THE BELFAST ADDRESS 169 



parts to one regular system." Referring to the condition 

 of the heathen, who sees a god behind every natural event, 

 thus peopling the world with thousands of beings whose 

 caprices are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibility 

 of any compromise between such notions and those of 

 science, which proceeds on the assumption of never-chang- 

 ing law and causality. "But," he continues, with charac- 

 teristic penetration, "when the great thought of one God, 

 acting as a unit upon the universe, has been seized, the 

 connection of things in accordance with the law of cause 

 and effect is not only thinkable, but it is a necessary con- 

 sequence of the assumption. For when I see ten thou- 

 sand wheels in motion, and know, or believe, that they 

 are all driven by one motive power, then I know that I 

 have before me a mechanism, the action of every part of 

 which is determined by the plan of the whole. So much 

 being assumed, it follows that I may investigate the struct- 

 ure of that machine, and the various motions of its parts. 

 For the time being, therefore, this conception renders 

 scientific action free." In other words, were a capricious 

 God at the circumference of every wheel and at the end 

 of every lever, the action of the machine would be incal- 

 culable by the methods of science. But the actions of all 

 its parts being rigidly determined by their connections and 

 relations, and these being brought into play by a single 

 motive power, then, though this last prime mover may 

 elude me, I am still able to comprehend the machinery 

 which it sets in motion. We have here a conception of 

 the relation of Nature to its Author, which seems per- 

 fectly acceptable to some minds, but perfectly intolerable 

 to others. Newton and Boyle lived and worked happily 



under the influence of this conception; Goethe rejected it 



SCIENCE YI 8 



