I

tations verified, and in but a very few | entific belief, for would Professor Huxley
cases indeed be disappointed.
admit that he has any belief, except of
If, then, Dr. Ward asks, said Professor course one resting on an immediately
Huxley, whether or not I hold that expe- present consciousness, deeper than his
rience can, in a mathematical sense, prove belief in the uniformity of nature? I
the uniformity of nature, I answer that I suppose not. Now theologians are ac-
do not believe it; that I believe only that, customed to assert, and I think with jus-
in the assumption of that uniformity of tice, that it is impossible to entertain any
nature, we have a working hypothesis of belief whether it be only a working
the most potent kind, which I have never hypothesis or something more - - in the
found to fail me. But further, if I might uniformity of nature, without basing it on
use the word "believe" loosely, though the irrefragable trustworthiness of the
with much less looseness than that with human faculties. In one of our earliest
which men who are not students of sci discussions Dr. Ward proved his case that
ence habitually use it, I should not hesi on the irrefragable trustworthiness of
tate to avow a belief that the uniformity memory, for example, for all facts which
of nature is proved by experience, for I it positively asserts, rests the whole struc
should be only too glad to think that half |ture of human knowledge; and this in a
the "demonstrated" beliefs of metaphy-sense much deeper than any such expres-
sicians are even a tenth part as trust- sion as working hypothesis will ex-
worthy as the great working hypothesis of press. Without assuming this irrefraga-
science. The man of science, however, ble trustworthiness, Dr. Ward has re-
"who commits himself to even one state-minded us that I could not know that I
ment which turns out to be devoid of good am replying to Professor Huxley at all,
foundation, loses somewhat of his reputa- or indeed who I myself am, or who is
tion among his fellows, and if he is guilty Professor Huxley. Without absolutely
of the same error often he loses not only assuming the trustworthiness of memory,
bis intellectual but his moral standing how should I have the least glimmering of
among them; for it is justly felt that era conception of that expressive person-
rors of this kind have their root rather
in the moral than in the intellectual na.
ture." That, I suppose, is the reason
why men of science are so chary of inves-
tigating the trustworthiness of the soi
disant miracles to which Dr. Ward is so
anxious that we should pay an attention
much greater than any which in my opin-
ion they deserve. For the scientific man
justly fears that if he investigates them
thoroughly, he shall wound many amiable
men's hearts, and that if he does not
wound amiable men's hearts he shall com-
promise his own character as a man of
science.

66

ality from whose mouth the weighty utterances we have just heard proceeded? Yet if you grant me the trustworthiness of memory, when it speaks positively of a recent experience, can you deny me the trustworthiness of other human faculties equally fundamental? Is my "belief" in the distinction between right and wrong, between holiness and sin, any less trustworthy than my belief in the asseverations of my memory? Did not Professor Huxley himself suggest in his closing remarks that the moral roots of our nature strike deeper than the intellectual roots; in other words, that if memory be much As Professor Huxley's rich and reso- more than a working hypothesis," if its nant voice died away, Father Dalgairns, trustworthiness be the condition without after looking modestly round to see which no working hypothesis would be whether any one else desired to speak, even possible, there are moral conditions began in tones of great sweetness: Pro- of our nature quite as fundamental as fessor Huxley has implied that to the sci- even the trustworthiness of memory it entific student the words "I believe" self? I hold it, I confess, most irrational have a stricter and more binding force to have an absolute and undoubting bethan they have to us theologians. If it lief in the uniformity of nature based on really be so, it is very much to our shame, any accumulation of experience, for no for no words can be conceived which are such accumulation of experience is possito us more solemn and more charged with ble at all without an absolute and unmoral obligation. But I confess that the doubting belief in the past, and this no drift of Professor Huxley's remarks hardly merely present experience can possibly bore out to my mind the burden of his give us. And I hold such a belief in the peroration. It seems that a "working uniformity of nature, based on anything hypothesis" is the modest phrase which but the trustworthiness of our faculties, to represents even the very maximum of sci- | be irrational, for precisely the same kind

66

of reason for which I hold it to be irra- | the negative which the writer appeared to tional to question the belief in God. The desire, that precisely on that ground the solemnity which Professor Huxley at- performance of any so-called miracles taches to the words "I believe," I attach to them also. Moreover, I could not use them in their fullest sense of anything which I regard merely as a "working hypothesis," however fruitful. But I deny that we theologians regard our deepest creed as a working hypothesis at all. We accept the words "I believe in God," as we accept the words "I believe in the absolute attestations of memory," as simply forced upon us by a higher intuition than any inductive law can engender. When I say "I believe in God," I use the word believe just as I use it when I say "I believe in moral obligation," and when I say "I believe in moral obligation," I use the word believe just as I do when I say "I believe in the attestations of memory." "God is not necessary only to my conception of morality. His existence is necessary to the existence of obligation." I know God by "a combination of intuition and experience, which is Kant's condition of knowledge. If there be a God, our imagination would present him to us as inflicting pain on the violator of his law, and lo! the imagination turns out to be an experienced fact. The Unknowable suddenly stabs me to the heart." I be lieve in the uniformity of nature only in the sense in which I believe in every other high probability for instance, only in the sense in which I believe that the sun will rise to-morrow. I believe in God in the sense in which I believe in pain and pleasure, in space and time, in right and wrong, in myself, in that which curbs me, governs me, besets me behind and before, and lays its hand upon me. The uniformity of nature, though a very useful working hypothesis, is, as Professor Huxley admits, unproved and unprovable as a final truth of reason. But "if I do not know God, then I know nothing whatsoever," for if "the pillared pavement is rottenness," then surely also is "earth's base built on stubble."

whatever would be really unimpressive to. me. If a second Joshua to-morrow commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him, and he therefore claimed def erence as a miracle-worker, I am afraid I should answer, 'What! a miracle that the sun stands still?- not at all. I was always expecting it would. The only wonder to me was its going on.' But even assuming the demonstrable uniformity of the laws or customs of nature which are known to us, it remains to me a difficult question what measure of interference with such law or custom we might logically hold miraculous, and what, on the contrary, we should treat only as proof of the existence of some other law hitherto undiscovered. For instance, there is a case authenticated by the signatures of several leading physicians in Paris, in which a peasant girl, under certain condi tions of morbid excitement, was able to move objects at some distance from her without touching them. Taking the evidence for what it may be worth, the discovery of such a faculty would only, I suppose, justify us in concluding that some new vital energy was developing itself under the conditions of modern life, and not that any interference with the laws of nature had taken place. Yet the generally obstinate refusal of men of science to receive any verbal witness of such facts, is a proof that they believe them contrary to a code of law which is more or less complete in their experience, and altogether complete in their conception; and I think it is therefore the province of some one of our scientific members to lay down for us the true principle by which we may distinguish the miraculous violation of a known law from the natural dis covery of an unknown one." "However," he proceeded, "the two main facts we have to deal with are that the historical record of miracle is always of inconstant power, and that our own actual energies There was a certain perceptible reluc-are inconstant almost in exact proportion tance to follow Father Dalgairns, which lasted some couple of minutes. Then we heard a deep-toned, musical voice, which dwelt with slow emphasis on the most important words of each sentence, and which gave a singular force to the irony with which the speaker's expressions of belief were freely mingled. It was Mr. Ruskin. "The question," he said, "Can experience prove the uniformity of nature? is, in my mind, so assuredly answerable with

to their worthiness. First, I say the his tory of miracle is of inconstant power. St. Paul raises Eutychus from death, and his garments effect miraculous cure, yet he leaves Trophimus sick at Miletus, recognizes only the mercy of God in the recovery of Epaphroditus, and, like any uninspired physician, recommends Timothy wine for his infirmities. And in the second place, our own energies are inconstant almost in proportion to their noble.

1.

ness. We breathe with regularity, and keen prepossession against the doctrine
can count upon the strength necessary for that laws of uniform antecedency and
common tasks, but the record of our best consequence can be traced throughout
work and our happiest moments is always the most interesting phases of human
one of success which we did not expect, life? Even in the City, where so many
and of enthusiasm which we could not hopes are crushed every day, the "
"bull
prolong."
goes on believing in his own too sanguine
expectations, and the "bear" in his own
dismal predictions, without correcting his
own bias as experience should have led
him to correct it. I believe it will be
found that nothing is more difficult than
to beat into the majority of minds the
belief that there is such a thing as a "law
of nature" at all. So far as I can judge,
nine women out of ten have never ade-
quately realized what a law of nature
means, nor is the proportion much smaller
for men, unless they have been well
drilled in some department of physics.
Of course I heartily agree with Dr. Ward
that experience cannot prove the uniform-
ity of nature, and for this very good rea
son, amongst others, that it is impossible
to say what the uniformity of nature
means. We cannot exhaust the number
of interfering causes which may break
that uniformity. I at least cannot doubt
that, so far as mind influences matter,
there may be a vast multitude of real dis-
turbing causes introduced by mind to
break through those laws of uniformity in
material things, of which at present we
know only the elements. But of this I

As Mr. Ruskin ceased, Walter Bagehot,
the then editor of the Economist, and a
favorite amongst us for his literary bril-
liance, opened his wide black eyes, and,
gulping down what seemed to be an in-
clination to laugh at some recollection of
his own, said: Mr. Ruskin's remark that
he had always been expecting the sun to
stand still was to me peculiarly interest-
ing, because, as I have formerly told the
society, whatever may be the grounds for
assuming the uniformity of nature, I hold
that there is nothing which the natural
mind of man, unless subjected to a very
serious discipline for the express purpose
of producing that belief, is less likely to
assume. A year or two ago I ventured to
express in this room the opinion that
credulity is the natural condition of al-
most every man. "Every child," I said,
"believes what the footman tells it, what
the nurse tells it, and what its mother
tells it, and probably every one's mem-
ory will carry him back to the horrid
mass of miscellaneous confusion which he
acquired by believing all he heard." I
hold that children believe in the sugges-
tions of their imaginations quite as confi-am very sure, that at present we are much
dently as they believe in the asseverations
of their memories; and if grown-up men
do not, it is only that their credulity has
been battered out of them by the hard
discipline of constant disappointment.
What can be better evidence that there is
at least no a priori belief in the uniform-
ity of nature than the delight in fairy
tales, which, certainly in childhood, are
accepted with quite as much private be-
lief that some great enchanter's wand will
be triumphantly found at last, as are the
dullest and most matter-of-fact of histo-
ries. Indeed, you will find in almost every
young person of any promise the pro-
foundest tendency to revolt against the
law of uniform succession as too dull to
be credible, and to exult in the occasional
evidence which the history of their time
affords that "truth after all is stranger
than fiction." Is not the early love of
tales of marvel, and the later love of tales
of wild adventure and hair-breadth es-
capes, and again, the deep pleasure which
we all feel in that "poetic justice" which
is so rare in actual experience, a sufficient
proof that men retain, even to the last, a

It is

apter to accept superficial and inadequate
evidence of the breach of laws of uniform-
ity than we ought to be; that education
does not do half enough to beat out of
our minds that credulous expectation that
there is some disposition in the governing
principles of the universe, either to favor
us or to persecute us, as the case may
be, which springs, not from experience,
but from groundless prejudice and pre-
possession; and that much greater efforts
should be made to set before young peo
ple the true inexorability of nature's laws
than is actually made at present.
quite true that no man can say positively
either that the sun will rise to-morrow, or
that an iron bar will fall to the ground if
the hand drops it. We do not absolutely
know that the sun may not blaze up and
go out before to-morrow, as it is said that
some stars of considerable magnitude
have blazed up and gone out. We do not
know that there may not be some enor-
mously powerful and invisible magnet in
the neighborhood which will attract the
iron bar upwards with more force than
that with which the earth pulls it down-

wards. But we do know that in millions | part, he said, I am quite ready to examine and billions of cases expectations founded into the evidence of any so-called miracle, on the same sort of evidence as the expectation that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the dropped bar will fall to the earth, have been verified, and that the imaginative illusion which half-educated people still so often indulge, that excep. tions will occur, for the occurrence of which there is no rational evidence, is a most mischievous one, which we ought to try to eradicate. We ought to engage what I have ventured in this society to call the "emotion of conviction," the caprices of which are so extravagant and so dangerous, much more seriously on the side of the uniformity of nature than we have ever hitherto done. We should all try to distinguish more carefully than we do between possibility, probability, and certainty. It is not as certain that the sun will rise to-morrow as it is that I was cold before I entered this room; it is not as certain that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid, as it is that the sun will rise to-morrow; it is not as certain that Peel's Act will always be suspended in a panic, as it is that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid. And it is difficult for "such creatures as we are to accommodate our expectations to these varying degrees of reasonable evidence. But though experience, however long and cumulative, can never prove the absolute uniformity of nature, it surely ought to train us to bring our expectations into something like consistency with the uniformity of nature. And as I endeavor to effect this in my own mind I certainly cannot agree with Mr. Ruskin that I have always been "expecting" the sun to stand still. Probably as a child I was always expecting things quite as improbable as that. But if I expected them now I should not have profited as much by the disillusionizing character of my experience as I endeavor to hope that I actually have.

There was a general smile as Bagehot ceased, but the smile ceased, as Mr. Fitzjames Stephen - the present Sir James Stephen took up the discussion by remarking, in the mighty bass that always exerted a sort of physical authority over us, that while the society seemed to be pretty well agreed upon the main question, namely, that the uniformity of nature could not be absolutely proved by experience, or, indeed, by any other method, there was a point in Dr. Ward's paper, namely, the challenge to examine seriously into the authenticity of miracles, which had not been dealt with. For my

that is, into the evidence of any unusual event which is offered to prove divine interference in our affairs, when it comes before me with sufficient presumption of authority to render it worth my while to investigate it; though I probably should not agree with Dr. Ward as to what constitutes such a presumption. Certainly a bare uncorroborated assertion by a person professing to be an eyewitness of an event is not sufficient evidence of that event to warrant action of an important kind based upon the supposition of its occurrence. When you are obliged to guess, such an assertion may be a reason for making one guess rather than another. Less evidence than this would make a banker hesitate as to a person's credit, or would lead a customer to doubt whether his banker was solvent; but in such cases all that is possible is a guess more or less judicious, and a guess, however judicious, is a totally different thing from settled rational belief. As regards all detailed matters of fact, I think there is a time, greater or less, during which the evidence connected with them may be collected, examined, and recorded. If this is done a judgment can be formed on the truth of allegations respecting them at any distance of time. Such judgments are rarely absolute; they ought always or nearly always to be tempered by some degree of doubt, but I do not think they need be affected by lapse of time. If, however, this opportunity is lost, if no complete examination is made at the time of an incident, or if being made it is not properly or fully recorded, clouds of darkness which can never be dispelled settle down upon it almost immediately. All that remains behind is an indistinct outline which can never be filled up. Under certain conditions rare occurrences are quite as probable as common ones. The main condition of the probability of such an event is that the rare occurrence should, from its nature and from the circumstances under which it occurs, be capable of being observed, and that the evidence of it should be recorded in the manner which I have already described. If a moa were caught alive and publicly exhibited for money, or if the body of a sea-serpent were to be cut up upon the coast and duly examined by competent naturalists, the existence of moas and sea-serpents could be proved beyond all reasonable doubt. The reason why their existence is disbelieved or doubted is not that they are seen, if at all, so sel

dom, but because in each particular in- | believers in miracles of the most astound-
stance they are seen, if at all, in such an ing kind, and of miracles that have hap
unsatisfactory way that it is doubtful pened in our own time, many within the last
whether they ever were seen. There are year. Let those who choose, for instance,
innumerable ghost stories in circulation, look into the evidence of the most aston-
but as far as I know no instance has ever ishing cure of varicose veins which took
yet been even alleged to exist in which place only last year in the south of France
the existence of a ghost has been properly a malady of thirty years' standing, and
authenticated as readily and as conclu- of steady progress throughout that time,
sively as that of any other being whatever. attested on the positive evidence of French
Stories of the interference of unseen physicians, who had themselves repeat-
agents stand upon exactly the same foot- edly seen and prescribed for the patient.
ing, speaking generally. Isolated in Yet they admitted that all they could do
stances occur in all ages and countries, but would be at most to alleviate his suffer-
the common characteristic of them all is ings by the application of mechanical
to be unauthenticated. Ten cases dis- pressure - and they nevertheless declared
tinctly proved under the conditions re- the cure to have been effected in a single
ferred to would do more to settle the night, the only new condition having been
question of the existence of miracles as a the believing application of the Lourdes
class than innumerable cases depending water to the body of the sufferer. Here
on assertions which were not properly ex- is a case where all Mr. Fitzjames Ste-
amined when they were originally made, phen's conditions are satisfied to the full.
and which can now never be examined. I do not, however, apprehend that Mr.
On the other hand, what reason can pos- Stephen will sift the evidence, or even
sibly be suggested why the action of an regard it as worth his serious attention.
invisible person upon matter should not He has hardly assigned sufficient force to
be ascertained just as clearly as the ac that strong predisposition to incredulity
tion of a visible person? The restoration which is so widely spread at this moment
of a dead body to life might, if it occurred, in the Protestant world, a predisposition
be proved as conclusively and as notori- which I cannot entirely reconcile with
ously as the death of a living person, or Mr. Bagehot's very striking remarks on
the birth of a child. If such events formed the universal credulousness of the natural
a real class to which new occurrences man. Perhaps, however, there may be
might be assigned, a large number of in- such credulousness where there is no
stances of those occurrences would be, so prejudice, and yet incredulity still more
to speak, upon record, established beyond marked where there is. I have been a
all doubt, and the very existence of the careful observer of the attitude of Protes-
controversy shows that nothing of the tants in relation to the controversy be-
sort exists."
tween the natural and supernatural. I
have seen its growth. I have watched its
development. I am persuaded that Mr.
Stephen is quite wrong in supposing that
the matter can be settled as one of evi-
dence alone. You must first overcome
that violent prejudice in your minds which
prevents you from vouchsafing even a
glance at the evidence we should have to
offer you. But I will, if the society per-
mits me, leave that part of the subject,
and return to the principal question before
us- the impossibility of proving the uni
formity of nature from experience alone.
Now, how do we Catholics, who have a
philosophy the value of which we imagine
that you believers in Spencer and Mill
and Bain greatly underrate, account for
the uniformity of nature without trench-
ing in any way on the supernatural basis
of that nature? I will show you. Aqui-
nas says in his "Summa" - and the arch-
bishop, of course, pronounced his Latin
in the Continental manner "Tota irra-

Hereupon the Archbishop of Westmin ster, looking at Mr. Stephen with a benign smile, said: Mr. Stephen's investigations into the evidence of the interference of unseen agents in human affairs are hardly on a par with some of those undertaken by the Church to which I belong. In canonizing, or even beatifying those who are lost to us, the Holy See has long been accustomed to go into the evidence of such events as those to which Mr. Stephen has just referred, and that with a disposition to pick holes in the evidence, which, if he will allow me to say so, could hardly be surpassed even by so able a sifter of evidence as Mr. Stephen himself. Nor is it indeed necessary to go into the archives of these laborious and most sceptically conducted investigations. If there were but that predisposition amongst Protestants to believe in the evidence of the unseen which Dr. Ward desired to see, there would, I am convinced, be many 2647

LIVING AGE.

VOL. LI,