88 
The Course of Nature. 
[January, 
1. When men study the operations of the world around 
them, they find that certain of those operations are deter- 
mined by knowable antecedent conditions, and go on with 
that blind disregard of consequences which they call law. 
The criterion for distinguishing these operations is that their 
results admit of being foreseen. They also find certain other 
operations which they are unable thus to trace to the opera- 
tion of law. 
2. Men attribute this latter class to invisible anthropo- 
morphic intelligences, having the power to bring about 
changes in nature, and having certain objects, worthy or 
ignoble, in view, which they thus endeavour to compass. 
Men also believe themselves able to discern these objects, 
and thus to explain the operations which bring them about. 
The objects are worthy or ignoble according to the character 
of the intelligences, which again depend upon the state of 
society. In ancient times they were often the gratification 
of the silliest pride or the lowest lusts. 
3. As knowledge advances, one after another of these 
operations are found to be really determined by law, the only 
difficulty being that the law was before unknown or not 
comprehended, or that the circumstances which determined 
its action were too obscure or too complex to be fully com- 
prehended. 
4. Final causes having thus, one by one, disappeared from 
every thicket which has been fully explored, the question 
arises whether they now have, or ever had, any existence at 
all. On the one hand it may be claimed that it is unphilo- 
sophical to believe in them when they have been sought in 
vain in every corner into which light can penetrate ; on the 
other hand, we have the difficulty of accounting for these 
very laws by which we find the course of nature to be deter- 
mined. Take, as a single example, the law of hereditary 
descent. How did such a law — or rather how did such a 
process, for it is a process — first commence ? If this is not 
as legitimate a subject for enquiry as the question how came 
the hand and the eye into existence, it is only because it 
seems more difficult to investigate. If, as the most advanced 
scientific philosophy teaches, creation is itself but a growth, 
how did that growth originate ? We here reach the limits 
of the scientific field, on ground where they are less well- 
defined than in some other directions, but I shall take the 
liberty of concluding my remarks with a single suggestion 
respecting a matter which lies outside of them. When the 
doCtrine of the universality of natural law is carried so far as 
to include the genesis of living beings, and the adaptations 
