The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, February 1885

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

But the first thing that men learned, as soon as they began to study nature carefully, was that some events take place in regular order and that some causes always give rise to the same effects. The sun always rises on one side and sets on the other side of the sky; the changes of the moon follow one another in the same order and with similar intervals; some stars never sink below the horizon of the place in which we live; the seasons are more or less regular; water always flows down-hill; fire always burns; plants grow up from seed and yield seed, from which like plants grow up again; animals are born, grow, reach maturity, and die, age after age, in the same way. Thus the notion of an order of nature and of a fixity in the relation of cause and effect between things gradually entered the minds of men. So far as such order prevailed it was felt that things were explained; while the things that could not be explained were said to have come about by chance, or to happen by accident.

But the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be nothing but complexity; until, at present, no one is so foolish as to believe that anything happens by chance, or that there are any real accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause. And if we say that a thing happens by chance, everybody admits that all we really mean is, that we do not know its cause or the reason why that particular thing happens. Chance and accident are only aliases[1] of ignorance.

At this present moment, as I look out of my window, it is raining and blowing hard, and the branches of the trees are waving wildly to and fro. It may be that a man has taken shelter under one of these trees; perhaps, if a stronger gust than usual comes, a branch will break, fall upon the man, and seriously hurt him. If that happens it will be called an “accident,” and the man will perhaps say that by “chance” he went out, and then “chanced” to take refuge under the tree, and so the “accident” happened. But there is neither chance nor accident in the matter. The storm is the effect of causes operating upon the atmosphere, perhaps hundreds of miles away; every vibration of a leaf is the consequence of the mechanical force of the wind acting on the surface exposed to it; if the bough breaks, it will do so in consequence of the relation between its strength and the force of the wind; if it falls upon the man it will do so in consequence of the action of other definite natural causes; and the position of the man under it is only the last term in a series of causes and effects, which have followed one another in natural order, from that cause, the effect of which was his setting out, to that the effect of which was his stepping under the tree.

But, inasmuch as we are not wise enough to be able to unravel all these long and complicated series of causes and effects which lead to the falling of the branch upon the man, we call such an event an accident.

When we have made out by careful and repeated observation that something is always the cause of a certain effect, or that certain events always take place in the same order, we speak of the truth thus discovered as a law of nature. Thus it is a law of nature that anything heavy falls to the ground if it is unsupported; it is a law of nature that, under ordinary conditions, lead is soft and heavy, while flint is hard and brittle; because experience shows us that heavy things always do fall if they are unsupported, that, under ordinary conditions, lead is always soft, and that flint is always hard.

In fact, everything that we know about the powers and properties of natural objects and about the order of nature may properly be termed a law of nature. But it is desirable to remember that which is very often forgotten, that the laws of nature are not the causes of the order of nature, but only our way of stating as much as we have made out of that order. Stones do not fall to the ground in consequence of the law just stated, as people sometimes carelessly say; but the law is the way of asserting that which invariably happens when heavy bodies at the surface of the earth, stones among the rest, are free to move.

The laws of nature are, in fact, in this respect, similar to the laws which men make for the guidance of their conduct toward one another. There are laws about the payment of taxes, and there are laws against stealing or murder. But the law is not the cause of a man’s paying his taxes, nor is it the cause of his abstaining from theft and murder. The law is simply a statement of what will happen to a man if he does not pay his taxes, and if he commits theft or murder; and the cause of his paying his taxes, or abstaining from crime (in the absence of any better motive) is the fear of consequences which is the effect of his belief in that statement. A law of man tells what we may expect society will do under certain circumstances; and a law of nature tells us what we may expect natural objects will do under certain circumstances. Each contains information addressed to our intelligence, and except so far as it Influences our intelligence, it is merely so much sound or writing.

While there is this much analogy between human and natural laws, however, certain essential differences between the two must not be overlooked. Human law consists of commands addressed to voluntary agents, which they may obey or disobey; and the law is not rendered null and void by being broken. Natural laws, on the other hand, are not commands, but assertions respecting the invariable order of nature; and they remain laws only so long as they can be shown to express that order. To speak of the violation, or the suspension, of a law of nature is an absurdity. All that the phrase can really mean is that, under certain circumstances the assertion contained in the law is not true; and the just conclusion is, not that the order of nature is interrupted, but that we have made a mistake in stating that order. A true natural law is a universal rule, and, as such, admits of no exceptions.

Again, human laws have no meaning apart from the existence of human society. Natural laws express the general course of nature, of which human society forms only an insignificant fraction.

If nothing happens by chance, but everything in nature follows a definite order, and if the laws of nature embody that which we have been able to learn about the order of nature in accurate language, then it becomes very important for us to know as many as we can of these laws of nature, in order that we may guide our conduct by them.