297 
“ Eros was one of the fundamental causes in the formation of the world, 
inasmuch as he was the uniting power of love, which brought order and 
harmony among the conflicting elements of which Chaos consisted.” 
III. — The Laivs or Conditions of Being, 
Let us investigate further the laws of being. Not un- 
frequently the chemist^ availing himself of the mathematical 
certainties of the laws of combination, forms a new body. He 
knows, we will suppose, of a combination of A + B, and also 
of A + 3B. Then he reasons thus, that if A could be induced 
to combine with 2B, he would have something new, and he 
succeeds in obtaining the desired result. It may be said that 
this is perhaps, after all, not a new substance, since it may 
have existed before, though not known. But there are other 
cases in which it can be demonstrated that the substance 
cannot possibly have ever existed before. As soon as it is 
produced, however, it is found to have a laio of its being ; 
quite siii generis, presenting, perhaps, most important effects 
for good or for evil on the animal economy, or fraught with 
important advantages in the arts of life. 
How, then, did this law of its being originate ? Certainly 
not from ivithout (unless so far as we understand that all things 
are from Grod), and if we say from within, we touch upon 
questions insoluble by human intellect. 
Was the promise and potency of all the new properties, 
which from henceforth will inhere in the new substance, 
attached provisionally to some four or five atoms, — say of 
carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, — in addition to an 
almost infinite number of properties attached to other com- 
binations of the same atoms ? Or were the properties freshly 
bestowed by the Creator ? 
Perhaps the most intelligible proposition may be that the 
nature of each combination is fixed, from the number and 
the arrangement of the atoms composing each molecule. 
This seems to lie at the foundation of the doctrine ascribed to 
Pythagoras : — 
“We find running through the Pythagorean system the idea that order or 
harmony of relation is the regulating principle of the whole universe.” * 
I suppose that no one would commit himself to maintain 
any of these theories. What, then, remains ? It is so because 
it is its nature ! Chloral will send you to sleep ; but if you 
Smith’s Dictionary, snh voce^ “ PythagoraSi” 
X 
VOL. XVI. 
