CHAP. VIII.] ESSAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 241 



reasons are simply absolute; forces are related by their 

 strength ; organic laws act towards resemblances to types ; 

 animal emotions tend to that which promotes the enjoy- 

 ment of life ; and will is in great measure actually subject 

 to all these, although certain other laws of right, which are 

 abstract and demonstrable, like those of reason, are supreme 

 among the laws of will. 



" Now the question of the reality of analogies in nature 

 derives most of its interest from its application to the 

 opinion, that all the phenomena of nature, being varieties of 

 motion, can only differ in complexity, and therefore the only 

 way of studying nature, is to master the fundamental laws 

 of motion first, and then examine what kinds of complica- 

 tion of these laws must be studied in order to obtain true 

 views of the universe. If this theory be true, we must 

 look for indications of these fundamental laws throughout 

 the whole range of science, and not least among those 

 remarkable products of organic life, the results of cerebra- 

 tion (commonly called ' thinking '). In this case, of course, 

 the resemblances between the laws of different classes of 

 phenomena should hardly be called analogies, as they are 

 only transformed identities. 



" If, on the other hand, we start from the study of the 

 laws of thought (the abstract, logical laws, not the physio- 

 logical), then these apparent analogies become merely 

 repetitions by reflexion of certain necessary modes of action 

 to which our minds are subject. I do not see how, upon 

 either hypothesis, we can account for the existence of one 

 set of laws of which the supremacy is necessary, but to the 

 operation contingent. But we find another set of laws of 

 the same kind, and sometimes coinciding with physical 

 laws, the operation of which is inflexible when once in 

 action, but depends in its beginnings on some act of volition. 

 The theory of the consequences of actions is greatly per- 

 plexed by the fact that each act sets in motion many trains 

 of machinery, which react on other agents and come into 

 regions of physical and metaphysical chaos from which it is 

 difficult to disentangle them. But if we could place the 



