antecedents. Equally undeniable is it that a knowledge of all the
antecedents and of all the laws of their movements would enable us to
foresee their results, for this, supposing the laws referred to to have
any real existence, is merely equivalent to the self-evident
proposition, that if we perceived certain causes and knew exactly how
they would act, we should know beforehand what would be their effects.
But what if there be no such laws? What if, on the showing of Mr. Buckle
himself and of his associates, there neither are nor can be?

The true nature of a scientific law has never been better explained than
by the writer already quoted as Mr. Buckle's dexterous apologist. A
scientific law is not an ordinance, but a record. It simply professes
to describe the order in which certain phenomena have been observed
uniformly to recur. It differs from a legislative enactment, in that the
one would be a law although it were never obeyed, whereas the other
would cease to be a law if one single exception to its statement could
be pointed out. Thus the Act of Parliament enjoining the registration of
births, would be equally a law although no births were ever registered;
whereas the law, that in a body moving in consequence of pressure the
momentum generated is in proportion to the pressure, would entirely
forfeit its legal character if, on any one occasion or in any
circumstances, momentum were generated in any other proportion. It is
essential, then, to the existence of a scientific law that there should
be uniformity of phenomena. But in human affairs uniformity is
impossible. No doubt, in exactly the same circumstances exactly the same
events must happen; but exactly the same aggregation of circumstances
cannot possibly be repeated. Such repetition is inconsistent with the
very theory, which is based on the assumption that the repetition is
continually happening.

'In the moral as well as the physical world' there are, say the
exponents of the new theory, not only 'invariable rule' and 'inevitable
sequence,' but 'irresistible growth' and 'continual advance.' In other
words, things can never be twice in precisely the same condition--never,
at least, within the same cycle. It has, indeed, been suggested that
there may be in human affairs the same sort of regularity as is observed
by the hands of a clock; and that, as the latter, at the end of every
twenty-four hours, recommence the movement which they have just
concluded, s