110 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m 



the cosmical machine, and, after setting it going, 

 have left it to itself till it needed repair. But 

 then, by the supposition, his personal responsi- 

 bility would have been involved in all that it did ; 

 just as much as a dynamiter is responsible for 

 what happens, when he has set his machine going 

 and left it to explode. 



The only hypothesis which gives a sort of mad 

 consistency to the Vestigiarian's views is the 

 supposition that laws are a kind of angels or 

 demiurgoi, who, being supplied with the Great 

 Architect's plan, were permitted to settle the 

 details among themselves. Accepting this doc- 

 trine, the conception of royal laws and plebeian 

 laws, and of those more than Homeric contests in 

 which the big laws " wreck " the little ones, 

 becomes quite intelligible. And, in fact, the 

 honour of the paternity of those remarkable ideas 

 which come into full flower in the preacher's dis- 

 course, must, so far as my imperfect knowledge 

 goes, be attributed to the author of the " Vestiges/' 



But the author of the "Vestiges" is not the 

 only writer who is responsible for the current 

 pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang about 

 the term " law." When I wrote my paper about 

 " Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," I had 

 not read a work by the Duke of Argyll, " The 

 Reign of Law," which, I believe, has enjoyed, 

 possibly still enjoys, a widespread popularity. 

 But the vivacity of the Duke's attack led me to 



