Silently and insensibly their experiences have been pressing men on towards the conclusion thus drawn. Not out of a conscious regard for these reasons, but from a habit of thought which these reasons formulate and justify, all minds have been advancing towards a belief in the constancy of surrounding coexistences and sequences. Familiarity with concrete uniformities has generated the abstract conception of uniformity—the idea of _Law_; and this idea has been in successive generations slowly gaining fixity and clearness. Especially has it been thus among those whose knowledge of natural phenomena is the most extensive—men of science. The mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the chemist, severally acquainted with the vast accumulations of uniformities established by their predecessors, and themselves daily adding new ones as well as verifying the old, acquire a far stronger faith in law than is ordinarily possessed. With them this faith, ceasing to be merely passive, becomes an active stimulus to inquiry. Wherever there exist phenomena of which the dependence is not yet ascertained, these most cultivated intellects, impelled by the conviction that here too there is some invariable connexion, proceed to observe, compare, and experiment; and when they discover the law to which the phenomena conform, as they eventually do, their general belief in the universality of law is further strengthened. So overwhelming is the evidence, and such the effect of this discipline, that to the advanced student of Nature, the proposition that there are lawless phenomena has become not only incredible but almost inconceivable. This habitual recognition of law which already distinguishes modern thought from ancient thought, must spread among men at large. The fulfilment of fresh predictions that are made possible by every new step, and the further {159} command gained over Nature’s forces, prove to the uninitiated the validity of scientific generalizations and the doctrine they illustrate. Widening education is daily diffusing among the mass of men that knowledge of these generalizations which has been hitherto confined to the few. And as fast as this diffusion goes on, the belief of the scientific must become the belief of the world at large. * * * * *