Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/834

812 bar will fall to the earth, have been verified, and that the imaginative illusion which half-educated people still so often indulge, that exceptions 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 he 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 can not 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 part, he said, I am quite ready to examine into the evidence of any so-called miracle, 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 eye-witness 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