84 The Course of Nature. [January, 
These supposed causes differed from what enlightened 
minds now understand by the term Providence, in being 
amenable to scientific investigation, and in not being included 
in the regular chain of natural phenomena. The designs of 
Providence are inscrutable, but those of Pallas and Juno 
were not. Careful experimental investigation, such as might 
have been undertaken by a Helmholtz of that time, would 
have sufficed to show just how Pallas wanted the spear 
thrown, if the view of the Homeric age was the correct one. 
When the King died, or the enemy was victorious, men 
thought they knew exactly why the comet appeared when 
it did. 
These views having so far vanished into thin air, I do not 
see how we can avoid recognising the reality of the revolution 
which modern science claims to have made in the views of 
men respecting the course of nature. And yet, as I have 
already shown, there are many tendencies in our being which 
make us unwilling to admit the revolution, and lead many 
to look upon the old theory as correCt, provided it were only 
considered as tracing causes to the will of the Creator. On 
what is this view founded at the present time ? Entirely, 
it seems to me, in ignoring the distinction between the 
scrutable and the inscrutable, between the seen and the 
unseen worlds. Science has, to a greater or less degree, 
banished final causes from the visible universe; but they 
aCt with undiminished vigour in the invisible one. Such a 
translation may not be a great revolution in thought, from a 
theological point of view, but it certainly is from a scientific 
standpoint, which considers only visible things. 
I can readily imagine your asking if teleological causes 
can be really considered as absolutely banished from the 
whole domain of visible nature, if, considering how limited our 
knowledge, and how vast that part even of the visible uni- 
verse which we do not know, it is not rash to assert that we 
know the true theory of nature, even in the field of phe- 
nomena. This question may lead us to look a little more 
carefully than we have hitherto done upon the exaCt stand- 
ing of the doCtrine of the uniform course of nature according 
to antecedent causes, and the relation of this doCtrine to 
modern scientific investigation. And this leads me to say 
that it would be entirely unphilosophical to regard the 
revolution I have described as a scientific discovery or 
induction. It may be doubted whether the scientific mind 
is really any less disposed to believe in final causes than the 
ordinary mind. Nor can the theory that the course of 
nature is symbolised by the chain of cause and effect, as I 
