STUDY XX.

VARIETY IN NATURE.

"Nisi Deus esset immutabilis, nulla mutabilis natura permaneret." "See God's hand in all things believe that things are not in such inevitable order, but that God often changeth it according as He sees fit."-GEORGE HERBERT.

"To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may be seen.'

THE general invariability of natural law must be taken as a fundamental fact without which no scientific interpretation of Nature is possible. The same things will always happen under the same conditions. If gravitation acted sometimes at one angle, sometimes at another, instead of pulling in a straight line, the cry of "stand from under!" would be a delusion and a snare. The most hidden and unaccountable movements, the fitful agitations of the weather, the waving of every leaf, the number of drops in a shower, the shaping of clouds, are by a rule so wise and strong that error, chance, mischance, can never enter.

Natural uniformity is sometimes made to appear-not an order laid down by Infinite Wisdom for beneficent and effectual rule, but a chain of fate blindly, rigorously, invariably, binding all things with iron links of necessity. We agree with Mr. John Stuart Mill that, next to the greatness of the cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes one is their recklessness-they go straight to their end without regarding what or whom they crush on the road: but enlarged consideration shows that this seeming recklessness is beneficent, by calling upon intelligence to provide safeguards and remedies; it, in fact, enables the will of man to count for something in the world.

The uniformity of Nature and the invariability of law are

not rightly understood, nor well interpreted, unless we know and act upon them as a platform for infinite variety. Laws are conservative, yet the untiring agents of change; and the ever-varying conditions of time, place, material combination, render it certain that no two series of phenomena can be absolutely the same. If, on the one side, a man maintains law to be uniform and universal; he may, on the other side, meet with the fact that it incloses infinite diversity and a series of surprises. Out of darkness we extract most brilliant light, and we analyze white light into all the colours. Who, looking at the field in winter, would predict, were it not for experience, the fruitfulness and glow of harvest? What man is able to prophesy why and how the caterpillar has a resurrection life of winged beauty? why and how the seed attains development in herb and flower, in shrub or tree? Nature is not one-sided, but all-sided. The student of physics carries the light of his private intelligence only a little way, and on one line, into the dark by which knowledge is surrounded; but Nature faces us on all sides, carries on her work centripetally, centrifugally, circularly, in spirals, ever extending into wider regions of the all-embracing infinite. What seem the wildest meteors of our imagination are sometimes proved brightest flashes of thought—with counterpart in the world of fact. Intellectual penetration of surrounding darkness depends not so much on method as on spiritual insight: the force carrying furthest is genius in the investigator. Experiments constitute a body, of which purified intuitions are the soul; we can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new."1 The elements are the same, but mixed with a difference. Uprising of great from small is the secret of the universe.

Law, far from being an argument against, is a prevailing plea for miracles. It may be thus stated-Where all things are by chance, no law exists. Law produces that invariability of mechanical action in the universe which renders miracles possible and necessary, it is the platform for miraculous operation. Uniformity of law, when brought into connection with the novel relations consequent on the contrary or consentaneous acts of free beings, gives rise to novel effects. To prevent, restrain, or enlarge these effects,

1 "Scientific Materialism: " Prof. John Tyndall, LL.D., F. R.S.

Scientific Idea of Law and Will.

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new powers must be evoked: miracles are the work of these powers, by which operations in immensity and timely shapings for eternity-not less by guidance than restraintcall freedom into exercise.

This establishes conformity between the Scientific idea of Law and the Theological idea of Will-Will exerting itself with purpose according to a predetermined plan. Of that plan, Revelation furnishes the moral scheme; and Science seeks to unravel the physical process. Divine actions are

based on unerring knowledge as to the future; and creation, begun upon a plan, is sustained by an all-embracing Providence. It is evident that if Foreknowledge be Infinite, if Power be Almighty, if Goodness be All-pervading, the Law or Rule will be perfect, and provide that interference and correction which the actions of free beings necessitate. Scientific men are so sure that the universe is the work of Intelligence, to be understood by intelligence, that they make their study an honest endeavour to unravel its laws. They find, or seem to find, a reason and purpose, infinitely greater than human intelligence, weaving the weft and warp of history with idea. The initial passage from ideal to actual is that moment of interference in which Nature begins to realise and express Supreme Thought. This Thought embraces all worlds, all time, everything contained in them, and safeguards all, by providing that interference and readjustment, which the good and evil wills of free intelligent responsible creatures render necessary.

Our conception that natural uniformity is a chamber in which Divine Will displays variety, may be carried further. The unexpected conclusion has been drawn from certain recondite investigations that more than three dimensions in space are possible. In the career of the solar system we may be passing to regions in which space has not precisely the same proportions that we find here where something will necessitate "a fourth dimension form of matter" for adaptation to the new locality. Nature, therefore, such as we know, possibly does not include all times, places, things. That which now concerns men, forming the natural part of their experiences and analogies, may be but a small portion of the Almighty's infinite dominions. When we are told of natural uniformity and invariability of law, we accept the statement, but confine it within the limits of our experience:

for things which seem utterly impossible here may be natural in other experiences and analogies. Consequently, that pre-arrangement which provides for every eclipse of the sun and occultation of a star; and which the government of free intelligent and responsible creatures renders necessary; may weave into the world a loving, spiritual, elevating process, by which purity, now chiefly ideal even in the holiest of men, shall become actual in all. If so, Inspiration, Prophecy, Miracles, Spirit-power, are not less real parts of Nature than is material and mechanical order.

The philosophical statement may be verified by experiment. Take matter as a beginning for examples of variety underlying "Natural Uniformity," and "Invariability of Law."

The various kinds of elements, though of a rigidly accurate mechanical base, geometrical figures lying at the bottom, are adapted to an infinity of purposes. Dense elements are pervaded by those less dense. Solid bodies are penetrated by moisture, or by gases, or by the imponderables -light, heat, electricity, magnetism. Fluids are pervious by fluids, gases are traversed by gases. Sometimes the path is traced by expansion, by fusion, by active chemical affinities. At other times, the path is secret, and the manner of transit a mystery. The elements, being impelled, aided by electric and other forces, produce what has been called "Electro-vegetation;" and advance to the mysteries of vegetable and animal life.

The elementary atoms, though we cannot convert any one into another, are probably compound, and were primarily one formless diffused substance. Mr. Crookes's experiments—taken in connection with a paper, by Professor Osborne Reynolds, before the Royal Society-demonstrate the molecular theory. Mr. Crookes has evidenced a truth which Faraday divined by instinct of genius sixty years since. Faraday expressed the belief that matter might exist in four states, though we know it but in three. To solid, fluid, and gaseous he added radiant; and Mr. Crookes shows matter in this "radiant" state. His beautiful experiments, with their striking, and to the ordinary mind inconceivable, results, were one of the greatest attractions of the meeting of the British Association (1879). "The phenomena in these exhausted tubes reveal," says Mr. Crookes, "to physical

Nature Infinitely Elastic.

357 science a new world-a world where matter exists in a fourth state, where the corpuscular theory of light holds good, and where light does not always move in a straight line, but where we can never enter, and in which we must be content to observe and experiment from the outside."

Far from the elements being somewhat inadequate, or all used in the many singularly contrasted substances exhibited in Nature, only a few are largely present. As a mass, the outside contents of the globe consist of few elements; silicon, iron, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, carbon. Animals and vegetables are varieties, chiefly of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen. The broad ocean, throughout its vast bulk, is narrowed to two elements-oxygen and hydrogen; other substances are indeed a small part of it. Considering that the human body, progressing to suitable form and fit use for the genius of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, the piety of Wicklyff, is resolvable into a few elementary atoms, we discern that the band encircling natural uniformity and invariability of law is infinitely elastic.

It might be thought that the mathematical basis of the forms of matter necessitated such invariable procedure, and production of like by like, that the whole future could be calculated and formulated; but Mr. Babbage, in his ninth "Bridgewater Treatise," shows that we have no right to expect invariable and fixed process. Deviations of the most startling character may co-exist with controlling law. A calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,001,. then leaps; and, instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002, "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000." The law thus changes :

"For a hundred or even for a thousand terms, they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find