68 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



fixed NATURAL INCLINATION or tendency of the agents which pro 

 duce such results. The expression &quot; natural inclination &quot; embodies 

 a fundamental doctrine of Aristotelean philosophy ; it implies 

 that the agencies whose effects or manifestations we observe in 

 the world around us are not, as the advocates of mechanical de 

 terminism (215) would have them, mere efficient agents capable 

 of producing any or every result indifferently, but that each of 

 them is endowed with an internal tendency in virtue of which it 

 manifests a manner of being and acting proper to itself; which 

 manner is called a property of the substance, and reveals the 

 specific nature of this latter. 



This view of the universe, as the expression of a divine plan, 

 hence called ideological, renders intelligible the use of a term 

 that is constantly recurring in the logic of induction : the term 

 Law (Lex). Law means primarily an order, mandate, precept, 

 emanating from the will of a superior (the legislator), and imposed 

 upon a community subject to him. 1 The law, as abiding in 

 their minds and hearts, by their knowledge of it and submission 

 to it, secures a certain uniformity in their conduct: it becomes 

 the immediate source and principle, in them, of a series of similar 

 acts. Next, the term Law came to be applied to what was 

 really its effect, to this uniform series of similar acts. It was then 

 extended, in this latter sense, from the domain of human activity 

 to the domain of physical, even inanimate, nature ; and here it 

 is now used, as, for example, in all the &quot; physical &quot; and &quot; natural &quot; 2 

 sciences, to denote any uniform series of connected phenomena, 

 whether the connected elements exist simultaneously (&quot; coexist 

 ences &quot;) or successively (&quot; sequences &quot;). The general propositions 

 or statements which formulate such connexions are commonly 

 referred to as &quot;laws of physical nature&quot;: e.g. &quot;Water seeks 

 its own level,&quot; &quot; All bodies fall with the same acceleration in a 

 vacuum,&quot; &quot;At a given temperature the volume of a given 

 quantity of gas varies inversely as the pressure it sustains,&quot; 

 &quot; Heat can produce mechanical work, and vice versa, in definite, 

 measurable proportions,&quot; &quot;The strength of an electric current 

 varies directly as the electromotive force and inversely as the 

 resistance,&quot; &quot;Every living cell has its origin from some other 

 living cell,&quot; &quot;Fermentation is due to the action of microbes&quot;. 



1 Cf. The Inductive Sciences, etc., pp. 70 sqq. 



a These terms are commonly regarded as synonymous ; when they are distin 

 guished, the former refers to the sciences of inorganic, inanimate nature, the latter 

 to those of the living universe, 



