Natural Law in the Spiritual World | Page 7

which avow themselves to
be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and
conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law, and must rest
entirely in that region of science (not physical, but moral and social
science), where we are free to use our intelligence in the methods
known to us as intelligible logic, methods which the intellect can
analyze. When you confront us with hypotheses, however sublime and
however affecting, if they cannot be stated in terms of the rest of our
knowledge, if they are disparate to that world of sequence and
sensation which to us is the ultimate base of all our real knowledge,
then we shake our heads and turn aside."--Frederick Harrison.
"Ethical science is already forever completed, so far as her general
outline and main principles are concerned, and has been, as it were,
waiting for physical science to come up with her."--Paradoxical
Philosophy.
PART I.
Natural Law is a new word. It is the last and the most magnificent
discovery of science. No more telling proof is open to the modern
world of the greatness of the idea than the greatness of the attempts
which have always been made to justify it. In the earlier centuries,
before the birth of science, Phenomena were studied alone. The world
then was a chaos, a collection of single, isolated, and independent facts.
Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that relations must subsist between these
facts, but the Reign of Law was never more to the ancients than a
far-off vision. Their philosophies, conspicuously those of the Stoics
and Pythagoreans, heroically sought to marshal the discrete materials of
the universe into thinkable form, but from these artificial and fantastic
systems nothing remains to us now but an ancient testimony to the
grandeur of that harmony which they failed to reach.
With Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler the first regular lines of the
universe began to be discerned. When Nature yielded to Newton her

great secret, Gravitation was felt to be not greater as a fact in itself than
as a revelation that Law was fact. And thenceforth the search for
individual Phenomena gave way before the larger study of their
relations. The pursuit of Law became the passion of science.
What that discovery of Law has done for Nature, it is impossible to
estimate. As a mere spectacle the universe to-day discloses a beauty so
transcendent that he who disciplines himself by scientific work finds it
an overwhelming reward simply to behold it. In these Laws one stands
face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable. Each single Law is an
instrument of scientific research, simple in its adjustments, universal in
its application, infallible in its results. And despite the limitations of its
sphere on every side Law is still the largest, richest, and surest source
of human knowledge.
It is not necessary for the present to more than lightly touch on
definitions of Natural Law. The Duke of Argyll[3] indicates five senses
in which the word is used, but we may content ourselves here by taking
it in its most simple and obvious significance. The fundamental
conception of Law is an ascertained working sequence or constant
order among the Phenomena of Nature. This impression of Law as
order it is important to receive in its simplicity, for the idea is often
corrupted by having attached to it erroneous views of cause and effect.
In its true sense Natural Law predicates nothing of causes. The Laws of
Nature are simply statements of the orderly condition of things in
Nature, what is found in Nature by a sufficient number of competent
observers. What these Laws are in themselves is not agreed. That they
have any absolute existence even is far from certain. They are relative
to man in his many limitations, and represent for him the constant
expression of what he may always expect to find in the world around
him. But that they have any causal connection with the things around
him is not to be conceived. The Natural Laws originate nothing, sustain
nothing; they are merely responsible for uniformity in sustaining what
has been originated and what is being sustained. They are modes of
operation, therefore, not operators; processes, not powers. The Law of
Gravitation, for instance, speaks to science only of process. It has no
light to offer as to itself. Newton did not discover Gravity--that is not

discovered yet. He discovered its Law, which is Gravitation, but tells us
nothing of its origin, of its nature or of its cause.
The Natural Laws then are great lines running not only through the
world, but, as we now know, through the universe, reducing it like
parallels of latitude to intelligent order. In themselves, be it once more
repeated, they may have no more