Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/839

Rh bracing all the elements of the problem, including the states of his own mind. This efficient causality can be denied by no one who admits the dynamic idea at all; and no phenomenon can dispense with it."

Here we have, as I conceive, the clew to the principle of the uniformity of Nature. So far as Nature is purely dynamic, and so far as force is measured by reason, we can not stray from the rigid logic of fact and the equally rigid logic of thought. Doubtless it will be replied that, as in the mind of man there is a free spring of force, which is as yet undetermined, which is potential and not actual force, so there is behind Nature a free spring of force which is as yet undetermined, which is potential and not actual nature—in short, a power above nature and capable of modifying it; in other words, supernatural. And that doctrine I should heartily accept. The uniformity of Nature is the uniformity of force, just as the uniformity of reasoning-is the uniformity of thought. But just as the indeterminateness of creative will stands behind the determinateness of the orbit of force, so the indeterminateness of creative purpose stands behind the determinateness of the orbit of thought or inference. I hold that man is not wholly immersed in dynamic laws, that though our physical constitution is subject to them, our mental constitution rises above them into a world where free self-determination is possible. I do not wonder, therefore, that we find it difficult to realize the rigidity of the laws of efficient causation even so far as it would be good for us to realize them. But I can not think that any one who has once contracted the habit of even fixing his own attention can doubt for a moment that cause and effect are connected together by efficient links, nor that, if force outside us means the same thing as force inside us, the relation of cause and effect is as necessary—unless some higher power interfere to modify the cause—as the relation of premises to conclusion. With regard to Dr. Ward's invitation to us to examine more carefully the credentials of miracle, I am inclined to agree with Mr. Stephen that, if there were any tangible number of incontrovertible miracles, there could be no controversy on the question whether or not such things can be. But then I should not apply that remark to any case of internal consciousness of supernatural influence, because, from the very circumstances of the case, the evidence of the existence of such influence can not be open to any mind except that which is the subject of it, and in my view it is quite unreasonable to deny that there are indirect but yet conclusive proofs in history that such supernatural influences have transformed, and do still habitually transform, the characters of the very greatest of our race. But it is one thing to see the evidence of spiritual influence in every page of human history and quite another to attach importance to such preternatural occurrences as the Archbishop has recently referred to, which are usually so mixed up with superstitions of all kinds, and so great a variety