434 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



the consequent results of the law of gravitation must 

 have been entirely a matter of free choice. 



Chalmers has most distinctly pointed out that the 

 existing collocations of the material world are at least 

 as important as the laws which the objects obey. He 

 remarks that a certain class of writers entirely over 

 look the distinction, and forget that mere laws without 

 collocations would have afforded no security against a 

 turbid and disorderly chaos b . Mr. J. S. Mill has recog 

 nised the truth of Chalmers statement, without draw 

 ing the proper inferences from it. He says d of the dis 

 tribution of matter through space,&quot; We can discover 

 nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can reduced 

 it to no uniformity, to no law/ More lately the Dukei 

 of Argyle in his well known work on the Reign of Law I 

 has drawn attention to the profound distinction between^ 

 laws and collocations of causes. 



The original conformation of the material universe was, 

 so far as we can possibly tell, free from all restriction.: 

 There was unlimited space in which to frame it, and an] 

 unlimited number of material particles, each of which! 

 could be placed in any one of an infinite number OH 

 different positions. It must -also be added that each] 

 particle might be endowed with any one of an infinite] 

 number of degrees of vis viva acting in any one of an] 

 infinitely infinite number of different directions. Thei 

 problem of Creation was, then, what a mathematician \ 

 would call an indeterminate problem, and it was inde-j 

 terminate in an infinitely infinite number of ways. In4 

 finitely numerous and various universes might then.) 

 have been fashioned by the various distribution of thej 



b First Bridgwater Treatise (1834), pp. 16-24. 



c &amp;lt; System of Logic, 5th edit. bk. III. chap. V. 7. Chap. XVI 3. 



d Ibid. vol. i. p. 384. 



