But is not Mr. Peirce justified in declaring that law remains
unexplained? Is law really as he says “hard, ultimate, inexplicable,
immutable”? Law is to be regarded as immutable but not as ultimate or
inexplicable, and thus Mr. Peirce’s denunciation of natural law is not
justified. All natural laws must be conceived as forming one system
ascending from the lower to the higher, from the more special to the
more general. And the more comprehensive law represents in each case the
reason for the less comprehensive law which is comprised in it. Thus we
must finally reach the most general or all-comprehensive law, which is a
description of that which is a universal quality of existence.
There is wrong notion prevalent among many thinkers that the most
comprehensive description (law or reason) of a certain kind should,
as in a nutshell, contain and immediately explain all that which it
embraces, so that if once in its possession, we should be omniscient as
to all the rest. The most universal law is looked upon as the centre of
existence—_das Innerste der Welt_. If we could but get there, we should
solve all the world-problems by mere intuition. This is the old error of
the students of magic, whose hope is expressed by Faust when he says:
“_Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt_
_Im Innersten zusammenhält._”
That I may detect the inmost force
Which binds the world and shapes its course.—_Bayard Taylor._
Comprehension is not attained simply by finding out and stating the most
general feature of a certain class of facts; comprehension does not alone
consist of generalisation but also of discrimination. The differences
among less general laws must be recognised as results of special
conditions. And any knowledge of a general law reveals nothing about the
special conditions under the influence of which the same law will work
differently.
It is but too often overlooked that the more general a statement is, the
less it will contain, the vaguer it will appear, the emptier it must be.
There is no royal road to cognition and mere generalisation is of no
avail. We shall have to investigate the details of every case and view
it in its relation to the general law. The general law must be viewed
under those conditions which will invariably produce the same special
modifications.
But do not the most general reasons remain uncomprehended? Do we not at
last arrive at an ultimate law which, then, must be hard and inexplicable?
Those laws which appear in every respect to be universal are the formal
laws of mathematics, arithmetic, and their kindred sciences. And all
these formal sciences are not only _not_ mystical, unintelligible, and
inexplicable, but they are the most perspicuous, most reliable, and most
certain knowledge we possess. All their theorems admit of the most rigid
demonstration, and the last shadow of mysticism has been removed by
Hermann Grassmann. Owing to his searching investigations we are no longer
in need of axioms which were formerly supposed to be the indispensable
basis of mathematics.
There is however a basis of formal thought left which we cannot dispense
with; that is the idea of sameness, generally formulated as the law of
identity. Is perhaps the law of identity by which all the regularities
of nature are to be accounted for, inexplicable? Hardly! The idea of
sameness has a solid basis in the facts of experience.[78]