ditions which are indispensable to their mutual
action; and that these requirements leave ample room for those manifold
adjustments and adaptations on which the argument from "design," in
favor of the Perfections and Providence of God, is founded. The mere
recognition of "general laws," considered simply as the "cooerdination of
facts," and especially as exclusive of the idea of causation or
efficiency, can never satisfy the demands of reason, nor exhaust the
legitimate functions of Science. For, in the expressive words of Sir
John Herschell, "It is high time that philosophers, both physical and
others, should come to some nearer agreement than seems to prevail, as
to the meaning they intend to convey in speaking of causes and
causation. On the one hand, we are told that the grand object of
physical inquiry is to explain the nature of phenomena by referring them
to their _causes_; on the other, that the inquiry into 'causes' is
altogether vain and futile, and that Science has no concern but with the
discovery of 'laws.' Which of these is the truth? Or are both views of
the matter true _on a different interpretation of the terms_? Whichever
view we may take, or whichever interpretation we may adopt, there is
one thing certain,--the extreme inconvenience of such a state of
language. This can only be reformed by a careful analysis of the widest
of all human generalizations, disentangling from one another the
innumerable shades of meaning which have got confounded together in its
progress, and establishing among them a rational classification and
nomenclature.... A 'law' may be a _rule of action_, but it is not
_action_. The great First Agent may lay down a rule of action for
himself, and that rule may become known to man by observation of its
uniformity; but, constituted as our minds are, and having that conscious
knowledge of _causation_ which is forced upon us by the reality of the
distinction between _intending_ a thing, and _doing_ it, we can never
substitute the 'rule' for the 'act.'"[191]

But while the existence of "natural laws" and the operation of "second
causes" are equally admitted, and yet duly discriminated, large room is
still left for diversities of opinion or of statement in regard to _the
precise relation which God sustains to His works_, and especially in
regard to _the nature and method of His agency in connection with the
use of "second causes_." Hence have arisen the various theories which
have appear