158 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



stowed existence and order on this vast machine, and 

 adjusted all its parts to one regular system.' Referring 

 to the condition of the heathen, who sees a god behind 

 every natural event, thus peopling the world with 

 thousands of beings whose caprices are incalculable, 

 Lange shows the impossibility of any compromise be- 

 tween such notions and those of science, which pro- 

 ceeds on the assumption of never-changing law and 

 causality. ' But/ he continues, with characteristic 

 penetration, ' when the great thought of one God, 

 acting as a unit upon the universe, has been seized, 

 the connection of things in accordance with the law 

 of cause and effect is not only thinkable, but it is a 

 necessary consequence of the assumption. For when 

 I see ten thousand wheels in motion, and know, or be- 

 lieve, that they are all driven by one motive power, 

 then I know that I have before me a mechanism, the 

 action of every part of which is determined by the 

 plan of the whole. So much being assumed, it follows 

 that I may investigate the structure of that machine, 

 and the various motions of its parts. For the time 

 being, therefore, this conception renders scientific ac- 

 tion free/ In other words, were a capricious God at 

 the circumference of every wheel and at the end of 

 every lever, the action of the machine would be incal- 

 culable by the methods of science. But the actions 

 of all its parts being rigidly determined by their con- 

 nections and relations, and these being brought into 

 play by a single motive power, then though this last 

 prime mover may elude me, I am still able to compre- 

 hend the machinery which it sets in motion. We have 

 here a conception of the relation of Nature to its 

 Author, which seems perfectly acceptable to some 

 minds, but perfectly intolerable to others. Newton 

 and Boyle lived and worked happily under the infiu- 



