LAW; ITS DEFINITIONS. Ill 



produce a corresponding complication in result. 

 Like many other laws of the same class, it was 

 discovered, not by looking outwards, but by look- 

 ing inwards ; not by observing, but by thinking. 

 The human mind, in the exercise of its own facul- 

 ties and powers, sometimes by careful reasoning, 

 sometimes by the intuitions of genius unconscious 

 of any process, is able, from time to time, to reach 

 now one, now another, of those purely Intellectual 

 Conceptions which are the basis of all that is intel- 

 ligible to us in the Order of the Material World. 

 We look for an ideal order or simplicity in mate- 

 rial Law ; and the very possibility of exact Sci- 

 ence depends upon the fact that such ideal order 

 does actually prevail, and is related to the abstract 

 conceptions of our own intellectual nature. It 

 is in this way that many of the greatest dis- 

 coveries of Science have been made. Especi- 

 ally have the great pioneers in new paths of 

 discovery been led to the opening of those paths 

 by that fine sense for abstract truths which is the 

 noblest gift of genius. Copernicus, Kepler, and 

 Galileo were all guided in their profound interpre- 

 tations of visible phenomena by those intuitions 



