the hypothetical cause of an
observed order of facts.

Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says: "Force, ascertained according to
some measure of its operation--this is indeed one of the definitions,
but only one, of a scientific law" (p. 71) I reply that it is a
definition which must be repudiated by every one who possesses an
adequate acquaintance with either the facts, or the philosophy, of
science, and be relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies.
If the human mind has never entertained this notion of "force," nay,
if it substituted bare invariable succession for the ordinary notion of
causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a constantly-observed
order, which generates a corresponding intensity of expectation in our
minds, would have exactly the same value, and play its part in real
science, exactly as it does now.

It is needless to extend further the present excursus on the origin
and history of modern pseudo-science. Under such high patronage as it
has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished until, nowadays, it is
becoming somewhat rampant. It has its weekly "Ephemerides," in which
every new pseudo-scientific mare's-nest is hailed and belauded with
the unconscious unfairness of ignorance; and an army of "reconcilers,"
enlisted in its service, whose business seems to be to mix the black
of dogma and the white of science into the neutral tint of what they
call liberal theology.

I remember that, not long after the publication of the "Vestiges," a
shrewd and sarcastic countryman of the author defined it as "cauld
kail made het again." A cynic might find amusement in the reflection
that, at the present time, the principles and the methods of the
much-vilified Vestigiarian are being "made het again"; and are not
only "echoed by the dome of St. Paul's," but thundered from the castle
of Inverary. But my turn of mind is not cynical, and I can but regret
the waste of time and energy bestowed on the endeavour to deal with
the most difficult problems of science, by those who have neither
undergone the discipline, nor possess the information, which are
indispensable to the successful issue of such an enterprise.

I have already had occasion to remark that the Duke of Argyll's views
of the conduct of controversy are different from mine; and this
much-to-be lamented discrepancy becomes yet more accentuated when the
Duke reaches biological topics. Anything that was good enough for Sir
Charles Lyell, in his depa