Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/14

 unchanging so long as the heart continued to beat; in fact, that it was a law of Nature.

If my memory serves me rightly, it is to John Stuart Mill that philosophy is indebted for the induction, that all laws of Nature, as at present known to us, are unfailing; and, further, that this induction must form what logicians call the major premiss in every argument regarding such obscure subjects as—e.g., in medical science—the origin of life, generation, development, growth, decay, and death. What, then, do we mean by "Laws of Nature?" A law, if I understand the question, implies the existence of a Law-giver. It implies that if I, who am a living sentient being, acting and thinking for myself, am subject to such laws, there must be a Superior Being; who is over me, above me; who can give laws to me; who can act, and think too; one who meets me, when boasting of my own existence as the highest type with which I am familiar, as a higher Being still. Further: I feel that I must submit to these laws, and that their supremacy and duration are bounded only by the Will of Him who framed them.

I am not sure that this was what Mill meant. He conceived the laws of Nature to be immutable, eternal; and I suspect that he based this belief on the ground that matter was eternal too—though he positively disclaims the necessity for any such supposition. If I mistake not, he believed that