COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



Kepler and the statutes enacted by a legislative 

 body, we must not infer, with a naivete worthy 

 of the schoolmen, that whatever is true of the 

 one will always be true of the other. That the 

 laws of Justinian emanated from a lawgiver is 

 no reason for believing the same to have been 

 the case with the law of gravitation ; for the 

 former were edicts enjoining obedience, while the 

 latter is but a generalized expression of the man- 

 ner in which certain phenomena occur. A law 

 of nature, as formulated in a scientific treatise, 

 is a statement of facts, and nothing more. Ex- 

 pressed in the indicative mood, it has nothing 

 whatever to do with the imperative. Science 

 knows nothing of a celestial Ukase compelling 

 the earth to gravitate toward the sun. We know 

 that it does so gravitate with a certain intensity, 

 and that is the whole story. Nevertheless, so 

 strong is the realistic tendency that, in speaking 

 of laws of nature, the most careful writers too 

 seldom avoid " a tacit reference to the original 

 sense of the word law^ . . . the expression of the 

 will of a superior."^ Indeed it is immediately 

 after defining a law as " a general name for cer- 

 tain phenomena of the same kind, which regu- 

 larly recur under the same circumstances," that 

 Mr. Adam alludes to " the Supreme Will which 

 subjects (!) all phenomena to law, and colligates 

 all laws into a universe "(!). Upon such a con- 

 * Mill, System of Logic, vol. i. p. 348. 

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