Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/406

390 the machine was set, be ordered to reappear, after any desired interval.

Thus we might suppose an observer watching the machine, to see a known law continually fulfilled, until after a lengthened period, when a new law has been appointed to come in. This new law might after a single instance cease, and the first law might again be restored, and continue for another interval, when the second new law might again govern the machine as before for a single instance, and then give place to the original law.

This property of a mere piece of mechanism may have a parallel in the laws of human life. That all men die is the result of a vast induction of instances. That one or more men at given times shall be restored to life, may be as much a consequence of the law of existence appointed for man at his creation, as the appearance and reappearance of the isolated cases of apparent exception in the arithmetical machine.

But the workings of machinery run parallel to those of intellect. The Analytical Engine might be so set, that at definite periods, known only to its maker, a certain lever might become moveable during the calculations then making. The consequence of moving it might be to cause the then existing law to be violated for one or more times, after which the original law would resume its reign. Of course the maker of the Calculating Engine might confide this fact to the person using it, who would thus be gifted with the power of prophecy if he foretold the event, or of working a miracle at the proper time, if he withheld his knowledge from those around until the moment of its taking place.

Such is the analogy between the construction of machinery to calculate and the occurrence of miracles. A further illustration may be taken from geometry. Curves are represented