INTRODUCTION.

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natural laws.* Let us suppose a musician playing to
entertain an educated audience, and, through want of
skill, carelessness or perverseness, playing so badly that
‘he audience, instead of experiencing pleasure and
satisfaction, go away displeased and dissatisfied. Would
this have any connection with the laws of nature ¥ Only
the same indirect connection which we have pointed
out as belonging to the previous case. The musician
would have disregarded or neglected some of the laws
ordained by the Creator to regulate the Ideal Science of
Harmony. +
We find, however, a little further on in Prof. Cairnes’
work, a modified definition which appears to recognize,
in some degree, that the phenomena do not belong to
natural science and they are now turned ‘economic
phenomena.” For example. .¢ It is, then, the constant
relations exhibited in economic phenomena that we have
n view when we speak of the laws of the phenomena of
wealth.”
Now the relations and laws here spoken of are so
imaginary and unreal, that the things specified have no
absolutely necessary relation to human existence, and,

en

*In case the argument might suggest itself to the reader...that since
God is the God of nature, all laws which belong to the general Creation
nay be called © Natural Laws; We may state, quite decidedly, that such
would be false nomenclatnre and inevitably lead to confusion, because it
would be to disregard the essential and inherent difference between Ideal
and Natural Science.
t Observe that neither Acoustics nor Optics belong only to natural
science. In Acoustics, Harmony which belongs to ideal science is applied
to the natural phenomena of Sound. In Optics, Harmony is apnlied to
that manifestation of force on matter, known as Light.