74 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n 



sort of kaleidoscope, in which, at every successive 

 moment of time, a new arrangement of parts of 

 exquisite beauty and symmetry would present 

 itself; and each of them would show itself to be 

 the logical consequence of the preceding arrange- 

 ment, under the conditions which we call the laws 

 of nature. Such a spectator might well be filled 

 with that Amor intdlectualis Dei, the beatific 

 vision of the vita contemplative!,, which some of the 

 greatest thinkers of all ages, Aristotle, Aquinas, 

 Spinoza, have regarded as the only conceivable 

 eternal felicity; and the vision of illimitable 

 suffering, as df sensitive beings were unregarded 

 animalcules which had got between the bits of 

 glass of the kaleidoscope, which mars the prospect 

 to us poor mortals, in no wise alters the fact that 

 order is lord of all, and disorder only a name for 

 that part of the order which gives us pain.*] 



The other fallacious employment of the names 

 of scientific conceptions which pervades the preach- 

 er's utterance, brings me back to the proper topic 

 of the present essay. It is the use of the word 

 " law " as if it denoted a thing as if a " law of 

 nature," as science understands it, were a being 

 endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which 

 the phenomena expressed by that law are brought 

 about. The preacher asks, " Might not there be 

 a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of 

 a higher ? " He tells us that every time we lift 

 our arms we defy the law of gravitation. He asks 



