We have seen powerful evidences that the construction of this globe and its associates; and, inferentially, that of all the other globes in space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are the expression of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws which are in like manner an expression of his will? (p. 154, 1st edition).
And creation "operating by law" is constantly cited as relieving the Creator from trouble about insignificant details.
I am perplexed to picture to myself the state of mind which accepts these verbal juggleries. It is intelligible that the Creator should operate according to such rules as he might think fit to lay down for himself (and therefore according to law); but that would leave the operation of his will just as much a direct personal act as it would be under any other { 283} circumstances. I can also understand that (as in Leibnitz's caricature of Newton's views) the Creator might have made the cosmical machine, and, after setting it going, have left it to itself till it needed repair. But then, by the supposition, his personal responsibility would have been involved in all that it did, just as much as a dynamiter is responsible for what happens when he has set his machine going and left it to explode.
The only hypothesis which gives a sort of mad consistency to the Vestigiarian's views is the supposition that laws are a kind of angels or demiurgoi, who, being supplied with the Great Architect's plan, were permitted to settle the details among themselves. Accepting this doctrine, the conception of royal laws and plebeian laws, and of those more than Homeric contests in which the big laws "wreck" the little ones, becomes quite intelligible. And, in fact, the honour of the paternity of those remarkable ideas which come into full flower in the preacher's discourse, must, so far as my imperfect knowledge goes, be attributed to the author of the _Vestiges_.
But the author of the _Vestiges_ is not the only writer who is responsible for the current pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang about the term "law." When I wrote my paper about "Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," I had not read a work by the Duke of Argyll, _The Reign of Law_, which, I believe, has enjoyed, possibly still enjoys, a widespread popularity. But the vivacity of the Duke's attack led me to think it possible that criticisms directed elsewhere might have come home to { 284} him. And, in fact, I find that the second chapter of the work in question, which is entitled "Law; its definitions," is, from my point of view, a sort of "summa" of pseudo-scientific philosophy. It will be worth while to examine it in some detail.