ON LAWS OF NATURE. 7 



obeyed ; their transgression is not punished, it is 

 excluded. The language of a moral law is, man 

 shall not kill ; the language of a Law of Nature 

 is, a stone will fall to the earth. 



These two kinds of laws direct the actions of 

 persons and of things, by the sort of control of 

 which persons and things are respectively sus- 

 ceptible ; so that the metaphor is very simple ; 

 but it is proper for us to recollect that it is a 

 metaphor, in order that we may clearly appre- 

 hend what is implied in speaking of the Laws 

 of Nature. 



In this phrase are included all properties of 

 the portions of the material world ; all modes of 

 action and rules of causation, according to which 

 they operate on each other. The whole course 

 of the visible universe therefore is but the collec- 

 tive result of such laws ; its movements are only 

 the aggregate of their working. All natural oc- 

 currences, in the skies and on the earth, in the 

 organic and in the inorganic world, are deter- 

 mined by the relations of the elements and the 

 actions of the forces of which the rules are thus 

 prescribed. 



The relations and rules by which these occur- 

 rences are thus determined necessarily depend 

 on measures of time and space, motion and force ; 

 on quantities which are subject to numerical 

 measurement, and capable of being connected by 

 mathematical properties. And thus all things 



