CORRESP ONDENCE. 



407 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE AGAIN. 

 Messrs. Editors : 



IKEAD tlie first few pages of the Bish- 

 op of Carlisle's essay oa the " Uniform- 

 ity of Nature," in the last number of this 

 magazine, with a lively expectation that 

 some of the fog and uncertainty left hang- 

 ing around the question by the debaters of 

 the " Metaphysical Society " was to be cleared 

 up. But all such expectation ended be- 

 fore I had finished the article. The fog and 

 uncertainty became more bewildering than 

 ever. In fact, it seems to me the worthy 

 bishop missed the mark entirely. He set 

 out to tell us what was meant by the uni- 

 formity of Nature, and arrived at the con- 

 clusion that, outside of celestial mechanics, 

 it, in effect, meant simply unchangeableness 

 of the weather, uniformity in the direction 

 of the wind, invariableness in the form and 

 density of bodies, etc., and was therefore a 

 principle of only a very limited application. 

 How abiu' d, in the first place, to go back 

 to ciphering out by Newton and Laplace of 

 the problems of the laws and motions of the 

 heavenly bodies, for the origin of the prac- 

 tically universal belief in the uniformity of 

 Nature ! You might as well go back to them 

 for the origin of our practical belief in den- 

 sity, gravity, inertia, or in the existence of 

 the sun and moon themselves. The whole 

 course of our lives is predicated upon our 

 faith in the uniformity of Nature, upon the 

 belief that fire burns, that cold freezes, that 

 gravity is always operative. Would a man 

 ever plant seed in the ground if he did not 

 believe the laws which govern its growth 

 and development were constant ? Have the 

 laws (no matter how ignorant we are of 

 them) which govern steam, which govern 

 all fluids and solids and gases, which gov- 

 ern contraction and expansion and conden- 

 sation, ever been known to fail ? The mo- 

 ment any uncertainty is discovered here, 

 our whole philosophy of mechanics is in 

 ruins. Because the weather is changeable, 

 does the bishop therefore think that the 

 laws which govern the formation of clouds, 

 which determine the course of the winds, 

 and the precipitation of moisture in the 

 shape of rain and snow, are not uniform; 

 that, given the same conditions, the same 

 results will not follow ? Would he pray 

 for rain, or for the rain to cease ? Would 

 he pray for the postponement of an eclipse ? 

 Or would he say that, because man has 

 changed the face of the earth, he has not 

 done it under the rigid operation of natural 

 law? that he has reversed the law of grav- 

 ity, the laws of heat and cold, of wet and 



dry, of the tides and the seasons? Is it 

 not true, rather, that he has done it by 

 strictly following and obeying these laws ? 

 A belief in the uniformity of Nature does 

 not mean a belief in the uniformity of ap- 

 pearances or of phenomena. The law is 

 not disproved because some of the worlds 

 are large and some small, some hot and some 

 cold, some dense and some thin ; or because 

 some animals have two legs and some four 

 or six, some feathers and some hair, or be- 

 cause some crows are white and some swans 

 black, or because some fruit has the seed 

 upon the outside and some on the inside. 

 But show us a country where the trees are 

 walking about, and the men are rooted to the 

 ground, and our belief in the uniformity of 

 Nature will at least receive a severe shock. 

 Would not the same conditions that produce 

 a white crow or a white negro once always 

 produce a white crow or a white negro? 

 This, then, is what we mean and must mean 

 by the uniformity of Nature, that, f/ivc7i (he 

 same conditmis, the same restdts xvill always 

 follow. If this truth does not hold good at 

 all times and in all places, then, indeed, is 

 " the pillared firmament based upon rotten- 

 ness." A breach in the uniformity of Na- 

 ture means a breach of this law. If ice 

 should fail to melt in the fire, or if water 

 should flow up-hill, or lead swim where a 

 feather would sink, then would the uni- 

 formity of Nature be disproved. If the 

 Bishop of Carlisle, or any other person, will 

 make an axe-head swim upon water, as Eli- 

 sha did, and under the same conditions that 

 would send the iron to the bottom at all 

 other times, then must we either give up 

 the belief in the uniformity of Nature, or 

 else believe in the existence of a set of laws 

 which may be brought to bear upon mate- 

 rial bodies by the human will, so as to re- 

 verse or annul the laws by which they are 

 ordinarily governed. And the existence of 

 such laws and of such power of the human 

 will is an assumption which no sane man 

 can accept. 



If the sun should fail to" rise to-morrow, 

 it would be no breach of the uniformity of 

 Nature. If the sun failed to rise, could it be 

 from other than physical or natural cause ; 

 from the operation of laws which are uni- 

 form in their workings ? If we are to be- 

 lieve what astronomers tell us about the 

 disappearance of certain stars, then the sun 

 of some world or worlds has failed to rise 

 on the morrow. Have given the same con- 

 ditions, and would not our sun disappear 

 also ? No ; facts of this kind can not be 

 relied upon to invalidate the principle of 



