302 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



"It seems evident," says he, "that an idea can be only like 

 another idea, and that in our ideas, or immediate objects of sense, 

 there is nothing of Power, Causality, or Agency included" (12). 

 "How, then, can you tell," he asks, "whether such unknown cause 

 acts arbitrarily or necessarily ? I see the effects or appearances, 

 and I know that effects must have a cause, but I neither see nor 

 know that their connection with that cause is necessary. What- 

 ever this may be, I am sure I see no such necessary connec- 

 tion" (30).^ 



To return to our automatic clock. We do know, as a matter 

 of fact, that, once put in place and started, it may be expected to 

 keep on going, without farther attention, until in course of nature 

 something occurs to stop it. Some tell us, therefore, that while 

 the mechanism of nature may need a starter, it is self-sustaining 

 after it is once started. What meaning these reasoners attach to 

 the word self-sustaining, I am unable to conjecture, unless they 

 mean independent of human users ; but their logic seems to have 

 imposed upon no less shrewd a thinker than Bacon, who tells us 

 that "notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating 

 since the first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and 

 fulfil his divine will in all things, great and small, as fully and 

 exactly by Providence, as he would by miracle and new creation, 

 though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass, 

 not violating nature, which is his own law upon the creature." 



While Bacon took all knowledge for his patrimony, he failed 

 to enjoy his birthright, for he was quite unable to profit by his 

 acquaintance with true scientific men like Harvey, and when he 

 speaks of violating or not violating nature, he exhibits superficial 

 and erroneous notions of science, for nothing that is can be a vio- 

 lation of nature, since nature is neither more nor less than that 

 which is. If that is miraculous which is not accounted for by 

 natural law, all nature is miraculous; for natural laws tell us only 

 what is, not why it is. 



Some modern students unquestionably think as Bacon does. 

 They have been told so often that the spread of mechanical con- 

 ceptions of nature must necessarily end by pushing the Creator out 



1 Berkeley, "Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained." 



