this is either — first, equivalent to the assertion of a
prima et nuda materia
, so happily ridiculed by the author of
Hudibras
, and which under any scheme of cosmogony is a mere phantom, having its whole and sole substance in an impotent effort of the imagination or sensuous fancy, but which is utterly precluded by the doctrine of creation which it in like manner negatives: — or secondly, the words assert a self-destroying absurdity, namely, the antecedence of a thing to itself; as if having asserted that water consisted of hydrogen = 77, and oxygen = 23, I should talk of water as existing before the creation of hydrogen and oxygen. All laws, indeed, are constitutive; and it would require a longer train of argument than a note can contain, to shew what a thing is; but this at least is quite certain, that in the order of thought it must be posterior to the law that constitutes it. But such in fact was Hooker's meaning, and the word, thing, is used
proleptice
in favour of the imagination, as appears from the sentences that follow, in which the creative idea is declared to be the law of the things thereby created. A productive idea, manifesting itself and its reality in the product is a law; and when the product is phænomenal, (that is, an object of the outward senses) it is a law of nature.