152 OF LAWS IN GENERAL. 



Silently and insensibly their experiences have been press- 

 in^ men on towards the conclusion thus drawn. Not out of 



O 



a conscious regard for these reasons, but from a habit of 

 thought which these reasons formulate and justify, all minds 

 have been advancing towards a belief in the constancy of 

 surrounding coexistences and sequences. Familiarity with 

 concrete uniformities has generated the abstract conception 

 of uniformity the idea of Law ; and this idea has been in 

 successive generations slowly gaming fixity and clearness. 

 Especially has it been thus among those whose knowledge of 

 natural phenomena is the most extensive men of science. 

 The mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the che 

 mist, severally acquainted with the vast accumulations of 

 uniformities established by their predecessors, and themselves 

 daily adding new ones as well as verifying the old, acquire a 

 far stronger faith in law than is ordinarily possessed. With 

 them this faith, ceasing to be merely passive, becomes an 

 active stimulus to inquiry. Wherever there exist pheno 

 mena of which the dependence is not yet ascertained, these 

 most cultivated intellects, impelled by the conviction that 

 here too there is some invariable connexion, proceed to ob 

 serve, compare, and experiment ; and when they discover 

 the law to which the phenomena conform, as they eventually 

 do, their general belief in the universality of law is further 

 strengthened. So overwhelming is the evidence, and such 

 the effect of this discipline, that to the advanced student of 

 nature, the proposition that there are lawless phenomena 

 has become not only incredible but almost inconceivable. 



This habitual recognition of law which already distin 

 guishes modern thought from ancient thought, must spread 

 among men at large. The fulfilment of predictions made 

 possible by every new step, and the further command gained 

 of nature s forces, prove to the uninitiated the validity of 

 scientific generalizations and the doctrine they illustrate. 

 Widening education is daily diffusing among the mass of 



