THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 37 



compromising principles on which scientific investigation rests, as 

 on a foundation of adamant, is, that- all the phenomena of nature, 

 material or mental, result from the operation of fixed laws. Con- 

 sequently, when we set about the investigation of any object in 

 nature, the first step toward a right comprehension of it is a know- 

 ledge of the guiding and controlling principles or laws of its nature. 

 For its being as it is, and its doing as it does, are the natural result 

 of these, and the endless diversity we find in nature does not result 

 so much from a multiplicity of laws, as from the inexpressibly 

 diverse combinations of the materials through which they operate ; 

 for we know nothing whatever of the laws of nature except as they 

 manifest themselves in action. Therefore, the authoritative dictum 

 of science is, that every phenomenon in nature has an efficient cause, 

 which utterly excludes any possibility of chance, that being merely 

 a convenient term with which to cover our ignorance. 



Causes are either immediate or with different degrees of remote- 

 ness. Each remove is as a link in a chain, each being the effect of 

 the one preceding, and the cause of that succeeding it. We may 

 be able to trace back quite a number of these links, whilst those 

 more remote are wholly unknown to us. Yet science claims that 

 there has been an unbroken continuity of these from its first origin 

 to the present, and that there was an efficient cause for its origin ; 

 therefore it is a reasonable and desirable thing to try to discover 

 it ; hence the ever renewed and untiring efforts on the part of men 

 to account for the origin of things. 



When science takes up man as a subject of investigation, it 

 finds him to be composed of matter, the chemical constituents of 

 which are identical with the soil on which he treads, differing only 

 in their combinations. He draws his sustenance more or less directly 

 from the soil ; and belonging to the animal kingdom, is subject to all 

 the- laws of animal naatter, in his inception, development, maturity, 

 decay, death and dissolution, returning again to the elements from 

 which he came, being identical in these respects with all animal 

 life around him. Again science finds man to be an organic being, 

 constructed on a uniform principle ; having a variety of organs, 

 each adapted for the performance of a certain function, capable of 

 combining and working in harmony for the good of the whole, 

 making him a complete organization well adapted to all his require- 

 ments. But in this he does not stand alone, the organization of all 



