O NOMOS. 



becomes an argument that the latter law is none 

 other than a partial conception of cosmical law. 



Nor have we yet arrived at the limit of the in- 

 novations which appear to be required in the creed 

 of science ; for, on pursuing the inquiry, the same 

 law is found to lead us to the physical interpretation 

 of natural light and its associate phenomena. 



No very satisfactory explanation has yet been 

 offered of natural light. It is, we are told, the sign 

 of an undulation of inconceivable rapidity in an im- 

 ponderable ether which pervades all space. The 

 imagination is taxed to the utmost to take in the 

 subtle conception. But this difficulty is at an end 

 if the law of the laboratory be invoked to the ex- 

 planation of the phenomenon, for then the light 

 becomes the necessary effect of the law. The light 

 reveals the presence of the law, and the law explains 

 the nature of the light. 



It is so also with natural heat, with the chemical 

 powers of the solar ray, and with the manifold mani- 

 festations of terrestrial electricity ; and it is not too 

 much to say, that we know nothing about their 

 causes, unless we allow the law of the laboratory to 

 be a universal law. If we do this, then they become 

 only so many signs and effects of the law, and the 

 difficulty is, not to account for their presence, but to 

 imagine their absence. 



The law of the laboratory, then, must be regarded 

 as a cosmical law, for the more it is examined into the 

 more it is seen to gain in comprehensiveness, until 

 at length it loses every trace of speciality. This, 



