Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/827

Rh absolutely, indefensibly, "superabundantly" certain, or he knew no more "than a baby," to use his favorite simile, about the subjects I conversed with him upon. On the criticism of the New Testament, for instance, he always maintained that he knew no more than a baby, though really he knew a good deal about it. On the questions arising out of Papal bulls he would often say that he was as absolutely and superabundantly certain as he was of his own existence. Then he was a very decided humorist. He looked like a country squire, and in the Isle of Wight was, I believe, generally called "Squeer Ward"; but, if you talked to him about horses or land, he would look at you as if you were talking in an unknown language, and would describe, in most extravagant and humorous terms, his many rides in search of health, and the profound fear with which, whenever the animal showed the least sign of spirit, he would cry out, "Take me off! take me off!" He was one of the very best and most active members of our society, as long as his health lasted—most friendly to everybody, though full of amazement at the depth to which skepticism had undermined the creed of many among us. A more candid man I never knew. He never ignored a difficulty, and never attempted to express an indistinct idea. His metaphysics were as sharp cut as crystals. He never seemed to see the half-lights of a question at all. There was no penumbra in his mind; or, at least, what he could not grasp clearly, he treated as if he could not apprehend at all.

When dinner was over and the cloth removed, a waiter entered with sheets of foolscap and pens for each of the members, of which very little use was made. The ascetic Archbishop of Westminster, every nerve in his face expressive of some vivid feeling, entered, and was quickly followed by Dr. Martineau. Then came Mr. Hinton, glancing round the room with a modest half-humorous furtiveness, as he seated himself among us. Then Dr. Ward began his paper. He asked how mere experience could prove a universal truth without examining in detail every plausibly asserted exception to that truth, and disproving the reality of the exception. He asked whether those who believe most fervently in the uniformity of Nature ever show the slightest anxiety to examine asserted exceptions. He imagined, he said, that what impresses physicists is the fruitfulness of inductive science, with the reasonable inference that inductive science could not be the fruitful field of discovery it is, unless it rested on a legitimate basis, which basis could be no other than a principle of uniformity. Dr. Ward answered that the belief in genuine exceptions to the law of uniform phenomenal antecedents and consequents does not in the least degree invalidate this assumption of the general uniformity of Nature, if these exceptions are announced, as in the case of miracles they always must be, as demonstrating the interposition of some spiritual power which is not phenomenal, between the antecedent and its natural consequent -which interposition it is that alone interrupts the order of