112 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



it proclaims mystery where others profess knowledge. 

 There is mystery enough in the universe of sensation and 

 in its capacity for containing those little corners of con- 

 sciousness which project their own products, of order and 

 law and reason, into an unknown and unknowable world. 

 There is mystery enough here, only let us clearly dis- 

 tinguish it from ignorance within the field of possible 

 knowledge. The one is impenetrable, the other we are 

 daily subduing. 



SUMMARY 



1. Scientific law is of a totally different nature from civil law ; it does not 

 involve an intelligent lawgiver, a command and a corresponding duty. It is a 

 brief description in mental shorthand of as wide a range as possible of the 

 sequences of our sense-impressions. 



2. There are two distinct meanings to natural law : the mere routine of 

 perception, and the scientific law or formula describing the field of nature. 

 The " reason " in natural law is only obvious when we speak of law in the 

 latter sense, and it is then really placed there by the human mind. Thus the 

 supposed reason behind natural law does not enable us to pass from the 

 routine of perceptions to anything of the nature of reason behind the world of 

 sense-impression. 



3. The fact that the human reflective faculty is able to express in mental 

 formuhi; the routine of perceptions may be due to this routine being a pro- 

 duct of the perceptive faculty itself. The perceptive faculty appears to be 

 selective and to have developed in co-ordination with the reflective faculty. 

 Of the world outside sensation science can only logically infer chaos, or the 

 absence of the conditions of knowledge ; no human concept, such as order, 

 reason, or consciousness, can be logically projected into it. 



LITERATURE 



Austin, J. — Lectures on Jurisprudence. London, 1879. (Especially 



Lectures I. to V.) 

 Hume, D. — Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (pp. 375-468 of vol. ii. 



of the Philosophical Works, edited by Green and Grose). 

 Stuart, J. — A Chapter of Science; or, What is a Law of Nature? 



London, 1868. (A series of six lectures, of which the first five can still 



be read with some profit, if read cautiously, whilst the last forms for the 



student of logic a useful study in paralogisms.) 



