The topics treated are;
1. The supernatural;
2. Law—its definitions;
3. Contrivance, a necessity arising out of the reign of law;
4. Apparent exceptions to the supremacy of purpose;
5. Creation by law;
6. Law in the realm of mind;
7. Law in politics.
These are great topics, and are intimately connected with theology and philosophy, faith and religion. But what has the author proposed to himself in treating them? What general view of religion or of science does he seek to bring out, illustrate, or establish? We can find in his book no satisfactory answer to either of these questions. He is a savant, not a philosopher, and there seems to be in his mind and in his book the same want of unity and wholeness, the same tendency to lose itself in details, that there is and must be in the special or inductive sciences when not subordinated to a general or a superior science, to be supplied only by theology or philosophy, which deals with the ideal, the universal, and the necessary; and we find it impossible to harmonize the several special views which he takes, integrate them in any general view which it can be supposed that he accepts, or which he is not found, first or last, directly or indirectly impugning. We understand well enough his language, which is simple and clear, so far as the words and sentences go; we understand, too, the parts of his book taken separately; but we frankly confess our inability to put the several parts together and understand them as a whole.
Our first impression, on looking through the work, was that the author wished to harmonize the sciences with the great primary truths of religion, by showing that the universe in all its departments, laws, facts, and phenomena proceeds from a productive will under the direction of mind or intelligence, for a purpose or end. In this view the laws of nature, producing effects in their order, could be carried up for their first cause to the divine will, or that will itself using the instrumentality of laws or means it had itself created. To harmonize the sciences with faith, or to render them compatible with faith, all that would need to be done would be to show that since the so-called natural laws themselves depend wholly on God, they can never restrain his freedom, or compel him to act through them, and only through them. We will not say that he has not had something of the sort in view; but, certainly, not uniformly and steadily.
We thought, again, that having the same end in view, he wished to show that all things are produced according to one and the same dialectic law, and| therefore, that viewed as a whole, in its principle, medium, and end, as the external expression of the Holy Trinity, which God is in himself, the universe must be really dialectic, and strictly logical in all its parts. Creation is the external word of God, as the Son is his internal word or expression. As the Creator is in himself the supreme logic,
logic itself, creation as his expression ad extra, or external image, must be as a whole and in all its parts strictly logical, as St. Thomas implies when he says, "God is the similitude of all things—similitudo rerum omnium." Not that the type of God is in the creature, as the noble duke more than once implies; but that the type of the creature, of creation, is in God. Hence there can be no anomalies, no sophisms in the Creator's works; nothing arbitrary, capricious; but order must run through all, and all must be subjected to the law of order, implied in the doctrine of Scripture, "God hath made all things by weight and measure." The author, then, might be understood as attempting, by his knowledge of the physical sciences, to prove à posteriori that this is true, and to show that this law of order reigns in the world of matter and in the realm of mind, in the plant and in the animal, in science and in faith, in religion and in politics, as the universal law of creation. Hence, the possibility and reality of science, which consists in recognizing this law and tracing it in all things, little or great.
Some things, the author says, may be construed in favor of such a purpose, but he seems sometimes to be asserting the universal reign of law and at others to be censuring those who do assert it, and refuting those who maintain that life is the product of law: plainly showing that he does not understand law in the sense supposed, nor always in the same sense. His definitions of law also prove that he is a stranger to the view we suggest, and has his mind fixed on something quite different. The "root idea" of law, he says, is that of force; and he defines law to be in its primary sense "will enforcing itself with power"—a very erroneous definition, by the way, for law is will directed by reason. He also understands by it the means, medium, or instrument by which will creates, for he does not seem to hold that God creates from nothing, or without means distinguishable from himself; so we are thrown back, and again puzzled to determine what he really does mean. We ask ourselves if he is not a really profound theologian, master of the deepest Christian philosophy, and simply endeavoring to translate it into the language of the savans, or if he is not totally ignorant of that philosophy, suggesting to those who know it far more than he has ever dreamed of himself? Something almost inclines us to think the former; but upon the whole we incline to the latter, and conclude that the less profound in philosophy and theology we regard him, the greater the justice we shall do him.
The author, as near as we can come at his meaning, holds that all action of the divine will is by law, and that law is the means or instrument by which it acts and produces its effects; or, in other words, God always and everywhere makes use of natural laws or forces to effect his purposes. The definition he has given of law in its primary sense, "will enforcing itself with power," would seem to identify it with God himself, or at least with God willing and effecting his purpose; but he says: "Law is taken in certain derivative senses, in which hardly a trace of the primary sense is retained: