OH. ii.] ANTHROPOM011PHIG TBEISM. 393 



&quot;necessary law is the constant expression of the divine 

 working&quot; But the connection asserted between universal 

 law and a supreme quasi-human Will, is one which a scien 

 tific philosophy cannot admit, for it rests upon a mere verbal 

 equivocation. The inference from community of name to 

 community of nature, however appropriate it might have 

 seemed to the realists of the twelfth century, is in our day 

 hardly admissible. Because the word &quot;law&quot; is used to 

 describe alike the generalizations of Kepler and the statutes 

 enacted by a legislative body, we must not infer, with a 

 naivete worthy of the schoolmen, that whatever is true of 

 the one will always be true of the other. That the laws of 

 Justinian emanated from a lawgiver is no reason for believing 

 the same to have been the case with the law of gravitation ; 

 for the former were edicts enjoining obedience, while the 

 latter is but a generalized expression of the manner in which 

 certain phenomena occur. A law of na,ture, as formulated 

 in a scientific treatise, is a statement of facts, and nothing 

 more. Expressed in the indicative mood, it has nothing 

 whatever to do with the imperative. Science knows nothing 

 of a celestial Ukase compelling the earth to gravitate toward 

 the sun. We know that it does so gravitate with a certain 

 intensity, and that is the whole story. Nevertheless, so 

 strong is the realistic tendency that, in speaking of laws of 

 nature, the most careful writers too seldom avoid &quot; a tacit 

 reference to the original sense of the word law, . . . the 

 expression of the will of a superior.&quot; 1 Indeed, it is imme 

 diately after defining a law as &quot; a general name for certain 

 phenomena of the same kind, which regularly recur under 

 the same circumstances/ that Mr. Adam alludes to &quot; the 

 Supreme Will which subjects (!) all phenomena to law, and 

 solligates all laws into a universe (!).&quot; Upon such a confusion 

 of ideas, and amid such a chaos of terminology, is this whole 

 argument, so far as concerns theism, unsuspectingly reared. 



1 Mill, Astern of Logic, voL i p. S4S. 



