Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/269

Rh the life of one greater than St. Francis, on the like ground. I am not going into the argument concerning the miracles and resurrection of the Lord; but 'I wish to suggest that if the potency of a divine will be admitted, we have in the case of these events to take account of a power which does not present itself in the discussion of natural phenomena. We may well as philosophers admit, in consideration of the special circumstances of the case, the possibility of these supernatural facts, while prizing the principle of uniformity as a working hypothesis, or as more than this. For in truth even the action of the ordinary human will introduces strange breaches of uniformity into Nature. Conceive some observer endowed with human scientific faculties contemplating this earth of ours in the pre-human period. He sees the continents covered with forests, beasts of all kinds disporting themselves in the same, a great vigor of vegetable and animal life both in the sea and on the dry land. But all is absolutely wild, not a single glimpse anywhere of human purpose and contrivance. Suppose our observer to speculate upon the future of this scene of life and activity by the help of the working hypothesis of the uniformity of Nature, of which we will liberally allow him the use out of the scientific repertory of our own times. Would it be possible that this working hypothesis could present to his view, as a possible future of the globe, anything essentially different from what he could then see? The limits of land and water might have been observed to vary, and further variation might be anticipated; volcanic action would have been seen to be very active, and it might be expected that volcanoes would still be a potent agent; nay, I will even suppose that an observer is keen enough from his observations to deduce the theory of evolution, and 80 to expect that the flora and fauna which he witnesses are in process of transformation into something higher; but could he possibly, in his happiest moment, and when his genius was highest, ever have conceived or guessed the change which would come upon the globe when man appeared as the head and crown of the creation? It is not that man would be a stronger, or more active, or more crafty beast, than had ever appeared before, but that he would be a new creature altogether; a creature with plans and purposes of his own, capable of saying, "I intend to do this or that, and I will do it"; a creature, in fact, with a will which, joined to an intelligence infinitely higher than anything exhibited before, would enable him to treat the earth as his own, to subdue the powers of Nature, and fashion the earth's surface after his own pleasure; which also would make him a moral agent, and so a creature different in kind from all those which had preceded him. This, however, is not the point upon which I intend to dwell now; what I wish to point out is, that the appearance of man upon the earth would break to fragments any theory which an observer might have formed with the aid of the working hypothesis of the uniformity of Nature. The forests disappear, except so far as man finds them