The Limits of Natural Law. 43. 



plete confidence whether a law derived from observa- 

 tion represents a permanent or a variable and transient 

 condition ; whether it sets out a mode of action, 

 essential in the constitution of things, or but a passing 

 interaction of forces as they sweep onward in vast 

 curves of change. We cannot follow with certainty 

 the path of any great cosmic movement. We see too 

 minute a portion of the line to assert with confidence 

 whether it be straight or curved. What is true of the 

 physical sciences is true, mutatis mutandis, of all the- 

 sciences which proceed on the experiential method. 

 So far as they formulate the results of experience 

 they are reliable; when they extend their formulae 

 into other departments or make them rules for all 

 forms of being they are delusive. The experiential 

 laws of mind will not elucidate the problems of 

 matter ; nor the dynamic laws of matter solve the 

 problems of intelligence. Experience, good in its own 

 channel, is an unsafe pilot in strange waters. Assur- 

 ance of the permanence and universality of any law, 

 supposed to cover the whole field of knowledge, cannot 

 be based on experience. 



It is a delusion to suppose, if the evolution hypo- 

 thesis be true, that experience gives us knowledge of 

 stability. Stability is, according to the evolution 

 doctrine, the seeming, mutability the real in experience. 

 Not stability but mutability is the condition which 

 evolution teaches us to recognize as the mode of 

 concrete being. Evolution discloses to us the homo- 



