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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
are indebted for order and regularity in the world. With chance at the helm, we should be unable to predict anything, and life, instead of finding encouragement and joy in the pursuit of Science, would fritter itself away for pure uncertainty and worry. Just think of a state of existence wherein chance is the prime factor. Where is the assurance that our calculations about the time of the next visit of Halley's comet would be true? Where is the certainty that our earth, instead of going round the Sun, as science maintains, at an enormous speed, would not stop short the very next instant, destroying everything living and reducing the most solid parts of our mountains and rocks to dust in less than a second ? One cannot conceive a greater calamity, in short, than the change of the orderly working of laws into a state of chaotic chance. We must, therefore, reject the hypothesis of chance altogether. Our conclusion, however, is not to be taken as establishing the existence of an interfering deity ; for the very argument which excludes the hypothesis of chance also suffices to prove that the uniformity and regularity of the laws of nature are possible only on the supposition that no one interferes with their working. The laws of nature are not at all like the written or verbal injunctions of men which may be defeated by artifice or cunning; they owe their origin to the properties of substances which no one tries to or can interfere with successfully.
It is also well to bear in mind the fact that the word 'chance,' in its scientific' import, does not mean anything in the nature of a 'lawless' occurrence, but only
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