272 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



with the legend, " Me no religion at all, me only wash 

 clothes." 



What then becomes of the eternal, immutable laws 

 of nature, of which we have heard so often ? Are 

 such laws non-existent ? By no means. But they 

 are the logical laws of the conceptual world formed 

 by our minds. Mathematics is in its essence symbolic 

 logic, and mathematical and logical laws are of the 

 same nature, though that nature is still a matter of 

 dispute among philosophers. Some would hold here 

 too an empiricist view, and say we gain a knowledge 

 of such laws by experience. But, on the other hand, 

 a rational school hold that logical principles are 

 grasped by an intuitive action of the mind, and are 

 not proved, though usually suggested, by experience. 

 Once we understand the terms involved, we see 

 instinctively that two and two are four in all condi- 

 tions and at all times. Once we make the assumption 

 that every particle of matter attracts every other 

 particle with a force proportional to the product of 

 their masses and inversely proportional to the square 

 of the distance, the whole planetary theory follows 

 logically, though it may need a Newton first to work 

 it out. 



Such relations follow from the structure of our 

 minds, they are laws of thought. Some hold that 

 they give us knowledge about a real world also the 

 world of universals, and are laws of nature as well 

 as laws of thought. Such philosophers thus revive 

 Plato's doctrine of ideas in modern guise. But 

 however this may be, the laws enable us to build up 

 a logical and necessary structure in the conceptual 

 world once we have formed the conceptions and agreed 



