itself
be thought and reason,"--this argument, I say, must now for ever be
abandoned by reasonable men. No doubt it would be easy to point to several
speculative thinkers who have previously combated this argument,[21] and
from this fact some readers will perhaps be inclined to judge, from a false
analogy, that as the argument in question has withstood previous assaults,
it need not necessarily succumb to the present one. Be it observed,
however, that the present assault differs from all previous assaults, just
as demonstration differs from speculation. What has hitherto been but mere
guess and unwarrantable assertion has now become a matter of the greatest
certainty. That the argument from General Laws is a futile argument, is no
longer a matter of unverifiable opinion: it is as sure as is the most
fundamental axiom of science. That the argument will long remain in
illogical minds, I doubt not; but that it is from henceforth quite
inadmissible in accurate thinking, there can be no question. For the sake,
however, of impressing this fact still more strongly upon such readers as
have been accustomed to rely upon this argument, and so find it difficult
thus abruptly to reverse the whole current of their thoughts,--for the sake
of such, I shall here add a few remarks with the view of facilitating the
conception of an universal Order existing independently of Mind.

Sec. 32. Interpreting the mazy nexus of phenomena only by the facts which
science has revealed, and what conclusion are we driven to accept? Clearly,
looking to what has been said in the last two sections, that from the time
when the process of evolution first began,--from the time before the
condensation of the nebula had showed any signs of commencing,--every
subsequent change or event of evolution was _necessarily bound_ to ensue;
else force and matter have not been persistent. How then, it will be asked,
did the vast nexus of natural laws which is now observable ever begin or
continue to be? In this way. When the first womb of things was pregnant
with all the future, there would probably have been existent at any rate
not more than one of the formulae which we now call natural laws. This one
law, of course, would have been the law of gravitation. Here we may take
our stand. It does not signify whether there ever was a time when
gravitation was not,--_i.e._, if ever there was a time when matter, _as we
now know it_, was not in existence;--for if there ever was