26 
are self-caused is not only unprovable, but is a contradiction of 
Science ; for if those things of which all Nature is com- 
posed have the source of causation in themselves, it cannot 
be assumed that anything whatever in Nature is the subject 
of causation. 
15. (II.) But all these conclusions will be more clearly 
illustrated in the examination of the scientific view of the con- 
secutive order of the universe. In this we have to deal with 
those laws of Nature, as they are called, which represent the 
order in which certain phenomena or existences follow one 
another in succession. Here, again. Science is compelled to 
postulate that there is an order, that events or phenomena do 
not follow one another promiscuously ; and further, that there 
is a unity in the order, and that both this orderly succession 
and the variations in it are the result of sequences of cause 
and effect. Science also assumes a unity in all the apparent 
diversity of these sequences, and continually searches after 
a connection between the various causes, the effects of which 
are subjects of its observation. 
The confidence that there is an established order in the 
universe is the only ground on which empirical laws, which 
cannot be determined as sequences of cause and effect, can 
ever have the slightest value in Science. In fact, it is the 
profound conviction in the human mind of order and unity 
being fundamental principles in the universe, that produces, 
in those who have not sufficiently considered or apprehended 
the equally fundamental principle of causation, too much 
confidence in empirical laws. Indeed, so deeply rooted is this 
confidence in the order of the universe, that it is a very 
common belief in the unscientific mind that a law of Nature, 
instead of being an order due to causes which, under other 
conditions, might produce another order, is an independent 
entity, possessing some power of causation in itself. Of all 
the idola which have imposed on the understanding of man 
none is more irrational than this false notion of law. But it 
is not sufficiently realised, I think, that even in regard to 
dynamical laws, which rise far above the category of those 
that are merely empirical, it is necessary for Science to make 
assumptions which require some basis outside Nature itself. 
To exhibit this we must briefly examine the history of the 
development of Science in this direction. 
16. The most familiar instance of the progress of Science 
from empirical laws to dynamical — I mean that which we 
have in the Science of Astronomy — is also the most instruc- 
tive. How the unsystematic order of the heavenly bodies 
observed by ancient Astronomers was by the genius of 
