The Relations Between Religion and Science | Page 7

cannot otherwise be explained; but why should the sequence of all
things that happen be capable of being explained? The question
therefore still remains unanswered. What right have we to assume this
Uniformity in Nature? or, in other words, what right have we to assume
that all phenomena in Nature, observed by our senses, are capable of
being brought within the domain of Science? And to answer this
question we must approach it from a different side.
And there is the more reason for this because it is undeniable that both
the definition and the universality of the relation of cause and effect, as
they were accepted by Hume and his followers, are not accepted by
men in general. In ordinary language something more is meant by
cause and effect than invariable sequence, and the common assumption
is not that all Nature obeys this rule with absolutely no variation, but
that the rule is sufficiently general for all practical purposes.
If then we begin by asking what is the process of Science in dealing
with all questions of causation, we find that this process when reduced
to its simplest elements always consists in referring every event as an
effect to some cause which we know or believe to have produced some
other and similar event. Newton is struck by a falling apple. His first
thought is, 'how hard the blow.' His second is wonder, 'how far the
earth's attraction, which has caused this hard blow, extends.' His third,
'why not as far as the moon?' And he proceeds to assign the motion of
the moon to the same cause as that which produced the motion of the
apple. Taking this as a working hypothesis, he examines what would be
the motions of all the planets if this were true. And the examination
ends with establishing the high probability of the Law of Gravitation.

Now this being the invariable process of Science, it follows that our
conception of cause must come originally from that cause which we
have within ourselves and with which we cannot but begin, the action
of the human will. It is from this action that is obtained that conception
which underlies the ordinary conception of cause, namely, that of force
or power.
This conception of force or power is derived from the consciousness of
our own power to move our limbs, and perhaps too of passions,
temptations, sentiments to move or oppose our wills. This power is
most distinctly felt when it is resisted. The effort which is necessary
when we choose to do what we have barely strength to do, impresses
on us more clearly the sense of a force residing in ourselves capable of
overcoming resistance. Having the power to move our limbs, and that
too against some resistance, we explain, and in no other way can we
explain, other motions by the supposition of a similar power. In so
doing we are following strictly the scientific instinct and the scientific
process. We are putting into the same class the motions that we observe
in other things and the motions that we observe in ourselves; the latter
are due to acts of our own wills, the former are assigned to similar acts
of other wills. Hence in infancy, and in the infancy of mankind, the
whole world is peopled with persons because everything that we
observe to move is personified. A secret will moves the wind, the sun,
the moon, the stars, and each is independent of the others.
Soon a distinction grows up between the things that seem to have a
spontaneous motion and those that have not, and spontaneous motion is
taken as the sign of life. And all inanimate things, of whatever kind, are
held to be moved, if they move at all, by a force outside themselves.
Their own force is limited to that of resisting, and does not include that
of originating motion. But though they cannot originate motion they are
observed to be capable of transmitting it. And the notion of force is
expanded by the recognition that it can be communicated from one
thing to another and yet to another, and that we may have to go back
many steps before we arrive at the will from which it originated. We
began with the notion of a power the action of which was or appeared
to be self-originated: we come to the notion of a power the action of

which is nothing more than the continuance of preceding action. And
the special characteristic of the action of this force as thus conceived,
which we may call the derivative force, is seen to be its regularity, just
as the special characteristic of the self-originating action was its
spontaneity.
As experience increases the regularity of the action of the derivative
force is