THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 461 



conception but of one single Being, who bestowed 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, Lunge shows the impossibility of any 

 compromise between such notions and those of science, 

 which proceeds 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 believe, 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 action 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 incalculable by the methods of 

 science. But the actions of all its parts being rigidly 

 determined by their connections 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 comprehend 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 influence 

 of this conception; Goethe rejected it with vehemence, 

 and the same repugnance to accepting it is manifest in 

 Carlyle.* 



The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human 



* Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an 

 outside Artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang 



" Ihm ziemt's die Welt iin Innern zu bewegen, 



Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen." 

 See also Carlyle, " Past and Present," chap. v. 



