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
d