244 WORLD BUILDING 



as the most typical natural laws are of the nature of 

 truisms, and the ultimate controlling laws of the basal 

 structure (if there are any) are likely to be of a differ- 

 ent type from any yet conceived. 



Thirdly, the mind has by its selective power fitted 

 the processes of Nature into a frame of law of a pattern 

 largely of its own choosing; and in the discovery of this 

 system of law the mind may be regarded as regaining 

 from Nature that which the mind has put into 

 Nature. 



Three Types of Law. So far as we are able to judge, the 

 laws of Nature divide themselves into three classes: 

 (i) identical laws, (2) statistical laws, (3) transcenden- 

 tal laws. We have just been considering the identical 

 laws, i.e. the laws obeyed as mathematical identities in 

 virtue of the way in which the quantities obeying them 

 are built. They cannot be regarded as genuine laws of 

 control of the basal material of the world. Statistical 

 laws relate to the behaviour of crowds, and depend on 

 the fact that although the behaviour of each individual 

 may be extremely uncertain average results can be 

 predicted with confidence. Much of the apparent uni- 

 formity of Nature is a uniformity of averages. Our 

 gross senses only take cognisance of the average effect of 

 vast numbers of individual particles and processes; and 

 the regularity of the average might well be compatible 

 with a great degree of lawlessness of the individual. I do 

 not think it is possible to dismiss statistical laws (such 

 as the second law of thermodynamics) as merely mathe- 

 matical adaptations of the other classes of law to certain 

 practical problems. They involve a peculiar element 

 of their own connected with the notion of a priori proba- 

 bility; but we do not yet seem able to find a place for 



