236 COSM1CAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



law of motion ; but the law itself has no ne- 

 cessary existence, so far as we can see. It was 

 discovered only after various perplexities and 

 false conjectures of speculators on mechanics. 

 We have learnt that it is so, but we have not 

 learnt, nor can any one undertake to teach us, 

 that it must have been so. For aught we can 

 tell, it is one among a thousand equally possible 

 laws, which might have regulated the motions of 

 bodies. 



2. But though we have thus no reason to con- 

 sider this as the only possible law, we have 

 good reason to consider it as the best, or at least 

 as possessing all that we can conceive of ad- 

 vantage. It is the simplest conceivable of such 

 laws. If the velocity had been compelled to 

 change with the time, there must have been a 

 law of the change, and the kind and amount of 

 this change must have been determined by its 

 dependence on the time and other conditions. 

 This, though quite supposable, would undoubt- 

 edly have been more complex than the present 

 state of things. And though complexity does 

 not appear to embarrass the operation of the 

 laws of nature, and is admitted, without scruple, 

 when there is reason for it, simplicity is the 

 usual character of such laws, and appears to 

 have been a ground of selection in the formation 

 of the universe, as it is a mark of beauty to us in 

 our contemplation of it. 



But there is a still stronger apparent reason 



