But is it true, as a matter of fact, that physical science throws discredit upon these three propositions? Let us examine this question a little. I must of necessity be brief in the limits to which I am here confined, and I must use the plainest language, for I am writing not for the school but for the general reader. Brevity and plainness of speech do not, however, necessarily imply superficiality, which, in truth, is not unfrequently veiled by a prolix parade of pompous technicalities. First, then, as to causation. The shepherd in the play, when asked by Touchstone, "Hast any philosophy in thee?" replies, "No more but that I know that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep: and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun," and upon the strength of this knowledge is pronounced by the clown to be "a natural philosopher." Well, is not in truth the "science" of the mere physicist, however accomplished, _in pari materia_ with that of honest Corin? He observes certain sequences of facts, certain antecedents and consequents, but of the _nexus_ between them he knows no more than the most ignorant and foolish of peasants. He talks, indeed, of the laws of Nature, but the expression, convenient as it is in some respects, and true as it is in a sense--and that the highest--is extremely likely to mislead, as he uses it ordinarily. What he calls a law of Nature is only an induction from observed phenomena, a formula which serves compendiously to express them. As Dr. Mozley has well observed in his Bampton Lectures, "we only know of law in Nature, in the sense of recurrences in Nature, classes of facts, _like_ facts in Nature:"[41] "In vain the sage with retrospective eye Would from the apparent what conclude the why;"