SCIENCE. 



5 



chanism of Nature. They have the mosi intimate connec- 

 tion with the phenomena of Life, and in these the profound- 

 est changes are often determined in moments of time. For 

 many purposes to which this so-called " Law of Continuity " 

 is often applied in argument no idler dogma was ever in- 

 vented in the schools. There is a common superstition 

 that this so-called law negatives the possibility, for exam- 

 ple, of the sudden appearance of new forms of Life. What 

 it does negative, however, is not appearances which are sud- 

 den, but only appearances which have been unprepared. 

 Innumerable things may come to be, — in a moment — in the 

 twinkling of an eye. But nothing can come to be without 

 a long, even if it be a secret, history. The "Law of Con- 

 tinuity " is, therefore, a phrase of ambiguous meaning ; but 

 at the bottom of it there lies the true and invincible convic- 

 tion that for every change, however sudden — for every 

 " leap," however wide — there has always been a long chain 

 of predetermining causes, and that even the most tremon- 

 dous bursts of energy and the most sudden exhibitions of 

 force have ali been slowly and silently prepared. In this 

 sense the Law of Continuity is nothing but the idea of 

 Causation. It is founded on the necesary duration which 

 we cannot but attribute to the existence of Force, and this 

 appears to be the only truth which the Law of Continuity 

 represents. 



When now we consider the place in the whole system of 

 our knowledge which is occupied by these great fundamen- 

 tal conceptions of Time and Space, and of Matter and of 

 Force, and when we consider that we cannot even think of 

 any one of these realities as capable of coming to an end, 

 we may well be assured that, whatever may be the limits of 

 the human mind, they certainly do not prevent us from ap- 

 prehending infinity. On the contrary, it would rather ap- 

 pear that this apprehension is the invariable and necessary 

 result of every investigation of nature. 



It is indeed of the highest importance to observe that 

 some of these conceptions, especially the indestructibility 

 of Matter and of Force, belong to the domain of science. 

 That is to say, the systematic examination of natural phen- 

 omena has given them distinctness and a consistency which 

 they never possessed before. As now accepted and de- 

 fined, they are the result of direct experiment. And yet, 

 strictly speaking, all that experiment can do is to prove that 

 in all cases in which either Matter or Force seems to be de- 

 stroyed, no such destruction has taken place. Here then 

 we have a very limited and imperfect amount of " expe- 

 rience " giving rise to an infinite conception. But it is an- 

 other of the suggestions of the Agnostic philosophy that 

 this can never be a legitimate result. Nevertheless, as a 

 matter of fact, these conceptions have been reached. They 

 are now universally accepted and taught as truths lying at 

 the foundation of every branch of natural science — at once 

 the beginning and the end of every physical investigation. 

 The;- are not what are ordinarily called " laws." They 

 stand on much higher ground. They stand behind and be- 

 fore every law, whether that word be taken to mean simply 

 an observed order of facts, or some particular force to 

 which that order is due, or some combinations of force 

 for the discharge of function, or some abstract definition 

 of observed phenomena such as the "laws of motion." 

 All th ese, though they may be '■ invariable " so far as we 

 can see, carry with them no character of universal or neces- 

 sary truth— no conviction that they are and must be true in 

 all places and for all time. There is no existing order — no 

 present combinationsof Matter orof Force — which wecannot 

 conceive coming to an end. But when that end is come we 

 cannot conceive but that something must remain, — if it be 

 nothing else than that by which the ending was brought about 

 or, as it were, the raw materials of the creation which, 

 has parsed away. That this conception, when once suggested 

 and clearly apprehended, cannot be etadicated, is one of 

 the most indisputable facts of instructed consciousness. 

 That no possible amount of mere external observation or 

 experiment can cover the infinitude of the conclusion is 

 also unquestionably true. But if "experience" is to be 

 upheld as in any sense the ground and basis of all our 

 knowledge, it must be understood as embracing the most 

 important of all kinds of experience in the study of Nature 

 — the experience we have of the laws of Mind. It is one 

 of the most certain of those laws, that in proportion as the 

 powers of the understanding are well developed, and are 



prepared by previous training for the interpretation of 

 natural facts, there is no relation whatever between the time 

 occupied in the observation of phenomena and the breadth 

 or sweep of the conclusions which may be arrived at from 

 them. A single glance, lasting not above a moment of 

 time, ma)' awaken the recognition of truths as wide as the 

 universe and as everlasting as Time itself. Nay, it has often 

 happened in the history of science that such recognitions 

 of general truths have been reached by no other kind of 

 observation than that of the mind becoming conscious of its 

 own innate perceptions. Conceptions of this nature have 

 perpetually gone before experiment — have suggested it, 

 guided it — and have received nothing more than corrobora- 

 tion from it. I do not say that these conceptions have been 

 reached without any process. But the process has been to 

 a large extent as unconscious as that by which we see the 

 light. I do not say they have been reached without "ex- 

 perience," even in that narrow sense in which it means the 

 observation of external things. But the experience has 

 been nothing more than the act of living in the world, and 

 of breathing in it, and of looking round upon it. These 

 conceptions have come to Man because he is a Being in har- 

 mony with surrounding Nature. The human mind has 

 opened to them as a bud opens to the sun and air. So true 

 is this, that when reasons have been given for the conclu- 

 sions thus arrived at — these reasons have often been quite 

 erroneous. Nothing in the history of philosophy is more 

 curious than the close correspondence between many ideas 

 enunciated by the ancients as the result of the speculation, 

 and some, at least, of the ideas now prevalent as the result 

 of science. It is true that the ancients expressed them 

 vaguely, associated them with other conceptions which are 

 wide of the truth, and quoted in support of them illustra- 

 tions which are often childish. Nevertheless the fact re- 

 mains that they had attained to some central truths, however 

 obscured the perception may have been by ignorance of the 

 more precise and accurate analogies by which they can be 

 best explained, and which only the process of observation 

 has revealed. " The)' had in some way grasped," says Mr. 

 Balfour Stewart,* " the idea of the essential unrest and 

 energy of things. They had also the idea of small particles 

 or atoms ; and finally of a medium of some sort, so that 

 they were not wholly ignorant of the most profound and 

 deeply seated of the principles of the material universe." 

 There is but one explanation of this, but it is all-sufficient. 

 It is that the mind of Man is a part, and one at least of the 

 highest parts, of the system of the universe — the result of 

 mechanism most suited to the purpose of catching and 

 translating into thought the light of truth as embodied in 

 surrounding Nature. 



We have seen that the foundations of all conscious rea- 

 soningare to be found in certain propositions which we call 

 self-evident. That is to say, in propositions the truth of 

 which is intuitively perceived. We have seen, too, as a 

 general law affecting all manifeslations of Life or Mind, 

 even in its very lowest forms, that instinctive or intuitional 

 perceptions are. the guide and index of other and larger 

 truths which lie entirely beyond the range of the perception 

 or intuition which is immediately concerned. This law 

 holds good quite as much of the higher intuitions which 

 are peculiar to Man as of the mere intuitions of sensation 

 which are common to him and to the animals beneath him. 

 The lowest savage does many things by mere instinct which 

 contain implicitly truths of a very abstract nature — truths 

 of which, as such, he has not the remotest conception, and 

 which in the present undeveloped condition of his faculties 

 it would be impossible to explain to him. Thus, when he 

 goes into the forest to cut a branch fit for being made into a 

 bow, or when he goes to the marsh to cut a reed fit for 

 being made into an arrow, and when in doing so he cuts 

 them off the proper length by measuring them by the bows 

 and arrows which he already has, in this simple operation 

 he is acting on the abstract and most fruitful truth that 

 " things equal to the same thing are equal to one anothei." 

 This is one of the axioms which lie at the basis of all mathe- 

 matical demonstration. But as a general, universal, and 

 necessary truth the savage knows nothing of it — as little as 

 he knows of the wonderful consequences to which it will 

 some day lead his children or descendants. So in like 



*" Conservation of Energy," p. 135. 



