LAW AND FOKCE. 237 



tion and ridicule, it should be remembered that precisely 

 similar opposition, based upon precisely the same grounds, 

 attended a similar announcement when first made, with refer- 

 ence to the origin and modus operandi of many forms and de- 

 partments of nature concerning which the announcement is 

 now fully admitted to have been true; and the final triumphs 

 of Astronomy and Geology over the dragon of unscriptural, 

 as well as unphilosophical, opposition, which stood before their 

 parents to devour them as soon as they were born, should 

 stand as a warning against a too hasty decision unfavorable to 

 law-developments, as applied to all other departments, organic 

 and even spiritual, as well as inorganic and material. 



Yet, when it is asserted that all things, as to their creation 

 and functional operations, are within the governing influences 

 of law, the sense in which we have defined the term " law," 

 should be distinctly borne in mind ; and for the sake of more 

 explicitness on this point, as well as to show that our position 

 involves no objectionable theological corrolaries, we will here 

 submit a few more considerations respecting it. 



I have said that Law is not of itself/orce or motion hence, 

 that it can create nothing or do nothing of itself; but that it 

 is simply the mode or rule by which force and motion act. 

 Hence, when we speak of the " law of Expansion," for instance, 

 we refer only to a mode of operation among particles or 

 substances, which is expressed by the term " Expansion ;" 

 when we speak of the " law of Gravitation," we only refer to 

 that particular mode of action among materials which the term 

 " gravitation" defines. And we have a similar meaning when 

 we speak of any other law. But the Force by which the ac- 

 tion-, proceeding according to these various laws, is generated, 

 remains yet to be accounted for ; and this we will now attempt 

 to do, at the same time that we attempt to illustrate how 



