THE MECHANICAL CONCEPTION OF NATURE, 221 



in nature, which has control over all the molecules ? Why- 

 do we never see the dust of the graveyard come together 

 into skin and flesh, and the bones reassemble, " bone to his 

 bone," and the Hfe and warmth return, so as to present us 

 the living man, and the old becoming young again, reversing 

 the process down to the ovum, and back through several 

 generations ? and why does our sun not receive back all the 

 heat that it has scattered over space ? This inverse process, 

 though never observed, is, scientifically speaking, as easily 

 conceivable as is the ordinary course. 



The considerations which apply to the entire universe are 

 with pro23er limitations applicable to, any part, as to our 

 earth or to the microcosm ot our body. 



The earth and our body are, in whole or in part, machines 

 at work, and a great deal more, and the task of science is to 

 watch movements, transformations, and developments, and 

 to formulate them into '• laws of nature." These laws appear 

 to be absolutely uniform in their action, to amount in fact 

 merely to transformations of energy. The objection taken 

 to physical law in general and to the uniformity of nature, as 

 being only working hypotheses and incapable of demonstra- 

 tion, is, we think, misleading. The uniform action of natural 

 molecules and forces is the basis of all science and of all 

 animal movements, and has never been known to play us 

 false ; so that the unchangeable behaviour of the laws of 

 nature is as well established as human experience can 

 establish anything. But a uniformitarian theory, holding 

 that the sum total of activities in a particular place, as on 

 tlie surface of the earth, has been the same at all times, is no 

 part of science; such an assumption was helpful to Sir 

 Charles Lyell, and within limits had an element of truth in 

 it, but it very often led him astray. Most of tlie attacks oii 

 Christianity that profess to be based on the doctrine of 

 uniformity of nature, really involve uniformitarianism. 



The general outcome of scientific discovery has been not 

 only to verify the uniform action of natural law, but to bring 

 larger provinces of nature into the realm of mechanism ; so 

 that every new discovery becomes a contribution towards the 

 mechanical theory. At the outset the search was random, 

 often after what we now deem impossibilities. But though it 

 never alighted on perpetual motion, or the elixir of life, or the 

 philosopher's stone, it was not lost labour. One class of 

 phenomena after another came to be understood relatively 

 to their conditions and physical causes. The astrologers 



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