TRANSACTIONS 
OF THE 
HERTFORDSHIRE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
i. 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
By the President, Professor John Attfield, Ph.D., F.R.S.,F.I.C., 
F.C.S., etc. 
Delivered at the Annual Meeting , 1 6th February , 1886, at Watford. 
The Laws of God in Nature. 
Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell; 
That mind and soul according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster.— Tennyson. 
So comprehensive a subject as the Laws of Nature demands the 
life-thoughts of the most powerful minds, and their record in many 
series of volumes. For although by laws we may mean only the 
greater truths, or, as they will presently he termed, decrees which 
govern the materials and the forces of nature, yet these cannot he 
considered without some reference to the materials and forces 
themselves, and cannot be described without illustrations drawn 
from every department of nature. Goethe felt this all-embracing 
character of the subject, but at the same time saw the importance 
of the how and why, the interest attached to the linking of cause 
with effect in nature, in a word the relation of nature to law, when 
he made Faust thus soliloquise over the sign of Macrocosmos, that 
is, over the whole of nature external to himself: — 
“ How all things live and work, and ever blending, 
Weave one vast whole from Being’s ample range ! 
How powers celestial, rising and descending, 
Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange ! 
Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, 
From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing, 
Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing. 
VOL. IV.—PART i. 
1 
