by the operation of the sun's heat upon air and moisture, land and sea; and though in this case we cannot trace the particular events to their general causes, as we can trace the motions of the sun and moon, no philosophical mind will doubt the generality and fixity of the rules by which these causes act. The variety of the effects taks place, because the circumstances in different cases vary; and not because the action of material causes leaves any thing to chance in the result. And again, though the vital movements which go on in the frame of vegetables and animals depend on agencies still less known, and probably still more complex, than those which rule the weather, each of the powers on which such movements depend has its peculiar laws of action, and these are as universal and as invariable as the law by which a stone falls to the earth when not supported.

The world then is governed by general laws; and in order to collect from the world itself a judgment concerning the nature and character of its government, we must consider the import and tendency of such laws, so far as they come under our knowledge. If there be, in the administration of the universe, intelligence and benevolence, superintendence and foresight, grounds for love and hope, such qualities may be expected to appear in the constitution and combination of those fundamental regulations by which the course of nature is brought about, and made to be what it is.

If a man were, by some extraordinary event, to find himself in a remote and unknown country, so entirely strange to him that he did not know whether there existed in it any law or government at all; he might in no long time ascertain whether the inhabitants were controlled by any superintending authority; and with a little attention he might determine also whether such authority were exercised with a prudent care for the happiness and wellbeing of its subjects, or without any regard and fitness to such ends; whether the country were governed by laws at all, and whether the laws were good. And according to the laws which he thus found prevailing, he would judge of the sagacity, and the purposes of the legislative power.

By observing the laws of the material universe and their

operation, we may hope, in a somewhat similar manner, to be able to direct our judgment concerning the government of the universe: concerning the mode in which the elements are regulated and controlled, their effects combined and balanced. And the general tendency of the results thus produced may discover to us something of the character of the power which has legislated for the material world.

We are not to push too far the analogy thus suggested. There is undoubtedly a wide difference between the circumstances of man legislating for man, and God legislating for matter. Still we shall, it will appear, find abundant reason to admire the wisdom and the goodness which have established the Laws of Nature, however rigorously we may scrutinize the import of this expression.

CHAPTER II.

On Laws of Nature.

WHEN We speak of material nature as being governed by laws, it is sufficiently evident that we use the term in a manner somewhat metaphorical. The laws to which man's attention is primarily directed are moral laws; rules laid down for his actions; rules for the conscious actions of a person; rules which as a matter of possibility, he may obey or may transgress; the latter event being combined, not with an impossibility, but with a penalty. But the Laws of Nature are something different from this; they are rules for that which things are to do and suffer; and this by no consciousness or will of theirs. They are rules describing the mode in which things do act; they are invariably obeyed; their transgression is not punished, it is excluded. The language of a moral law is, man shall not kill; the language of a law of Nature is, a stone will fall to the earth.

These two kinds of laws direct the actions of persons and of things, by the sort of control of which persons and things are respectively susceptible; so that the metaphor, is very simple; but it is proper for us to recollect that it is

a metaphor, in order that we may clearly apprehend what is implied in speaking of the Laws of Nature.

In this phrase are included all properties of the portions of the material world; all modes of action and rules of causation, according to which they operate on each other. The whole course of the visible universe therefore is but the collective result of such laws; its movements are only the aggregate of their working. All natural occurrences, in the skies and on the earth, in the organic and in the inor ganic world, are determined by the relations of the elements and the actions of the forces of which the rules are thus prescribed.

The relations and rules by which these occurrences are thus determined necessarily depend on measures of time and space, motion and force; on quantities which are subject to numerical measurement, and capable of being connected by mathematical properties. And thus all things are ordered by number and weight and measure. "God," as was said by the ancients, "works by geometry:" the legislation of the material universe is necessarily delivered in the language of mathematics; the stars in their courses are regulated by the properties of conic sections, and the winds depend on arithmetical and geometrical progressions of elasticity and pressure.

The constitution of the universe, so far as it can be clearly apprehended by our intellect, thus assumes a shape involving an assemblage of mathematical propositions: certain algebraical formulæ, and the knowledge when and how to apply them, constitute the last step of the physical science to which we can attain. The labour and the endowments of ages have been employed in bringing such science into the condition in which it now exists; and an exact and extensive discipline in mathematics, followed by a practical and profound study of the researches of natural philosophers, can alone put any one in possession of the knowledge concerning the course of the material world, which is at present open to man. The general impression, however, which arises from the view thus obtained of the universe, the results which we collect from the most careful scrutiny of its administration, may, we trust, be rendered intelligible without this technical and laborious study, and to do this is our present object.

It will be our business to show that the laws which really prevail in nature are, by their form, that is, by the nature of the connexion which they establish among the quantities and properties which they regulate, remarkably adapted to the office which is assigned them; and thus offer evidence of selection, design, and goodness, in the power by which they were established. But these characters of the legislation of the universe may also be seen, in many instances, in a manner somewhat different from the selection of the law. The nature of the connexion remaining the same, the quantities which it regulates may also in their magnitude bear marks of selection and purpose. For the law may be the same while the quantities to which it applies are different. The law of the gravity which acts to the earth and to Jupiter, is the same; but the intensity of the force at the surfaces of the two planets is different. The law which regulates the density of the air at any point, with reference to the height from the earth's surface, would be the same, if the atmosphere were ten times as large, or only one-tenth as large as it is; if the barometer at the earth's surface stood at three inches only, or if it showed a pressure of thirty feet of mercury.

Now this being understood, the adaptation of a law to its purpose, or to other laws, may appear in two ways:either in the form of the law, or in the amount of the magnitudes which it regulates, which are sometimes called arbitrary magnitudes.

If the attraction of the sun upon the planets did not vary inversely as the square of the distance, the form of the law of gravitation would be changed; if this attraction were, at the earth's orbit, of a different value from its present one, the arbitrary magnitude would be changed; and it will appear, in a subsequent part of this work, that either change would, so far as we can trace its consequences, be detrimental. The form of the law determines in what manner the facts shall take place; the arbitrary magnitude determines how fast, how far, how soon; the one gives a model, the other a measure of the phenomenon; the one draws the plan, the other gives the scale on which it is to be executed; the one gives the rule, the other the rate. If either were wrongly taken, the result would be wrong

too.

CHAPTER III

Mutual Adaptation in the Laws of Nature.

To ascertain such laws of nature as we have been describing, is the peculiar business of science. It is only with regard to a very small portion of the appearances of the universe, that science, in any strict application of the term, exists. In very few departments of research have men been able to trace a multitude of known facts to causes which appear to be the ultimate material causes, or to discern the laws which seem to be the most general laws. Yet, in one or two instances, they have done this, or something approaching to this; and most especially in the instance of that part of nature, which it is the object of this treatise more peculiarly to consider.

The apparent motions of the sun, moon, and stars have been more completely reduced to their causes and laws than any other class of phenomena. Astronomy, the science which treats of these, is already a wonderful example of the degree of such knowledge which man may attain. The forms of its most important laws may be conceived to be certainly known; and hundreds of observers in all parts of the world are daily employed in determining, with additional accuracy, the arbitrary magnitudes which these laws

involve.

The inquiries in which the mutual effects of heat, mois ture, air, and the like elements are treated of, including, among other subjects, all that we know of the causes of the weather (meteorology) is a far more imperfect science than astronomy. Yet, with regard to these agents, a great number of laws of nature have been discovered, though, undoubtedly, a far greater number remain still unknown.

So far, therefore, as our knowledge goes, astronomy and meteorology are parts of natural philosophy in which we may study the order of nature with such views as we have suggested; in which we may hope to make out the adaptations and aims which exist in the laws of nature; and thus to obtain some light on the tendency of this part of the legislation of the universe, and on the character and dis position of the Legislator.