THREE TYPES OF LAW 245 



this in any of the current conceptions of the world sub- 

 stratum. 



If there are any genuine laws of control of the physical 

 world they must be sought in the third group — the 

 transcendental laws. The transcendental laws comprise 

 all those which have not become obvious identities im- 

 plied in the scheme of world-building. They are con- 

 cerned with the particular behaviour of atoms, electrons 

 and quanta — that is to say, the laws of atomicity of 

 matter, electricity and action. We seem to be mak- 

 ing some progress towards formulating them, but it is 

 clear that the mind is having a much harder struggle to 

 gain a rational conception of them than it had with the 

 classical field-laws. We have seen that the field-laws, 

 especially the laws of conservation, are indirecdy imposed 

 by the mind which has, so to speak, commanded a plan of 

 world-building to satisfy them. It is a natural suggestion 

 that the greater difficulty in elucidating the transcenden- 

 tal laws is due to the fact that we are no longer engaged 

 in recovering from Nature what we have ourselves put 

 into Nature, but are at last confronted with its own in- 

 trinsic system of government. But I scarcely know what 

 to think. We must not assume that the possible develop- 

 ments of the new attitude towards natural law have been 

 exhausted in a few short years. It may be that the laws 

 of atomicity, like the laws of conservation, arise only in 

 the presentation of the world to us and can be recognised 

 as identities by some extension of the argument we have 

 followed. But it is perhaps as likely that after we have 

 cleared away all the superadded laws which arise solely 

 in our mode of apprehension of the world about us, there 

 will be left an external world developing under genuine 

 laws of control. 



At present we can notice the contrast that the laws 



