60 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
are inexact because the human mind can never grasp all 
their data. The combined effort of all men, the flower 
of the altruism of the ages, which we call science has 
made only a beginning in such study. But, however in- 
complete our realization of the laws of life, we may be 
sure that they are never broken. Each law is the ex- 
pression of the best possible way in which causes and 
results can be linked. It is the necessary sequence of 
events, therefore the dest sequence, if we may imagine 
for a moment that the human words “ good” and “ bad” 
are applicable to world processes. The laws of Nature 
are not executors of human justice. Each one has its 
own operation and no other. Each represents its own 
tendency toward cosmic order. A law’in this sense can 
not be “broken.” “If God should wink at a single act 
of injustice,” says the Arab proverb, “the whole uni- 
verse would shrivel up like a cast-off snake skin.” If 
God should wink at any violated law the universe would 
vanish. 
Not long ago, in an examination in a theological 
seminary, the question was asked of the candidates for 
the ministry, “Is it right to pray for a change of sea- 
son?” The candidates thought that it was not, for the 
relations which produce winter and summer are fixed in 
the structure of the solar system and can not be altered 
for man’s pleasure or man’s need. “Is it right to pray 
for rain?” The candidates generally thought that it 
was, because the conditions of rain are so unstable that 
a little change in one way or another would bring 
rain or fair weather. It is proper to ask for such a 
change, as it does not concern the economy of the 
universe. 
The third question was: “When the signal service 
of the United States is well established, so that weather 
conditions are perfectly known, will it then be right to 
