“Thirdly, as applied to individual forces, the measure of whose operation has been more or less defined or ascertained.”
“Fourthly, as applied to those combinations of forces which have reference to the fulfilment of purposes or the discharge of functions.”
“Fifthly, as applied to abstract conceptions of the mind—not corresponding with any actual phenomena, but deduced therefrom as axioms of thought, necessary to an understanding of them. Law, in this sense, is a reduction of the phenomena, not merely to an order of facts, but to an order of thought.”
“These leading significations of the word Law,” says the Duke, “all circle round the three great questions which science asks of nature, the what, the how, and the why.”
“What are the facts in their established order?”
“How, i.e. from what physical causes does that order come to be? What relation do they bear to purpose, to the fulfilment of intention, to the discharge of function?”
Such are the multiform acceptations attached by scientific men to the term “law,” yet the Duke is not quite certain whether they may not be even more numerous. It is evident that if they are all imported into the question of the credibility of miracles, our position must resemble that of persons who are compelled to fight in the dark; and that the question whether an occurrence is natural or supernatural, whether it is contrary to, or a violation of the laws of nature, or above nature, and many others which enter into this controversy must be without definite meaning. It is clear that unless we can restrict the word “law” to one, or at most, two definite meanings, we shall get into hopeless confusion, or to speak more correctly, we shall open the gate wide for the introduction of any number of fallacies.
The primary conception implied by the term “law” [pg 034] is unquestionably one which is strictly applicable to man and his actions, and can only be applied metaphorically, and in some systems of thought after a considerable change of meaning, to the facts and phenomena of the material universe. A law is a rule of action for human conduct and nothing more. Such rules of conduct for the most part pre-suppose that they are imposed by some external authority, which has the right or the power to enforce obedience to them; or else that the person obeying them has an inward feeling that it is right to do so, and knows that his conscience will reproach him for the omission. But law, strictly speaking, is simply the rule of action itself, as for instance, an Act of Parliament; but as in practice all such rules are enforced by a sanction of some kind, our conception of a law is also united with that of a lawgiver, who has both the right and the power to enforce it.
It follows therefore that such a conception is essentially a moral one. It is also intimately united with the knowledge that we possess the power to act or forbear acting in conformity with its dictates, and, if we prefer it, of taking the consequences of disobedience. But when such a conception is transferred to material nature it loses a considerable portion of its original significancy.
In its application therefore to physical science, it may with strict propriety be used to denote an invariable order of events: and if the human analogy could hold in physics it might be used to include the power which originated and enforced them. But as the consideration of will or purpose forms no portion of strictly physical science, and is expressly excluded from it, the term law as used by it ought to denote the invariable order of sequences, and not to include [pg 035] the forces which generate them. Unless this distinction is carefully observed, we shall be in danger of introducing into our reasonings human analogies to which there is nothing corresponding in nature viewed as a mere body of unintelligent forces.