and the consequent results of the law of gravitation, must have been entirely a matter of free choice.
Chalmers has most distinctly pointed out that the existing collocations of the material world are as important as the laws which the objects obey. He remarks that a certain class of writers entirely overlook the distinction, and forget that mere laws without collocations would have afforded no security against a turbid and disorderly chaos.2 Mill has recognised3 the truth of Chalmers’ statement, without drawing the proper inferences from it. He says4 of the distribution of matter through space, “We can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can reduce it to no uniformity, to no law.” More lately the Duke of Argyll in his well-known work on the Reign of Law has drawn attention to the profound distinction between laws and collocations of causes.
The original conformation of the material universe, as far as we can tell, was free from all restriction. There was unlimited space in which to frame it, and an unlimited number of material particles, each of which could be placed in any one of an infinite number of different positions. It should be added, that each particle might be endowed with any one of an infinite number of quantities of vis viva acting in any one of an infinite number of different directions. The problem of Creation was, then, what a mathematician would call an indeterminate problem, and it was indeterminate in a great number of ways. Infinitely numerous and various universes might then have been fashioned by the various distribution of the original nebulous matter, although all the particles of matter should obey the law of gravity.
Lucretius tells us how in the original rain of atoms some of these little bodies diverged from the rectilinear direction, and coming into contact with other atoms gave rise to the various combinations of substances which exist. He omitted to tell us whence the atoms came, or by what force some of them were caused to diverge; but surely these omissions involve the whole question. I accept the Lucretian conception of creation when properly supplemented. Every atom which existed in any point of space must have existed there previously, or must have been created there by a previously existing Power. When placed there it must have had a definite mass and a definite energy. Now, as before remarked, an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an unlimited number of modes of distribution. Out of infinitely infinite choices which were open to the Creator, that one choice must have been made which has yielded the Universe as it now exists.
It would be a mistake, indeed, to suppose that the law of gravity, when it holds true, is no restriction on the distribution of force. That law is a geometrical law, and it would in many cases be mathematically impossible, as far as we can see, that the force of gravity acting on one particle should be small while that on a neighbouring particle is great. We cannot conceive that even Omnipotent Power should make the angles of a triangle greater than two right angles. The primary laws of thought and the fundamental notions of the mathematical sciences do not seem to admit of error or alteration. Into the metaphysical origin and meaning of the apparent necessity attaching to such laws I have not attempted to inquire in this work, and it is not requisite for my present purpose. If the law of gravity were the only law of nature and the Creator had chosen to render all matter obedient to that law, there would doubtless be restrictions upon the effects derivable from any one distribution of matter.