law is
res noumenon
; the thing is
res phenomenon
A physical law, in the right sense of the term, is the sufficient cause of the appearance, —
causa sub-faciens
.
P.S. What a deeply interesting volume might be written on the symbolic import of the primary relations and dimensions of space — long, broad, deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left, horizontal, perpendicular, oblique: — and then the order of causation, or that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher the lower would want its intelligibility: without the lower the higher could not have existed. The infant is a riddle of which the man is the solution; but the man could not exist but with the infant as his antecedent.
Ib.