THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 9 



the illustrious Kepler. Sir John Herschel truly observes 

 " When we contemplate the constituents of the planetary 

 system from the point of view which this relation affords us, 

 it is no longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a 

 general resemblance among them, as individuals independent 

 of each other, and circulating about the sun, each according 

 to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own 

 peculiar tie. The resemblance is now perceived to be a true 

 family likeness ; they are bound up in one chain interwoven 

 in one web of mutual relation and harmonious agreement, 

 subjected to one pervading influence, which extends from the 

 centre to the furthest limits of that great system, of which all 

 of them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as 

 members." ( 6 ) 



The tendency of all the later discoveries has been to deepen 

 the conviction arising from the first, that the physical affairs 

 of the universe are under the regulation of laws ; the forms, the 

 distances, the movements, the inter- dependencies of the bodies 

 of space, are determined in this, and in no other more arbitrary 

 manner. And what does a law imply ? It is an arrange- 

 ment in which we see invariable uniformity and self-consis- 

 tency. In the case of these physical laws, we can bring it to 

 mathematical elements, and see that numbers, in the expres- 

 sion of space or of time, form, as it were, its basis. We thus 

 trace in law, Intelligence often we can see that it has a bene- 

 ficial object, still more strongly speaking of mind as con- 

 cerned in it. There cannot, however, be an inherent intelli- 

 gence in these laws ; we cannot conceive of mind actually 

 working in the agglomeration of a dew-drop or the orbitual 

 revolution of the moon. The intelligence appears external to 

 the laws ; something of which the laws are but as the expres- 

 sion of the Will and Power. If this be admitted, the laws 

 cannot be regarded as primary or independent causes of the 

 phenomena of the physical world. We come, in short, to 

 a Being beyond nature its author, its God ; infinite, in- 

 conceivable, it may be, and yet one whom these very laws 

 present to us with attributes showing that our nature is in 

 some way a faint and far-cast shadow of His, while all the 



