466 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



given purpose at a given moment. Like the pre-arranged 

 change of law in Babbage's Imaginary Calculating Machine, 

 there may exist pre-arranged surprises in the order of 

 nature, as it presents itself to us. Secondly, the same 

 Power, which created material nature, might, so far as 

 I can see, create additions to it, or annihilate portions 

 which do exist. Such events are doubtless inconceivable 

 to us in a certain sense ; yet they are no more inconceiv- 

 able than the existence of the world as it is. The in- 

 destructibility of matter, and the conservation of energy, 

 are very probable scientific hypotheses, which accord very 

 satisfactorily with experiments of scientific men during 

 a few years past, but it would be a gross misconception 

 of scientific inference to suppose that they are certain 

 in the sense that a proposition in geometry is certain, 

 or that any fact of direct consciousness is certain in it- 

 self. Philosophers no doubt hold that de nihilo nihil 

 jit, that is to say, their senses give them no means of 

 imagining to the mind how creation can take place. 

 But we are on the horns of a trilemma ; \we must either 

 deny that anything exists, or we must allow that it was 

 created out of nothing at some determinate date, or that 

 it existed from past eternity.] The first alternative is 

 absurd ; the other two seem to me equally conceivable. 



Conclusion. 



It may seem that there is one point where our specu- 

 lations must end^ namely, where contradiction begins! The 

 laws of Identity and Difference and Duality were the 

 very foundations from which we started, and they are, so 

 far as I can see, the foundation which we can never quit.) 

 Scientific Method must begin and end with the laws of 

 thought] but it does not follow that it will save us froni 

 encountering inexplicable, and at least apparently contra-/ 



