432 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



passed away, and in this fact we have some illustra- 

 tion, as Laplace remarks, of the power which scientific 

 prescience may attain. Doubtless, too, all efforts in the 

 investigation of nature tend to bring us nearer to the 

 possession of that ideally perfect power of intelligence. 

 Nevertheless, as Laplace with profound wisdom adds a , we 

 must ever remain at an infinite distance from the goal of 

 our aspirations. 



Let us assume, for a time at least, as a highly probable 

 hypothesis, that whatever is to happen must be the out- 

 come of what is ; there then arises the question, What is ? 

 Now our knowledge of what exists must ever remain im- 

 perfect and fallible in two respects. Firstly, we do not 

 know all the matter that has been created, nor the exact 

 manner in which it has been distributed through space. 

 Secondly, assuming that we had that knowledge, we 

 should still be wanting in a perfect knowledge of the 

 way in which the particles of matter will act upon each 

 other. The power of scientific prediction extends at the 

 most to the limits of the data employed. Every con- 

 clusion is purely hypothetical and conditional upon the 

 non-interference of agencies previously undetected. The 

 law of gravity asserts that every body tends to approach 

 towards every other body, with a certain determinate 

 force, but even supposing the law to hold true, it does 

 not assert that the body will approach. No single law 

 nor science can warrant us in making any one absolute 

 prediction. We must know all the laws of nature and all 

 the existing agents acting according to those laws before we 

 can say what will occur. To assume, then, that scientific 

 method can take everything within its cold embrace of 

 uniformity, is to imply that the Creator cannot outstrip 

 the intelligence of his creatures, and that the existing 



a ' The'orie Analytique des Probabilit^s,' quoted by Babbage, ' Ninth 

 Bridgwater Treatise/ p. 173. 



