Memories and Studies

But pass the Unknowable by, and turn to Spencer’s famous law of Evolution. “Science” works with several types of “law.” The most frequent and useful type is that of the “elementary law,” — that of the composition of forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like. Such laws declare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any actual future. They limit themselves to saying that if a certain character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it or follow it. The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the extent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to the accuracy with which they are definable.