infinite God who is without variableness or shadow of turning,
but quite incompatible with the fitful behaviour of the
anthropomorphic deities of the old mythologies. By thus
abstaining from all appeal to agencies that are extra-cosmic, or
not involved in the orderly system of events that we see
occurring around us, we have at last succeeded in eliminating
from philosophic speculation the character of random guesswork
which at first of necessity belonged to it. Modern scientific
hypothesis is so far from being a haphazard mental proceeding
that it is perhaps hardly fair to classify it with guesses. It is
lifted out of the plane of guesswork, in so far as it has
acquired the character of inevitable inference from that which
now is to that which has been or will be. Instead of the
innumerable particular assumptions which were once admitted into
cosmic philosophy, we are now reduced to the one universal
assumption which has been variously described as the "principle
of continuity," the "uniformity of nature," the "persistence of
force," or the "law of causation," and which has been variously
explained as a necessary datum for scientific thinking or as a
net result of all induction. I am not unwilling, however, to
adopt the language of a book which has furnished the occasion for
the present discussion, and to say that this grand assumption is
a supreme act of faith, the definite expression of a trust that
the infinite Sustainer of the universe "will not put us to
permanent intellectual confusion." For in this mode of statement
the harmony between the scientific and the religious points of
view is well brought out. It is as affording the only outlet from
permanent intellectual confusion that inquirers have been driven
to appeal to the principle of continuity; and it is by unswerving
reliance upon this principle that we have obtained such insight