78 The Course of Nature. [January, 
effedt, the laws of nature are satisfied. So if the Ruler wants 
to reward, punish, kill, or rescue, he has only to bring into 
operation the appropriate cause at the proper moment ; the 
natural effedt follows, and His will is executed without any 
violation of the laws of nature. I am not sure that this is 
an exadt statement of the views to which I refer ; but it is 
the best I can gather from the study of the forms in which 
they have found expression. Supposing this to be the view 
really entertained, it is essentially different from that held by 
the scientific philosophy. The course of nature as it pre- 
sents itself to the eye of science is not a colledtion of isolated 
causes, each with its effedt attached to it, but it is rather to 
be symbolised by a chain in which each link is connedted 
with the link which precedes it and with the one which fol- 
lows it. At each moment of time the state of the universe 
is the effedt of the state which immediately precedes it, and 
the cause of the state which immediately follows. There are 
no such things as distindt causes and effedts, but only laws 
of progress which connedt the successive links of the seem- 
ingly endless chain. 
As an illustration of this, let us take the falling of the 
rock. To the mere observer there is no evident reason why 
it should fall at one time rather than another; he may, 
therefore, feel that there is room for speculation as to the 
cause which made it fall at the exadt moment it did. But 
science teaches that it will fall at the very moment when the 
cohesive attraction which binds it to the mountain behind 
becomes less than the weight of the rock. We might 
suppose a power to so adjust the causes which effedt 
the cohesion that the rock shall fall at some desired 
moment. But any such adjustment would be as complete a 
change of the course of nature as if the power should hold 
the rock up after it had begun to fall. The natural pro- 
cesses by which the cohesion of the rock is slowly diminished, 
though largely hidden from our view, are governed by laws 
as precise in their adtion as those which regulate the motion 
of the planets. The water which falls from the clouds 
slowly percolates through the ground and enters a crack in 
the supporting mass. It wears it away at a rate dependent 
on the solubility of the material and the quantity of water 
which falls. A constant but certain molecular adtion goes 
on without ceasing between each molecule of water and each 
molecule of rock. The strength of the latter is thus weak- 
ened according to some law admitting of precise mathe- 
matical statement. Thus a mind possessed of sufficient 
mathematical ability, knowing how much water runs over 
