THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 461 
conception but of one single Being, who bestowed existence 
und order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its 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 whosecaprices 
are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibility of any 
compromise between snch notions and those of science, 
which proceeds on the assumption of never-changing law 
and causality. "But," he continues, with characteristic 
penetration, "when the great thought of one God, acting 
as a unit npon 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 consequence of the 
assumption. For when I see ten thousand wheels in 
motion, and know, or believe, that they are all driven by 
one motive power, then I know that 1 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 structure 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 incalculable 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 perfectly 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 with vehemence, 
and the same repugnance to accepting it is manifest in 
Carlyle.* 
The analytic_and synthetic tendencies of the human 
* Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an 
outside Artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang 
" linn ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, x V/U"'" t -^ ^ 
JXatur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen." 
See also Carlyle, " Past and Present," cliap. v. 
