317 
10. But this view of Nature,* as was recognized even in the 
Greek philosophy, includes not the material universe only, but 
the whole nature of man, and, therefore, his civil and political 
relations — those which belong to him as a member of the 
human family ; and it is thus the foundation of social and 
moral science. In regard to these, however, its sphere is very 
limited, as it cannot transcend the realm of law, or deal with 
questions, the governing principle in which is spirit, and not 
Nature only — that spirit which is life, and not mere law, which 
is self-determining, and not the mechanical effect of antecedent 
causes. Science, however, as the logical investigation of law, 
and of the sequences of causes and effects, has to do, not only 
with those relations between men which are determined by 
the laws of the State, but also with that lower, yet most true, 
doctrine of morals which forbids injustice between man and 
man, and dictates obedience to that which duty requires, 
whether commanded by any external law or not. Nor is this 
science, as might be imagined, of a different order from 
physical science; for the law and order of the material 
universe are but the counterpart of those which must govern 
the social state of man, if it would fulfil its proper ends ; as 
has been beautifully said, in the spirit of the truest philosophy, 
of those molecules of which, according to the theory which 
the writer has expounded, all the systems of the material 
universe are constructed, 
“ From the ineffaceable characters impressed on them, we may learn that 
those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and 
justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are 
ours because they are essential constituents in the character of Him Who in 
the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials 
of which heaven and earth consist.” ( Cleric, Maxwell on Molecules.) 
11. (III.) And yet, however superior to the life of sense, 
and worthy of a rational being, the scientific mode of regard- 
ing the universe may be — and to many it appears the sum 
total of all conceivable wisdom, — it is nevertheless certain that 
most cultivated intellects, and many, indeed, that are unculti- 
vated, find this view wholly insufficient of itself to satisfy 
them, and that there is a higher and nobler region of thought, 
as far removed from that of mere law as this is from the 
domain of the senses. The grandeur and the beauty of the 
universe appeal to a faculty in man, far superior to that logical 
faculty which amounts only to the recognition of identities ; 
while the spirit of man has a poetic or creative power, and 
derives from the universe ideas which the dialectic reason 
* Maine’s Ancient Law , p. 54. 
