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Letter 13] gravitation would still act, pressing the stone, so to speak, upon an invisible hand: and the explanation would be, not that the Law was suspended, but that the results of the Law were uniquely modified by the peculiar action of a unique human nature, in the same way in which they are commonly modified by the regular action of an ordinary human nature. This, I say, is conceivable. Yet if we find (1) in past history, a general tendency to believe in miracles on very slight evidence; (2) in the present time, a general and, as many think, a universal refutation of the evidence on which miracles have been accepted; (3) an increasing power of explaining many so-called miracles in accordance with natural Laws—it becomes our obvious duty to regard miraculous narratives with a very strong suspicion until cogent evidence has been produced for their truth.

The Action of the Will

Hitherto we have been considering the action of the Will upon external Nature; but now what as to the action of our Will upon our own Nature, upon the machinery of our own body? Is that to be called a Law of Nature or a suspension of a Law of Nature?

It is to be called neither. Our definition of "Law of Nature" was "a metaphorical name given to the ordinary course of things apart from the intervention of human will:" consequently the action of human will (about which we are now speaking) is expressly excluded from the province of Nature, in this sense, and can neither be called "a Law of Nature," nor a "suspension of a Law of Nature." The action of the Will falls under the head of "human Nature;" and, discussing it under that head, we may call it by any metaphor we please, a custom, habit, law of human Nature.