xxxi.] LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 741 



it. He says l of the distribution of matter through space, 

 " We can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself ; 

 we can reduce it to no uniformity, to no law." More lately 

 the Duke of Argyll in his well-known work on the Reign 

 of Law has drawn attention to the profound distinction 

 between laws and collocations of causes. 



The original conformation of the material universe, as 

 far as we can tell, was free from all restriction. There 

 was unlimited space in which to frame it, and an unlimited 

 number of material particles, each of which could be placed 

 in any one of an infinite number of different positions. It 

 should be added, that each particle might be endowed 

 with any one of an infinite number of quantities of vis 

 viva acting in any one of an infinite number of different 

 directions. The problem of Creation was, then, what a 

 mathematician would call an indeterminate problem, and it 

 was indeterminate in a great number of ways. Infinitely 

 numerous and various universes might then have been 

 fashioned by the various distribution of the original 

 nebulous matter, although all the particles of matter 

 should obey the law of gravity. 



Lucretius tells us how in the original rain of atoms 

 some of these little bodies diverged from the rectilinear 

 direction, and coming into contact Avith other atoms gave 

 rise to the various combinations of substances which exist 

 He omitted to tell us whence the atoms came, or by what 

 force some of them were caused to diverge ; but surely 

 these omissions involve the whole question. I accept the 

 Lucretian conception of creation when properly supple- 

 mented. Every atom which existed in any point of space 

 must have existed there previously, or must have been 

 created there by a previously existing Power. When 

 placed there it must have had a definite mass and a 

 definite energy. Now, as before remarked, an unlimited 

 number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an 

 unlimited number of modes of distribution. Out of in- 

 finitely infinite choices which were open to the Creator, 

 that one choice must have been made which has yielded 

 the Universe as it now exists. 



It would be a mistake, indeed, to suppose that the law 



1 System of Logic, vol. i. p. 384. 



