nded, may
possibly not be intended for any result. It must be admitted, then,
that, so far, no reason has appeared why the force or forces by which
the universe was originally moulded, may not, as contended, have been
perfectly heedless and reckless; may not, without the least
premeditation or the slightest view to any ulterior object, have
produced certain phenomena in those particular sequences to which the
name of natural laws has been given; and may not, with the same total
absence of purpose, have adopted certain other courses of action which,
very fortunately, though quite undesignedly, have resulted in the
production of endless varieties of mechanism, most of them of
marvellously intricate and complex structure, and all and each of them
of structure marvellously suitable for performing, in co-operation with
Nature's laws, functions of an utility as varied as their structure. And
what any forces have been equal to do once, those same forces, if
remaining unimpaired, must be equal to repeat times without number.
Although, if you found your opponent at dice invariably throwing
double-sixes, you might feel confident that his dice were loaded, your
confidence, unless otherwise corroborated, would not amount to entire
certainty. With unloaded dice there would be nothing strange in
double-six being thrown once; but, if once, why not twice running? and
if twice, why not three, four, or a million times running, provided that
the thrower's strength held out so long? No one of the separate throws,
from the first to the millionth, would be attended with more difficulty
than any other. Whoever made the first might with no greater effort make
any one, and therefore every one, of the rest. In the fact of his having
commenced the series there would be proof of the possibility of his
completing it. In like manner, if it be not inconceivable that Nature's
forces may once, by a single unpremeditated exertion, have bestowed on
the universe its actual constitution, it is not inconceivable that by
continual repetition of similarly unpremeditated exertions, they may
have ever since maintained that constitution. In this supposition there
is nothing patently absurd. It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that
any event or combination of events, not demonstrably impossible, may
have occurred in the absence of complete certainty that they have not
occurred. It may not be illegitimate, therefore, to suppose that all
phenomena of the descripti