If a man were, by some extraordinary event, to find himself in a remote and unknown country, so entirely strange to him that he did not know whether there existed in it any law or government at all; he might in no long time ascertain whether the inhabitants were controlled by any superintending authority; and with a little attention he might determine also whether such authority were exercised with a prudent care for the happiness and well-being of its subjects, or without any regard and fitness to such ends; whether the country were governed by laws at all, and whether the laws were good. And according to the laws which he thus found prevailing, he would judge of the sagacity, and the purposes of the legislative power. By observing the laws of the material universe and their operation, we may hope, in a somewhat similar manner, to be able to direct our judgment concerning the government of the universe: concerning the mode in which the elements are regulated and controlled, their effects combined and balanced. And the general tendency of the results thus produced may discover to us something of the character of the power which has legislated for the material world. We are not to push too far the analogy thus suggested. There is undoubtedly a wide difference between the circumstances of man legislating for man, and God legislating for matter. Still we shall, it will appear, find abundant reason to admire the wisdom and the goodness which have established _the Laws of Nature_, however rigorously we may scrutinize the import of this expression. CHAPTER II. _On Laws of Nature._ When we speak of material nature as being governed by _laws_, it is sufficiently evident that we use the term in a manner somewhat metaphorical. The laws to which man’s attention is primarily directed are _moral_ laws; rules laid down for his actions; rules for the conscious actions of a person; rules which, as a matter of possibility, he may obey or may transgress; the latter event being combined, not with an impossibility, but with a penalty. But the _Laws of Nature_ are something different from this; they are rules for that which _things_ are to do and suffer; and this by no consciousness or will of theirs. They are rules describing the mode in which things _do_ act; they are invariably obeyed; their transgression is not punished, it is excluded. The language of a moral law is, man _shall_ not kill; the language of a Law of Nature is, a stone _will_ fall to the earth. These two kinds of laws direct the actions of persons and of things, by the sort of control of which persons and things are respectively susceptible; so that the metaphor is very simple; but it is proper for us to recollect that it is a metaphor, in order that we may clearly apprehend what is implied in speaking of the Laws of Nature.