or to deduce any standards by which to be guided in future. If they are the mere culminations of decrees issued an eternity ago, they are not certainly the result of law. If that which exists does so, not of necessity, but by external compulsion, there is no necessary relation by which we may determine that which will exist by that which now exists or has existed. All things are appointed both as to time and place. They are necessary, it is true, but they are not dependent; each has an independent, co-ordinate existence.

Let us see what effect such a belief must have upon the pursuit of knowledge. Evidently it is incompatible with it. For vain would be the attempt to acquire knowledge if there were no necessary connection between truths. To attempt to store away in the mind any number of independent facts is found to be a most difficult task at best. What, then, shall we say of an attempt to discover all the truths of the universe where each is absolutely independent of every other? And of what use would all this knowledge be, even if it were possible to obtain it? What assurance would we have that similar events would occur under similar circumstances? A knowledge of facts is of very little use to us unless by such knowledge we can establish some law. Of what use is the study of history to the statesman if he can derive no principles therefrom to guide him in framing measures for the government of men? Yet this could not be the case if all facts were merely foreordained, since in that case, though every fact would have a cause, yet no fact would have a necessary cause. The cause of every fact would be the same, viz., the will of the foreordainer, and one effect would be as liable to result from that cause as another. There would be no clew by which effects could be traced. When the cause was reached, it would not be the particular cause of any particular effect, but a general cause of all effects. Hence every effort to acquire useful knowledge would be fruitless. Every one who really believes this doctrine feels this; and, if there be any who profess to believe it and still advocate the

pursuit of knowledge, it is because they have a certain unconscious intuition that their philosophy is unsound. They are, in fact, dualists.

But there is an intermediate school who claim that it is laws and not facts that are primordially established, and that these laws are thereafter never interfered with. The reply to this is that it is not foreordination at all. It is acknowledging the laws of the universe, but assigning to them a beginning and a creation, which is unnecessary, and betrays failure to conceive of an infinite series.

Fatalism is no better promoter of intelligence than either of the other doctrines considered. If it be not mere chance, it is at least the same thing to men, since no one knows the origin, cause, or purpose of any event, neither can know it. Therefore, it is useless to seek this knowledge; and here again, as before, the pursuit of knowledge is a fruitless task.

It makes no difference, therefore, which of the prevailing beliefs we take up: they all lead to this result. In depriving truth of its necessary character, and making it dependent upon something external to itself, they render it contingent and precarious. They assume that there either is no necessary law, or that whatever we call law is the creation of some external power, so as not to be reliable or permanent.

In contrast with all these dogmas stands the consistent philosophy of causal circumstances. The necessity of nature is a rational necessity. Its truths are such, not because they have been willed or decreed, but in and of themselves. By necessity it is only meant that phenomena are uniform and unvarying. The same circumstances must produce the same effect. If truths were not necessary, they could not be relied upon. If they were not unvarying, they could not be traced, discovered, or utilized.

Let us take an illustration. There is one class of truths which all are compelled to admit to be not only invariable and reliable, but absolute and necessary-the truths of mathematics. The most obstinate predestinarian could not, if he

would, doubt that twice two has always made four, and would have done so if no decree to that effect had ever gone forth. There is no supporter of special divine supervision so illogical as to believe that Omnipotence itself implies the power of making the three angles of a triangle either greater or less than two right angles. He may claim to believe this, but at the same time he must instinctively deny it. He knows it to be impossible, and that such truths are necessary. The necessitarian doctrine simply invests all truths with the attributes which are conceded to those of mathematics. It declares that truth can not exist except of itself, and therefore of necessity. It thus invests every branch of knowledge with the character of a science, and every science with the potential positivity of mathematics. The laws of barology, of optics, of mechanics, and of chemical proportions, are already found to be in themselves mathematically exact. And, as science advances, the same harmony is found to pervade all natural phenomena. See with what symmetry the petals, stamens, and pistils of flowers are arranged; consider the adaptation of the eye to the phenomena of light; contemplate the regularity of form in crystals, in snow-flakes, in rain-drops, and in the heavenly bodies!

But it may be said that nature abounds in irregularities; that while it is true that the normal form of the crystal is a polyhedron, yet in fact most crystals are not perfect, they are usually found wanting in some facet or angle or axis; that while theoretically the normal condition of solid matter may perhaps be said to be crystalline, yet in reality the great mass of it is amorphous; that while generally there is a wonderful symmetry about the vegetable world, yet the student is puzzled with a thousand anomalies and imperfections; that the same is true of the animal kingdom, and, indeed, of every department of experimental science or practical knowledge. And it may be plausibly claimed that herein consists the distinction between mathematical and all other truth. But the necessitarian is in no way staggered

by these facts. He puts the irregular as well as the regular under the dominion of law. There is a legitimate reason why every anomaly (if there still remains such a thing) should exist, a necessary cause for each deviation from the normal condition; and that cause is as absolute as the original law by which the normal condition is brought about. Furthermore, the variation is adapted to the cause of variation as precisely as the normal condition is adapted to the cause which produces it. A few illustrations may be furnished upon this point.

It may be said that the normal condition of a planetary orbit is an ellipse, yet no planet describes a perfect ellipse. All orbits are irregular. This at first puzzled and disheartened astronomers, and shook their faith in the order of the universe. But they finally found that each perturbation was occasioned; that it was not a mere deviation from, or violation of, the general law, but that, on the contrary, it was in obedience to another and a higher law-that of the mutual attraction of all matter. The absolute path of the moon, with reference to a fixed line, would present a figure which would be neither circle, ellipse, spiral, nor any other known curve. It would be considered irregular in every respect, yet every deviation from that fixed line is caused by some real and necessary circumstance. So true is this, that these irregularities have been calculated, and their true causes definitely ascertained. And if there is a reason for all these apparent anomalies, which when known will enable us to calculate in advance what the anomalies will be, why, then, is not the law that produces those anomalies as necessary as the law that governs the normal condition?

The irregularities of the more immediate objects around us, whether in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdom, are subject also to law. If a crystal has lost an angle, there has been some reason for it; some material circumstance has come in, and, for that particular case, set aside the general by its special law. If a flower is deficient in its regular

number of petals, the same explanation applies; if a tree has a gnarled trunk or an unsightly excrescence upon it, something has caused it; and the most hideous deformity in an animal or in a human being, the most monstrous abnormity of birth or physical growth, the most loathsome ulcer or the most terrible disease-all are the results of certain causative influences which are as necessary as the laws which govern the normal condition of the vegetable or the animal world. These pathological influences must exist, or the observed results would not follow; yet, given their existence, there is no escaping these results. But their existence is something real and tangible. It is not hidden, inscrutable, or mysterious; and by patient investigation the causes of these irregularities may be discovered.

It follows from these two principles-viz., first, that the effects observed must result of necessity from a definite cause actually existing in the nature of things; and, second, that whatever does so exist is capable of discovery—that every apparent anomaly in nature can be satisfactorily accounted for and scientifically explained. And, if this is true of apparent violations of law, a fortiori, it is true of those things which exist in manifest obedience to law. It is here that the immense superiority of the necessitarian theory becomes evident, since it opens up to man a field of otherwise forbidden fruit.

Truth is no longer a privileged commodity; it is the common property of all who want it. The pursuit of knowledge is no longer the pursuit of a phantom. It is a safe investment of time and talent. In learning that all truth is necessary, we have also learned that it is obtainable. For, if whatever exists or happens has and can have but one definite, necessary cause, without which it could not exist or happen, and with which it could not but exist or happen, then it only remains to ascertain that cause. And, since all causes consist of real and tangible circumstances or combinations of circumstances, they can in most cases be repro