LAW; — ITS DEFINITIONS. 119 



that we understand " that the things which are 

 seen were not made of the things which do ap- 

 pear." Yet this is now one of the most assured 

 doctrines of Science, — that invisible Forces are be- 

 hind and above all visible phenomena, moulding 

 them in forms of infinite variety, of all which forms 

 the only real knowledge we possess lies in our 

 perception of the Ideas they express — of their 

 beauty, or of their fitness, — in short, of their being 

 all the work of " Toil co-operant to an End." 



Every natural Force which we call a law is itself 

 invisible — the idea of it in the mind arising by way 

 of necessary inference out of an observed Order of 

 facts. And very often, if not always, in our con- 

 ception of these Forces, we are investing them with 

 the attributes of Intelligence and of Will at the 

 very moment, perhaps, when we are stumbling 

 over the difficulty of seeing in them the exponents 

 of a Mind which is intelligent and of a Will which 

 is Supreme. The deeper we go in Science, the 

 more certain it becomes that all the realities of 

 Nature are in the region of the Invisible, so that 

 the saying is literally, and not merely figuratively 

 true, that the things which are seen are temporal, 



