The mind seems to
find a satisfaction when a change of whatever kind is shown to be, or
possibly to be, the result of movement. And so too all laws of Nature
are then felt to be satisfactorily explained when they can be traced to
some force exhibited in the movement of material particles. The law of
Gravitation has an enormous evidence in support of it considered simply
as a fact. And yet how many attempts have been made to represent it as
the result of vortices or of particles streaming in all directions and
pressing any two bodies together that lie in their path! The facts which
establish it are enough. Why then these attempts? What is felt to be yet
wanting? What is felt to be wanting is something to show that it is the
result of some sort of general or universal motion, and that it thus
falls under the same head as other motions, either those which originate
in ourselves and are propagated from our bodies to external objects, or
those which, springing from an unknown beginning, are for ever
continuing as before.
This then is the answer to the question, Why do we believe in the
uniformity of Nature? We believe in it because we find it so. Millions
on millions of observations concur in exhibiting this uniformity.
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