Mr Glover on Forms of Indttction. ]21 



Subordinate to the great logical characters of physical laws, 

 there are other characters of a physical, or a metaphysical kind, 

 which, not being all common to such expressions, but some of 

 them peculiar to particular laws, serve to distinguish those. 

 The chief of these characters depend upon the relations pre- 

 served between properties connected in laws, in time, and in 

 space. Characters deduced from such relations, may be termed 

 metaphysical : their existence was clearly pointed out by Dr 

 Brown. The physical characters belonging to laws are very 

 various ; and in tliis inquiry may be considered accidental or 

 contingent. 



A law, stating that the properties to which it applies pre- 

 serve a relation one to another, so that the presence of none is 

 antecedent to the appearance of the others, is an expression like 

 the description of a natural family, or the theory of the circu- 

 lation reduced to its utmost simplicity. For as, in this latter 

 case, it is only stated that the performance of the circulation of 

 the blood is a function essentially connected with a peculiar 

 structure, — the prior presence, whether of structure or function, 

 is left undetermined. But where one property precedes ano- 

 ther in the order of time — one being a uniform antecedent, and 

 the other a uniform consequent, L e., when this order is found 

 to occur regularly in certain contingent physical circumstances, 

 — the law is then one of cause and effect. Since the phenome- 

 na of gravitation are now found to be consequent upon the re- 

 lative position of gravitating masses, because the attractive 

 influence requires time for its transmission, the law of gravity 

 is one of cause and effect. Matter, in separate masses, and 

 these at distances not extremely minute, being the uniform ante- 

 cedent ; — the phenomena of gravitation the uniform consequent; 

 and the occurrence of the law within certain definite distances 

 (added to what is said just above), the contingent circumstan- 

 ces. 



But besides the statement of an existing relation between 

 properties, a physical law often carries with its terms the pre- 

 sumption of an existency in nature, more remote and subtile 

 than the observed properties, and which causes those to preserve 

 their known relations. In other words, the law excites in the 



