394 COSMIC FHILOISOPE.Y, [pt. hi. 



Strip tLe phrase "law of nature" of this inherent ambiguity, 

 substitute for it the equivalent phrase, " order of sequence 

 among certain phenomena," and the anthropomorphic in- 

 ference so confidently drawn from it at once disappears. 



Viewed in close connection with the Doctrine of Evolution, 

 this scholastic argument from the Law to the Lawgiver lands 

 us amid strange and terrible embarrassments. For what is a 

 law, in the sense in which the word is used by legislators! 

 It is a set of relations established by the community, or by 

 some superior mind representing and guiding the community, 

 in correspondence with certain environing circumstances. 

 Certain phenomena of crime, for example, tend to detract 

 from the fulness of life of society, and to balance these 

 phenomena a certain force of public opinion is embodied in 

 an edict prescribing due punishments for the crimes in 

 question. Or — slightly to vary the definition and make it 

 more comprehensive — a law is the embodiment of a certain 

 amount of psychical energy, directed towards the securing of 

 the highest attainable fulness of social life. Now if, on the 

 strength of an ambiguous terminology, we proceed to regard 

 the "laws" of nature as edicts enjoined upon matter and 

 motion by a personal Euler, shall we also, as we are logically 

 bound to do, carry with us the conceptions of legislation 

 with which the Doctrine of Evolution has supplied us ? 

 Shall we say that the infinite Deity adjusts inner relations to 

 external contingencies ? 



Here we come upon the brink of the abyss into which the 

 anthropomorphic hypothesis must precipitate us, if instead 

 of passively acquiescing in it as a vague authoritative 

 formula, we analyze it with the scientific appliances at our 

 command. To those who have acquired some mastery of 

 the physical truths upon which our Cosmic Philosophy is 

 based, the doctrine not only ceases to be intellectually con- 

 soling, but becomes a source of ungovernable disturbance. 

 For to represent the Deity as a person who thinks, contrives^ 



