Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/263

Rh into the truth of alleged phenomena lying apparently outside the circle of ordinary experience, to have argued that there might be causes of which ordinary physical science takes no account, and that you can not logically deny the occurrence of what may be called conveniently the "supernatural," unless you assert that the causes which are included in what we call Nature exhaust all possible forms of causation. Such an assertion would probably be rash, even if we took into account only the results which may be produced by the action of the human will. But so far as the physical investigator, the scientific discoverer, the man of science in the ordinary sense of the phrase, is concerned, he may consistently say that all causation of a spiritual or supernatural kind is outside his domain. He may say, "I neither affirm nor deny the possibility of events and phenomena which are not according to the ordinary course of Nature. I am content to take what is called the uniformity of Nature as prescribing the limit of my inquiries"; and he may be able to add, with Professor Huxley, that he has never yet found it to fail him. If it should fail him, the result might possibly be similar to that which mathematicians call the failure of Taylor's theorem, and might indicate, not that the theorem was faulty, but that in certain critical cases the ordinary law of the theorem would not apply.

The discussion which precedes has been longer than I expected, but I could not well shorten it. Hitherto I have been chiefly engaged in what has been offered by others on the subject of the uniformity of Nature; I now proceed to suggest a view which, if it fails to give the reader's mind as much satisfaction as it affords my own, will at least, I trust, be deemed worthy of some consideration.

Strict views concerning the uniformity of Nature appear to me to date from the period when Newton first showed that the motions of the heavenly bodies could be made the subject of mathematical calculations, or rather of dynamical, for I am not speaking of those which are merely empirical. Newton, in fact, founded what we now call physical astronomy. If we look a little back from this period, we find the opinions of men of the most educated class very loose on the subject of Nature and Nature's laws. It is sufficient to refer to Sir Thomas Browne's belief, that intercourse was possible between human creatures and evil spirits, and Sir Matthew Hale's often-quoted opinions and consequent judicial action in the case of witchcraft. There was much in popular superstition, much even in orthodox religious belief, and perhaps much in the tendencies of the human intellect, to suggest views of Nature which would now present insuperable obstacles to minds even of ordinary powers and proficiency, but which presented no such obstacles in what may be called the