verned by law and not by caprice: that we
now and are assured of. But such a formula does not settle the matter. A wise and prudent man’s life is also governed by law and not by caprice, and yet the intervention of his moral reason, of his power of choice, disturbs from time to time the semblance of uniformity in his conduct. For him the same physical antecedents do not always issue in the same physical consequences, because moral considerations—non-physical motives —may sway him now in this direction, and now
NATURE 495
in that. Thus in the case of man, who is a part, and an important part, of nature, the rule of uniformity does not hold absolutely. And when we remember that the Divine Will must be, at the least, as independent of physical law as is man’s will, we see no ground for regarding the ‘ Uni- formity of Nature’ as a constitutive principle of the Cosmos. It is nothing more than a convenient way of saying that God’s laws are general laws; that He does not depart from the usual methods of His rule, without the gravest reasons for inter- vention. See MIRACLE.
Such conceptions, such problems, are too abstract to occupy the mind of primitive piety. And, as a matter of fact, the word ‘nature’ does not once oceur in the OT. The Hebrews saw the hand of Jehovah everywhere; they recognized that He had made ‘the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is’ (Ex 20”), that the thunder was His voice and the lightning-flashes His arrows of destruction (Ps 18"), that fire and hail, snow and vapour, and stormy wind fulfilled His word (Ps 148°) ; but they had no thought of nature as a whole, a totality, which might be conceived of as an abstract idea, without any special reference to the particular phenomena which represent it in the concrete. The power of forming abstract ideas comes late in the development of mental life, and it was not until Hebraism came into contact with Hellenism that the idea of φύσις was introduced into Hebrew thought. In 4 Mae 5? we find Antiochus recommending Eleazar to consent to eat swine’s flesh, on the ground that it is given to us by nature. And St. Paul argues that ‘nature itself teaches’ us that a man’s head ought to be uncovered, but a woman’s covered (1 Co 11"). In both of tnese instances nature is spoken of asa unity, and it is personified in a fashion which would have been unintelligible at an earlier period of Jewish thought. Again, the word φύσις is used occasionally in the writings of St. Paul and in the Bk. of Wis (as it is still) to describe the sum of the properties or characteristics of a species—the system of its constitution (as Butler would put it).
.g-, among the subjects on which σοφία is engaged are mentioned φύσεις ζώων, ‘the natures of living creatures’ (Wis 7”), and St. Paul speaks of abominable vices as being παρὰ φύσιν (Ro 155), i.e. contrary to the nature of man; and in Ro 11* ofa wild olive-tree being grafted into a good olive- tree παρὰ φύσιν, i.e. contrary to its nature. The uncircumcised condition of the Gentiles is described as ἡ ἐκ φύσεως ἀκροβυστία (Ro 257), this being, as we would say, the natural state of man. Larger questions are suggested by the apostle’s words, ‘ we were by nature (φύσει) children of wrath’ (Eph 2°), which are considered elsewhere. See FALL.
It is easy to understand how such expressions and such a usage of the word φύσις should grow up, once the consephons of the world as a system, and of each animal and plant upon it as possessing a constitution of its own, became familiar. The word only gives rise to ambiguity when we are using it in reference to questions which touch theology ; it then becomes necessary to ask whether he who employs it understands it in sense (1) as the complex of the mechanical and chemical forces of the Cosmos, in sense (2) which reckons man’s will and reason as part of his φύσις, or in sense (3), the true religious conception, which ultimately refers every operation of phenomenal force to the Agency of Supreme Mind, directing and ordering it in wisdom.
Lrrerature.—Spinoza, Ethics ; Butler, Analogy and Sermons; Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft ; Spencer, First Principles ; Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law; Seeley, Natural Religion; Fiske, The Idea of God; Mlingworth, Divine Jmmanence. See under MIRACLE. J. H. BERNARD.
496 NAUGHT, NAUGHTINESS
NAUGHT, NAUGHTY, NAUGHTINESS. — The Eng. word ‘naught’ is formed from the Anglo- Saxon na, not, and wift, a whit, a thing. At an early stage, perhaps under the influence of the verb ‘ought,’ the spelling ‘nought’ came in. Then the word was contracted to ‘not.’ Thus ‘naught,’ ‘nonght,’ ‘not’ are all forms of the same word, and do not differ in meaning. In AV of 1611 the spelling is always nought, except in Lk 23" *Herod, with his men of warre, set him at naught,’ and Scrivener (Camb. Paragraph Bible, p. xlvii) says that in this passage ‘naught’ is a mere error.
The meaning of ‘naught’ was originally ‘not anything,’ ‘ worthless.’ ut it soon came to mean ‘bad,’ ‘ vicious,’ and this was the usual meaning in the 17th cent. Consequently in the 1638 ed. of AV the word is spelt ‘naught’ in 2 K 2”, Pr 20, the Heb. being 37 ra’, ‘ bad’; elsewhere ‘ nought,’ the Heb. being some expression of worthlessness rather than of wickedness. This distinction was preserved by Scrivener, and is found in most mod. editions of AV.