OF NATURE. 573 



and regularity, and the law of nature is merely an 

 abstract expression of this regularity of external occur- 

 rences. As forces can be seen and measured only in 

 the motions they produce, so the laws of nature can 

 be seen only in the multitude of examples or single 

 instances and occurrences which exhibit sameness and 

 regularity. In fact, laws do not govern the things 

 of nature ; they are simply the abstract expression 

 of the properties of these things themselves. The 

 attributes of the word law which recommend it to the 

 popular understanding as a something which turns 

 chaos into order and maintains it, are derived from 

 the artificial statutes of a human society, and do not 

 belong to the laws of nature. 



It is easily seen that those views of nature which I 

 termed above the astronomical and atomic views — 

 through the conception of forces acting at a distance and 

 of external things as consisting of larger or smaller but 

 discrete particles of matter — lent themselves readily to 

 those popular conceptions of natural forces and natural 

 laws which it was the first duty of a true philosophy of 

 nature to get rid of. And, indeed, these prejudices and 22. 



° ' ' r J Change in 



hidden attributes %vhich recommended the mechanical scientific 



conceptions. 



conception to the popular understanding were got rid of 

 quite as much by a change in the scientific ideas them- 

 selves as through a critical analysis such as was con- 

 tained in the polemical writings of Lotze and other 

 prominent thinkers. The change I refer to has been 

 fully described in former chapters, which dealt with the 

 kinetic and physical views of nature. The former 

 destroyed the idea of imponderable matter and of action 



