Many of those unbroken sequences of phenomena around us, which have been
most frequently observed, have been made the subject of the Imagination
and have received an imaginative name. When we find Nature, upon an
invariable system, dealing out rewards for one course of action and
penalties for another, there is suggested to us the thought of a great
Lawgiver laying down laws and affixing rewards for obeying, and
penalties for disobeying. Hence the sequences of natural phenomena have
been called “Laws of Nature.”
Every action of every moment of our lives is performed for the most part
in the instinctive and unconscious confidence that Nature will not
deceive us by breaking her Laws: and hence they might, from another
point of view, be called “Promises of Nature,” or “Expressions of the
Will of Nature;” but “Law of Nature” has been selected—not perhaps
altogether happily—as suggesting something more fixed and definite than
even the Promises or Will of the Maker of the world.
_Law of Nature is a metaphorical name for a frequently observed sequence
of phenomena (apart from human Will), implying; to some minds,
regularity; to others, absolute invariability._