CHAPTER I. THE ORIGIN OF LAW. $1 The Universal § 1.-Social life is the natural consequence of the human organism and, as such, necessarily Law of Nature. develops itself in conformity with the Universal Law of Nature. The Universal Law of Nature is the composite effect of the various natural conditions which are at work in the Universe and which are called Laws of Nature, in consequence of the regularity with which they appear to our consciousness. Creation. As laws are the manifestations of forces, and The Spirit of effects always indicate causes, we are accustomed to call the causes of these natural conditions the forces or powers of Nature. For the same reason the Universal Law of Nature, which is the constructing unity of the systems formed by the Laws of Nature, is correlative to the idea of a Universal Cause, Force or Power, and as this First Cause is made known to us, by irrefragible induction, as the absolute motor, force or life of all that we are conscious of in Nature, it may be represented, by way of a hypothesis which is based on natural phenomena, by the term Spirit of Creation. In inorganic and organic evolution, the Spirit of Creation is presented to our senses by the forces in matter and by the vital element in organisms. In the evolution of the mind, on the other hand, the Spirit of Creation is presented to our senses by that consciousness of its influence, Hypotheses in general. which is called the Soul, that is to say the highest development of that motive power in the evolution of the mind known as Feeling, which will be described in the following pages. Thus it is to Matter and Force, which constitute the primary manifestations of the Absolute, that all natural phenomena must be traced.* But Science is not yet able to trace all natural influences, by consistent induction, to their primor dial causes, nor has Science reached as yet "that highest unification which Philosophy seeks.' We are often hardly aware of the effects of the Laws of Nature, which in scientific language are called phenomena. Thus philosophical or speculative reasoning must often supply the place of Science, or it has, under the name of hypothesis, to be slipped into some scientific formula to pave the way for its comprehension by the human mind. Such is the case with all methods adopted for the purpose of explaining the course of the development of the Laws of Nature. Thus it is also with the interpretation of natural phenomena in the description of organic evolution, through reproduction, perpetuation and modifications of the forms of living beings-(not of their origin, as people unacquainted with Darwin's works often think)-in the manner described by Professor Darwin in his famous books, called "The Origin of Species" (the term Species being the scientific equivalent of forms of organisms) and "The Descent of Man." Darwin's theories regarding * “ A further inference was, that Philosophy, as we understand it, "must not unify separate concrete phenomena only; and must not "stop short with unifying separate classes of concrete phenomena, "but must unify all concrete phenomena. If the law of operation "of each factor holds true throughout the Cosmos; so, too, must the "law of their co-operation. And hence in comprehending the Cosmos "as conforming to this law of co-operation, must consist that highest "unification which Philosophy seeks." HERBERT SPENCER. First Principles, $ 186. the causes of the developmental changes in the structural forms and physiological functions and properties of organisms, called variation, adaptation, survival of the fittest, &c., are hypothetical statements of causes which, (whatever may be the controversial nature of philosophical assumptions, when taken up in scientific propositions), go far towards forming a development hypothesis explanatory of the Universal Law of Nature, or what we called the manifestations of the Spirit of Creation, by aiding the human mind to infer, with the nearest possible accuracy and with a prestige of scientific plausibility, the existence of causes which it could not arrive at through direct demonstration.* These hypothetical suppositions are at present indispensable to natural science in general, but particularly to physiology and psychology, in order to supply the want of sufficient data to fill up the gaps yet remaining in the corroboration of facts, as well as to make up for the imperfection or inadequacy of our Physico-Mental Organism, called Reason. "The privilege," says Professor Oscar Schmidt, "on which the progress of Science generally relies, is that of investigating, according to determined points of view, and accepting probabilities as truth in the garb of scientific conjecture or hypothesis."† * Evolution, whether by the process of successive changes of conditions "through multiplication of effects," as Mr. Herbert Spencer described it before Darwin, or by natural selection, which is the Darwinian theory, or whether both combined, (as Mr. Herbert Spencer accepts it, in the Fourth Edition [1880] of his "First Principles"), is as good as an established fact of history, but the causes of these effects are yet a hypothesis, and it is with truth that Professor Huxley said on the evidence of paleontology: "the evolution of many existing forms of animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but an historical fact; it is only the nature of the physiological factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to discussion." (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1878). † PROF. OSCAR SCHMIDT. The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism. Chapter on the Pedigree of Vertebrate Animals (Henry S. King & Co., London, 1875), p. 248. |