281 
footing to the inorganic. How is this occasioned ? Simply, I should say, by 
the extraordinary complexity of the conditions which determine the course of 
events. A number of seeds from the same pod are put in different places, 
and grow differently. Very true ; yet I should be disposed to regard the 
growth of these plants as being as absolutely regulated by law as any 
chemical combination, only the law is more complex, the result dependent 
on a far larger number of minute circumstances, so that it does not appear so 
uniform, though it may really be completely under the control of law all the 
time. He says : — 
“ If we are told that the changes in the natural world take place according 
to an invariable order of succession, and that this is the fixed law of nature, 
we are told what is transparently untrue. If such a statement is made in the 
name of scientific culture, it is made by one who is himself ignorant of one 
of the most irresistible conclusions of science.” 
What is the reason that men of science make such an assumption 1 Simply 
because, in cases which appear at first sight to have this kind of variability, 
the progress of science has shown that they are really subject to law ; and so 
analogy would lead us to suspect the same thing in other quarters. For 
example, of old it was considered that nothing was more variable than the 
winds ; in the New Testament the wind was taken as a type of that which 
came and went where it listed, yet there is no doubt that the course of 
science is tending to exhibit these very winds as a result of uniform laws and 
causes, only the conditions under which these causes act are so complex that 
they do not appear on the surface to produce a uniform result. In the same 
way we may expect that the apparent variableness in the vegetable and 
animal worlds will be found to be as subject to law as the more manifest 
uniformity of the inorganic world. Simply stating my opinion, I should be 
inclined to say that the only exception to uniformity is man himself, and 
that because man is not in harmony with nature, and does not carry on his 
part in the universe in the manner intended ; he is not acted upon by 
circumstances as he was meant to be, but follows his own will, and is thus 
the only exception to the great reign of law. I should be disposed, therefore, 
in spite of Professor Kirk, to hold that what he tells me is untrue, and to 
declare myself “ ignorant of one of the most irresistible conclusions of science 
and I take his epithets cheerfully because I know that they are in this matter 
quite undeserved. Then, as regards his criticism upon Professor Mansel, as 
to the knowledge of the infinite and absolute. With the greater part I 
agree ; but I notice one sentence towards the close, which I cannot pass 
over : — 
“ Mr. Mansel says again that 1 whatever we conceive is, by the very act of 
conception, regarded as finite.’ So when we conceive of an object which has 
no limits , we conceive of it as having limits ! ” 
But can we conceive of an object having no limits ? I have tried hard, and 
my experience is, that we cannot ; and the reason is, that every notion we 
form in our minds must first come to us as a perception through our senses. 
x 2 
