Burnett Lectures oti Light. 



