Nature

Name which has always stood for a fixed as opposed to a capricious order of events, but has varied with different periods in its specific conception: ( a ) originally a term for the proce of becoming or development; ( b ) then for the matérial world as opposed to the spiritual; and (c) for any fixed order of events, whether mental or physical, which is opposed to the supernatural, occasional, or arbitrary. When thus sifted down, it denotes the laws of things, though often wrongly conceived as a cause.