The Limits of Natural Law. 47 



forces has moulded it in forms of thought ; but these 

 are mutable as the interactions of the forces which 

 have shaped them. The laws of thought are but the 

 reflection in consciousness of a temporary phase of 

 the illimitable stream. The stores of knowledge 

 our boasted treasures of scientific discovery are no 

 more than ever-shifting ripples thrown for a moment 

 into view in the never-ending flow of the absolute 

 and unknowable energy. Instability of the homo- 

 geneous is a principle frequently recurring in_Mr. 

 Spencer's exposition. It is not the homogeneous alone 

 that is unstable. Instability is the only universal 

 the summation of all we know. The one thing 

 fixed is that nothing is fixed; the one th in or, certain 



O ' t5 



is that all is uncertain. To attempt to mark out the 

 law of the universe throughout the past and future 

 is an undertaking which, on evolution principles, 

 reaches the climax of absurdity. We who pretend 

 to determine what has been and what shall be, are 

 ourselves momentary manifestations shaped in that 

 swift-moving current whose ceasless mutations form 

 the essence of the thinker and of his thought. Mr. 

 Spencer's philosophy overturns all law and destroys 

 all certainty : it dissolves in universal scepticism. 



A survey of the possibilities of physical science 

 and of the limits of natural law, brings us back 

 to the point from which we set out, strengthening 

 the position that the complete unification of know- 

 ledge is impossible. ^fti all-embracing philosophy, 



