LETTER VI.

LAWS OF NATURE.

AFTER the complete exposure by Dugald Stewart of Montesquieu's confused employment of the term law at the commencement of his celebrated treatise แ Esprit des Lois," it is surprising to find similar confusion frequently re-appearing in the present day.

Mr. Stewart's words are, "Even the great Montesquieu in the very first chapter of his principal work, has lost himself in a fruitless attempt to explain its meaning, when by a simple statement of the essential distinction between its literal and metaphorical acceptations, he might have at once cleared up the mystery. After telling us that 'laws in their most extensive signification are the necessary relations (les rapports nécessaires) which arise from the nature of things, and that in this sense, all beings have their laws; - that the Deity has his laws; the material world its laws; intelligences superior to man their laws; the brutes their laws; man his laws;' he proceeds to remark, 'That the moral world is far from being so well governed as the material; for the former, although it has its

F

laws which are invariable, does not observe these laws so constantly as the latter.' It is evident (proceeds Mr. Stewart) that this remark derives whatever plausibility it possesses from a play upon words; from confounding moral laws with physical; or in plainer terms, from confounding laws which are addressed by a legislator to intelligent beings, with those general conclusions concerning the established order of the universe to which, when legitimately inferred from an induction sufficiently extensive, philosophers have metaphorically applied the title of Laws of Nature." *

One of the particular evils which I am desirous of emphatically pointing out as resulting from the confusion of two meanings animadverted upon in the foregoing extract, is a very lax and inaccurate mode of speaking of the infraction or violation of the laws of nature.

It is plain enough that a law of morality may be violated, but it seems not to be generally understood that a law of nature is in a very different position; and accordingly the infraction of both is often indiscriminately spoken of, as if something took place with regard to material laws corresponding to a breach of moral laws.

Everybody understands what it is to violate a moral law. A thief breaks the law thou shalt not steal. He does steal. He does that which the law

* Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II Chap. 2, Sect. 4.

forbids him to do. The deed is done although the law declares that it shall not be done.

But mark how different it is with a law of nature. It is a law of nature that the fumes of burning charcoal in a close room destroy life. A man inadvertently shuts himself up in a chamber without a vent and warmed by a pan of that substance in a state of ignition. He perishes. Here the writers I have in view would affirm that the man had violated a law of nature; but instead of a law of nature being violated, it was in truth completely carried out. Nature (if I may adopt the florid language common on such topics) proclaims her law that the fumes of charcoal destroy life, and she enforces it with unfaltering rigour.

What was violated on this occasion was clearly not any law of nature but a law of prudence or wisdom,—if we may dignify it by so high a name that teaches us to avoid subjecting ourselves to the deadly action of the law which nature has clearly proclaimed and will unsparingly execute. In plain language the poor man in my hypothetical instance, was ignorant or heedless of the properties of the things he meddled with and suffered in consequence.

And so it is throughout. Prudential maxims may be set at nought or infringed, ethical rules may be broken, the enactments of the legislature may be violated, but the laws of nature cannot in any sense be correctly spoken of as the subjects of similar infraction.

It is obvious enough, however, that rules of conduct, maxims of prudence, and precepts of wisdom, must, in order to be effectual for their purpose, be founded on the laws of nature; or, in other words, be conformable to the qualities of things. Wisdom and prudence require for their perfection an accurate knowledge of the physical and mental agents amongst which we are placed, so that wisdom may select her instruments, and prudence be able to point out what to avoid: but without the undeviating operation of these agents, or, in different language, the uniform connexion of causes and effects, no rules of conduct could be formed and wisdom and prudence would be vain.

There is one objection to the tenour of the preceding remarks which it may be worth while to consider, especially as to do so will afford opportunities of further elucidating the distinctions here drawn.

It may be said that the moral law thou shalt not steal is just as unalterable as any physical law, so that in this respect the two kinds of law are on an equality, and one may be spoken of in the same language as the other.

This brings us to a minuter examination of what infringing, or breaking, or violating a law, signifies.

When we say that a moral law is violated we certainly do not mean that the law itself is altered.

The violation consists in some one acting con

trary to it, while it still continues in force and unchanged. On one side is the unalterable precept; on the other the unconformable conduct. But the precept is as essential to the violation as the action which contravenes it; just as in the deviation of a right line A from parallelism with another right line B, the second line is as necessary to the deviation as the first.

In what is called a law of nature on the other hand the precept is wanting: there is no injunction and consequently it is impossible to act contrary to it. In truth the phrase acting contrary to the law, a phrase so clear and definite when applied to ethical precepts or legal enactments, has no real meaning when applied to the laws of nature. You cannot in any conceivable sense act contrary to them. Do what you will, you must submit to them as they are. Whether you stifle yourself with the fumes of charcoal in a chamber hermetically sealed, or preserve your life by providing a proper vent for the suffocating gas, the laws of nature are equally observed; a violation of such laws is equally impossible.

The laws of nature are in truth, as every philosopher knows and as Mr. Stewart clearly points out, nothing more than generalised facts, and it is only by a metaphor that the title in question is assigned to them. To deduce consequences from a literal interpretation of the figurative expression, is to plunge into error.