18 .. ADDRESS OP 



and dissolves the rock according to the laws of chemical affinity, 

 without any respect to the consequences, immediate or remote. At 

 length a moment arrives at which the cohesive force of the rock be- 

 comes less than the weight which urges it downward. This mo- 

 ment is fixed entirely by antecedent circumstances, such as the 

 solubility of the rock and the amount of water which percolates 

 over it. At this very moment the rock begins to full. . It falls six- 

 teen feet the first second, three times that distance the next, and 

 so on, accord ing to the mathematical law of falling bodies, without 

 any respect to the lovely character of the beings it may destroy, 

 or the disasters with which it may crush the fondest hopes of men. 

 The region may be the wilderness; the passer-by may be a babe 

 in its nurse's arms, an angel of charity, fulfilling her mission of 

 good will, or a murderer aiming the deadly blow at his victim ; but 

 under no circumstances can we see that these conditions in any 

 way affect the chain of causes which lead to the falling of the rock, 

 or cause it to wait a moment or swerve a hair's breadth from its 

 inevitable course. 



According to the theory of the course of nature, which I am 

 trying to elucidate, the chain of causes which we have described, 

 each cause acting according to antecedent conditions, but without 

 any regard to consequences, is the type of the whole course of 

 inanimate nature as far in space as the telescope can penetrate, 

 &nd as far back in time as the geological record can be deciphered. 

 An essential feature of the theory is, that the laws which connect 

 the several links of the chain, and thus determine the progress of 

 events, do not possess that character of inscrutability which 

 belongs to the decrees of Providence, but are capable, so far as 

 their sensible manifestations are concerned, of being completely 

 grasped by tbe human intellect, and expressed in scientific lan- 

 guage. Without this, the theory would have no practical bearing 

 whatever, because to say that the course of events is fixed, but by 

 laws which we can never grasp, would give us no clew at all to 

 learning what that course shall be, and would be equivalent to 

 telling us that it is enshrouded in the same impenetrable mystery 

 with first causes. A very important feature of the progress of 

 science is found in the constant resolution of the laws of nature 

 into more simple and elementary ones, until we reach principles so 

 simple that it is impossible to analyze them farther. Let us take 



