r her reason. She does not muddle her head
until it imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a
falling tower. But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they
imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree
and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had
found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those
facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things
physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one
incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing
the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black
riddles make a white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science they
are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting
conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's
Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law.
A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and
enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects. If there
is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is
an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea
of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take
liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can
turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into
a fairy prince. As _ideas_, the egg and the chicken are further off each
other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a
chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that
certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard
them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic
manner of science and the "Laws of Nature." When we are asked why eggs
turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the
fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to
horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer
that it is _magic_. It is not a "law," for we do not understand its
general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it
happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always
happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that
we