OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 



implicit obedience, and of this kind are the laws 

 of nature. 



(27.) This use of the word law, however, our 

 readers will of course perceive has relation to us as 

 understanding, rather than to the materials of which 

 the universe consists as obeying, certain rules. To 

 obey a law, to act in compliance with a rule, supposes 

 an understanding and a will, a power of complying 

 or not, in the being who obeys and complies, which 

 we do not admit as belonging to mere matter. The 

 Divine Author of the universe cannot be supposed 

 to have laid down particular laws, enumerating all 

 individual contingencies, which his materials have 

 understood and obey, this would be to attribute 

 to him the imperfections of human legislation; 

 but rather, by creating them, endued with certain 

 fixed qualities and powers, he has impressed them 

 in their origin with the spirit, not the letter, of his 

 law, and made all their subsequent combinations and 

 relations inevitable consequences of this first im- 

 pression, by which, however, we would no way be 

 understood to deny the constant exercise of his 

 direct power in maintaining the system of nature, or 

 the ultimate emanation of every energy which ma- 

 terial agents exert from his immediate will, acting in 

 conformity with his own laws. 



(28.) The discoveries of modern chemistry have 

 gone far to establish the truth of an opinion enter- 

 tained by some of the ancients, that the universe 

 consists of distinct, separate, indivisible atoms, or 

 individual beings so minute as to escape our senses* 

 except when united by millions, and by this aggre- 

 gation making up bodies of even the smallest visible 

 D 3 



