(27.) This use of the word _law_, however, our readers will of course perceive has relation to us as understanding, rather than to the materials of which the universe consists as obeying, certain rules. To obey a law, to act in _compliance_ with a rule, supposes an understanding and a will, a power of complying or not, in the being who obeys and complies, which we do not admit as belonging to mere matter. The Divine Author of the universe cannot be supposed to have laid down particular laws, enumerating all individual contingencies, which his materials have understood and obey,--this would be to attribute to him the imperfections of human legislation;--but rather, by creating them, endued with certain fixed qualities and powers, he has impressed them in their origin with the _spirit_, not the _letter_, of his law, and made all their subsequent combinations and relations inevitable consequences of this first impression, by which, however, we would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of his direct power in maintaining the system of nature, or the ultimate emanation of every energy which material agents exert from his immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws. (28.) The discoveries of modern chemistry have gone far to establish the truth of an opinion entertained by some of the ancients, that the universe consists of distinct, separate, indivisible _atoms_, or individual beings so minute as to escape our senses, except when united by millions, and by this aggregation making up bodies of even the smallest visible bulk; and we have the strongest evidence that, although there exist great and essential differences in individuals among these atoms, they may yet all be arranged in a very limited number of groups or classes, all the individuals of each of which are, to all intents and purposes, _exactly alike_ in all their properties. Now, when we see a great number of things precisely alike, we do not believe this similarity to have originated except from a common principle independent of them; and that we recognise this likeness, chiefly by the identity of their deportment under similar circumstances, strengthens rather than weakens the conclusion. A line of spinning-jennies[10], or a regiment of soldiers dressed exactly alike, and going through precisely the same evolutions, gives us no idea of independent existence: we must see them act out of concert before we can believe them to have independent wills and properties, not impressed on them from without. And this conclusion, which would be strong even were there only two individuals precisely alike in _all_ respects and _for ever_, acquires irresistible force when their number is multiplied beyond the power of imagination to conceive. If we mistake not, then, the discoveries alluded to effectually destroy the idea of an _eternal self-existent matter_, by giving to each of its atoms the essential characters, at once, of a _manufactured article_, and a _subordinate agent_.