PEESENT OCCURRENCE OF ARCHEBIOSIS 139 



never have arisen. In the absence of 'uniformity' we could neither 

 fathom the past nor illumine the future. As John Stuart Mill 

 said' : "Were we to suppose (what is perfectly possible to imagine) 

 that the present order of the universe were brought to an end, and 

 that a chaos succeeded in which there was no fixed succession of 

 events, and the past gave no assurance of the future, if a human 

 being were miraculously kept alive to witness this change, he 

 surely would soon cease to believe in any uniformity, the uniformity 

 itself no longer existing." 



It is true that in earlier times no absolute belief in the uniformity 

 of nature existed, even among the select few. The Greek philoso- 

 phers, including Aristotle, recognised 'chance' and 'spontaneity' 

 as finding a definite place in Nature, and to this extent they were 

 not sure that the future would resemble the past. But as we have 

 become more familiar with a wider range of natural phenomena 

 and with their mutual relations or order of appearance, so has the 

 conception of chance or spontaneity disappeared from the scientific 

 horizon — driven out of the field by the steady advance of Law and 

 Order. Those who embrace the Evolution Philosophy are foremost 

 in this opinion — they believe that no effects, of whatsoever kind, 

 can occur without adequate causes ; and the conditions being 

 similar, that similar results will always follow the action of any 

 given cause. Their whole creed is, in fact, pre-eminently based 

 upon an assumed Uniformity of Nature. 



The properties and chemical tendencies of material bodies have, 

 in fact, been found to be quite constant through time and space. 

 Speaking upon this subject in a celebrated discourse on ' Molecules,' 

 Prof. Clark Maxwell said,^ " We can procure specimens of oxygen 

 from very different sources, from the air, from water, from rocks of 

 every geological epoch. The history of these specimens has been 

 very different, and if, during thousands of years, difference of 

 circumstances could produce difference of properties these speci- 

 mens of oxygen would show it. . . . In like manner we may 

 procure hydrogen from water, from coal, or as Graham did, from 

 meteoric iron. Take two litres of any specimen of hydrogen, it 

 will combine with exactly one htre of any specimen of oxygen, and 

 will form exactly two litres of the vapour of water. . . . Now if 

 during the whole previous history of either specimen, whether 

 imprisoned in the rocks, flowing in the sea, or careering through 



I " System of Logic," 6th Edn., Vol. II, p., 98. 

 = " Nature," Sep. 25, 1873, p. 440. 



