EMPIRICAL LAWS. 311 



of both those elements in the antecedent, that the sequence is j)voba- 

 bly not an ultimate law, but a result of the laws of the two ditVcrent 

 agents : a presumption only to be destroyed when we had made 

 ourselves so well acquainted with the laws of both, as to be able to 

 affirm that those laws could not by themselves produce the observed 

 result. 



§ 7. There are but few known cases of succession from very complex 

 antecedents, which have not cither been actually accounted for from 

 simpler laws, or inferred with great probability (from the ascertained 

 existence of intermediate links of causation not yet understood) to be 

 capable of being so accounted for. It is, therefore, highly j)robable 

 that all sequences from complex antecedents are thus resolvable, and. 

 that ultimate laws are in all cases comparatively simple. If tliere 

 were not the other reasons already mentioned for believing that the 

 laws of organized nature are resolvable into simpler laws, it would be 

 almost a sufficient reason that the antecedents in most of the sequences 

 ai'e so very complex. 



There are appearances strongly favoring the suspicion, that these 

 phenomena are really resolvable into much simpler laws than might at 

 first be expected. The growth of an animal from infancy to maturity, 

 of a plant from infancy till death, and even that process of decay 

 which is but a slow death, bear a most striking resemblance to the 

 progressive effect of the continued action of some cause, proceeding 

 until it meets agencies which overpower it, or until its accumulated 

 effects give rise to conditions inconsistent with its own existence. 

 This supposition by no means requires that the effect should not, 

 during its progress, undergo many modifications besides those of 

 quantity, or that it should not sometimes appear to undergo a very 

 marked change of character. This may be, either because the unknown 

 cause consists of several component elements or agents, whose effects, 

 accumulating according to different laws, are compounded in different 

 proportions at different periods in the existence of the organized 

 being ; or because, at certain points in its progress, fresh causes or 

 agencies come in, or are evolved, which intermix their laws with 

 those of the prime agent. 



This great problem, the most difficult in all physics, the ascertain- 

 ment of the ultimate laws of organized nature, is one which natural 

 science in its progress seems now at least to have fairly come up to ; 

 and a beginning has been made at the point where the phenomena 

 appear most accessible to experiment, namely, in separating the effects 

 of partial from those of general causes. The result, as far as it goes, 

 fully accords with the above surmise. I allude to the new and infant 

 science of morphology, created with respect to animals by the genius 

 of Cuvier and St. Hilaire, and with respect to vegetables by that of 

 the illustrious Goethe, to whom the world owes so much in cjuite a 

 different field of intellect, and whose researches on the " Metamor- 

 phoses of Plants" have met with a more favorable reception from the 

 scientific world than his speculaticms on colors. It seems to be now 

 considered by natural philosophers as sufficiently established, that 

 plants and animals, in the process of growing up from their genns, 

 have a tendency to develop themselves in a much more uniform man- 

 ner than they in fact do ; that the differences, for example of leaf. 



