NOMOS. 



193 



The law of 

 the labora- 

 tory affords 

 the only ex- 

 planation of 

 natural light. 



Natural light 

 may be taken 

 as another 

 argument 

 that the law 

 of nature is 

 the law of the 

 laboratory. 



nature, and this is, that the law of the labo- 



ratory affords an intelligible answer to the 



question, What is light? It affords an 



answer to this question, for, according to 



this view, light is nothing more than law 



attested by the eye. And this answer 



is surely as intelligible as that which re- 



fers light to undulations of inconceivable 



rapidity, set up we know not how, in 



an hypothetical ether, which is at once matter and 



no matter, everywhere and nowhere. 



It seems, moreover, that we may find in the pages 

 of Scripture a recognition of the dependence of light 

 upon the same cause as motion. At the 

 beginning it was as it is now. The light 

 was no diffused and independent agency, 

 for then, as now, the light was divided 

 from the darkness, and morning followed 

 evening in the same order. Then, as 

 now, the light was divided from the dark- 

 ness, and morning followed evening, be- 

 cause the earth revolved upon her axis before the 

 sun. Then, as now, day followed day, so that the 

 earth moved along her orbit as well as upon her 

 axis. In a word, light was associated with motion, 

 and hence, arguing backwards, we may suppose that 

 light was associated with the same cause as motion. 



But there is another point in this account which 

 bears upon a question treated of in the last chapter, 

 and which seems to fix the time of the 

 creation at the beginning of the first day 

 of the Mosaic chronology. At the be- 



o 



The Scriptu- 

 ral account 

 of the crea- 

 tion appears 

 to show that 

 light and mo- 

 tion are 

 bound up in 

 a common 

 cause, as they 

 are in the 

 law of the 

 laboratory. 



A collateral 



