LAWS OF NATURE 195 



of that great proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent char- 

 acteristic it is that they find 'full satisfaction in half measures.' " 



"Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism" protests 

 against the misuse of scientific terms, especially the term 

 " law." As to the proper topic of the essay : — 



" It is the use of the word ' law ' as if it denoted a thing — as 

 if a ' law of nature,' as science understands it, were a being 

 endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which the phenomena 

 expressed by that law are brought about. The preacher asks, 

 ' Might not there be a suspension of a lower law by the inter- 

 vention of a higher ? ' He tells us that every time we lift our 

 arms we defy the law of gravitation. He asks whether some 

 day certain * royal and ultimate laws ' may not come and ' wreck ' 

 those laws which are at present, it would appear, acting as 

 nature's police. It is evident, from these expressions, that 

 ' laws,' in the mind of the preacher, are entities having an 

 objective existence in a graduated hierarchy. And it would 

 appear that the ' royal laws ' are by no means to be regarded as 

 constitutional royalties : at any moment, they may, like Eastern 

 despots, descend in wrath among the middle-class and plebeian 

 laws, which have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's 

 work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our seats of 

 learning — ' make hay ' of their belongings. Or perhaps a still 

 more familiar analogy has suggested this singular theory ; and it 

 is thought that high laws may ' suspend ' low laws, as a bishop 

 may suspend a curate. 



" Far be it from me to controvert these views, if any one likes 

 to hold them. All I wish to remark is that such a conception 

 of the nature of * laws ' has nothing to do with modern science. 

 It is 'scholastic realism — realism as intense and unmitigated as 

 that of Scotus Erigenus a thousand years ago. The essence of 

 such realism is that it maintains the objective existence of 

 universals, or, as we call them nowadays, general propositions." 



To this essay the Duke of Argyll attempted a reply, 

 bearing the somewhat personal heading, " Professor 

 Huxley on Canon Liddon" (Nineteenth Century, March 

 1887), rebuking Huxley for attacking a church dignitary, 



