fruitless labour to enable man to look steadily at the shifting
scenes of the phantasmagoria of Nature, to notice what is fixed
among her fluctuations, and what is regular among her apparent
irregularities; and it is only comparatively lately, within the
last few centuries, that the conception of a universal order and
of a definite course of things, which we term the course of
Nature, has emerged.

But, once originated, the conception of the constancy of the
order of Nature has become the dominant idea of modern thought.
To any person who is familiar with the facts upon which that
conception is based, and is competent to estimate their
significance, it has ceased to be conceivable that chance should
have any place in the universe, or that events should depend
upon any but the natural sequence of cause and effect. We have
come to look upon the present as the child of the past and as
the parent of the future; and, as we have excluded chance from a
place in the universe, so we ignore, even as a possibility, the
notion of any interference with the order of Nature.
Whatever may be men's speculative doctrines, it is quite certain
that every intelligent person guides his life and risks his
fortune upon the belief that the orderof Nature is constant, and
that the chain of natural causation is never broken.

In fact, no belief which we entertain has so complete a logical
basis as that to which I have just referred. It tacitly
underlies every process of reasoning; it is the foundation of
every act of the will. It is based upon the broadest induction,
and it is verified by the most constant, regular, and universal
of deductive processes. But we must recollect that any human