Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 111 



think it possible that criticisms directed else- 

 where might have come home to him. And, in 

 fact, I find that the second chapter of the work in 

 question, which is entitled " Law ; its definitions/ 1 

 is, from my point of view, a sort of " summa " of 

 pseudo-scientific philosophy. It will be worth 

 while to examine it in some detail. 



In the first place, it is to be noted that the 

 author of the " Eeign of Law " admits that " law," 

 in many cases, means nothing more than the 

 statement of the order in which facts occur, or, as 

 he says, "an observed order of facts" (p. 66). 

 But his appreciation of the value of accuracy of 

 expression does not hinder him from adding, 

 almost in the same breath, "In this sense the 

 laws of nature are simply those facts of nature 

 which recur according to rule " (p. 66). Thus 

 " laws," which were rightly said to be the state- 

 ment of an order of facts in one paragraph, are 

 declared to be the facts themselves in the next. 



We are next told that, though it may be 

 customary and permissible to use " law " in the 

 sense of a statement of the order of facts, this is 

 a low use of the word ; and, indeed, two pages 

 farther on, the writer, flatly contradicting himself, 

 altogether denies its admissibility. 



An observed order of facts, to be entitled to the rank of a law, 

 must be an order so constant and uniform as to indicate necessity, 

 and necessity can only arise out of the action of some compelling 

 force (p. 68). 



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