latly contrary to all experience, then we must
acknowledge that the idea of cause asks to confirm it something quite
independent of experience, that is abstract. But such examples are
common. We never saw two objects continue to approach without meeting;
but we are constrained to believe that lines of certain descriptions can
forever approach and never meet.

The uniformity of sequence is, in fact, in the physical sciences never
assumed to express the relation of cause and effect, until the
connection between the antecedent and consequent can be set forth
abstractly in mathematical formulae. The sequence of the planetary
motions was discovered by Kepler, but it was reserved for Newton to
prove the theoretical necessity of this motion and establish its
mathematical relations. The sequence of sensations to impressions is
well known, but the law of the sequence remains the desideratum in
psychology.[92-1]

Science, therefore, has been correctly defined as "the knowledge of
system." Its aim is to ascertain the laws of phenomena, to define the
"order in things." Its fundamental postulate is that order exists, that
all things are "lapped in universal law." It acknowledges no exception,
and it considers that all law is capable of final expression in
quantity, in mathematical symbols. It is the manifest of reason, "whose
unceasing endeavor is to banish the idea of Chance."[93-1]

We thus see that its postulate is the same as that of the religious
sentiment. Wherein then do they differ? Not in the recognition of
chance. Accident, chance, does not exist for the religious sense in any
stage of its growth. Everywhere religion proclaims in the words of
Dante:--

"le cose tutte quante,
Hann' ordine tra loro;"

everywhere in the more optimistic faiths it holds this order, in the
words of St. Augustine, to be one "most fair, of excellent
things."[93-2]

What we call "the element of chance" is in its scientific sense that of
which we do not know the law; while to the untutored religious mind it
is the manifestation of divine will. The Kamschatkan, when his boat is
lost in the storm, attributes it to the vengeance of a god angered
because he scraped the snow from his shoes with a knife, instead of
using a piece of wood; if a Dakota has bad luck in hunting, he says it
is caused by his wife stepping over a bone and thus irritating a
spirit. The idea of cause, the sentiment of order, is as strong as ever,
but it d