LAW IMPLIES MIND. 301 



place of the facts themselves, and is said to 

 govern or determine them, because it determines 

 our anticipations of what they will be. But we 

 cannot, it would seem, conceive a law, founded on 

 such intelligible relations, to govern and deter- 

 mine the facts themselves, any otherwise than by 

 supposing also an intelligence by which these 

 relations are contemplated, and these conse- 

 quences realized. We cannot then represent to 

 ourselves the universe governed by general laws, 

 otherwise than by conceiving an intelligent and 

 conscious Deity, by whom these laws were origi- 

 nally contemplated, established, and applied. 



This perhaps will appear more clear when it is 

 considered that the laws of which we speak are 

 often of an abstruse and complex kind, depending 

 upon relations of space, time, number, and other 

 properties, which we perceive by great attention 

 and thought. These relations are often combined 

 so variously and curiously, that the most subtle 

 reasonings and calculations which we can form 

 are requisite in order to trace their results. Can 

 such laws be conceived to be instituted without 

 any exercise of knowledge and intelligence ? can 

 material objects apply geometry and calculation 

 to themselves ? can the lenses of the eye, for 

 instance, be formed and adjusted with an exact 

 suitableness to their refractive powers, while there 

 is in the agency which has framed them, no con- 

 sciousness of the laws of light, of the course of 



