dr. whewell's pal etiological sciences. 265 



When we set about describing this system, we are 

 struck by finding it vague and unsteady, varying with 

 every degree of intelligence in its votaries and every ad- 

 dition made to science. The uneducated man regards 

 the whole system of the world as resulting from, and de- 

 pending upon, the immediate working and guidance of 

 an Almighty being who acts in each case as*may seem to 

 him most meet, exactly as human creatures do. Persons 

 of intelligence, again, usually admit a system of general 

 laws, but for the most part entertain it under great reser- 

 vations, or in connection with views totally inconsistent 

 with it. We find Dr. Clark, for instance, admitting a 

 course of nature as the " will of God producing certain 

 effects in a regular and uniform manner," but this will 

 *' being arbitrary [an assumption, as far as natural means 

 of knowledge are concerned], is, he says, as easy to be 

 altered at any time as to be preserved." 



Others cut off particular provinces of nature as excep- 

 tions from the plan of constant order. Whatever part is 

 dubious or obscure, to mankind generally or to themselves 

 in particular, there they rear the torn standard of the ar- 

 bitrary system of divine rule. Human volitions form such 

 a region to many who know not that Quetelet has reduced 

 these to mathematical formulae, and that one of our own 

 most popular divines has written a Bridgewater Treatise, 

 to show the predominance of natural law over mind, as a 

 proof of the existence and Wisdom of God. Some who 

 give up this domain to law, find footing in other depart- 

 ments of nature upon which science has not as yet poured 

 any clear light. We shall presently see by what weak 

 argument such exceptions are maintained. Meanwhile, 

 it must be noted as important that all is uncertainty on 

 this side of the question — a strong presumption, were there 

 no other against it. 



One of the most remarkable reservations made of late 

 years from the system of invariable order is that presented 

 in Dr. Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. Ad- 

 mitting that nature, as revealed to our senses, is a system 

 of causation, this writer halts when he comes to consider 

 the origin of language and of arts, the origin of species 

 and formation of globes. These he calls palaetiological 

 sciences, because, in his opinion, we have to seek for an 

 ancient and different class of causes, as affecting them, 

 from any which are now seen operating. " In no palaetio- 

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