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tower upon tower, but the stairs you could not reach. The only lights you bore in your hand were dim and wavering. At every step, as you compared the position of a few objects with the plan in your hand, there appeared undeniable traces of alteration, something new, something unaccounted for. But in some few instances you detected that the anomaly was a mistake of your own eyes, or your own imagination. After a few hours' search you were quite satisfied; and you come out to us with the unhesitating declaration that in no street, or chamber, or passage, or vault of that boundless city has a single object changed its place from the day when it was abandoned by the founder. Is not this the real amount of the experience of science to the facts and operations of

nature.

Is it necessary to empty a commonplace book of humble, yet ennobling, confessions of human ignorance on all those profounder questions involved in the theory of causation, and therefore in the consideration of miracles ?

Spirit. . . . We are still ignorant, strictly speaking, of the causes of the various operations of Nature, after ages of laborious and scientific investigation. Nor will the philosopher profess to have ascertained with regard to any one series of these causes, or successive events and changes, that he has, beyond all possibility of doubt, at length arrived at the beginning of the series, that he has laid his finger on the ultimate link in the whole chain which is held by the hand identical point at which these second causes of Omnipotence, and that he has traced the merge and are lost in the secret agency of the great first cause of all-if indeed it be not more proper to consider all second causes as nothing more than so many constant actions of the Deity, regulated by his own laws. † : . . All organic structures, even the most minute, present exceedingly complicated arrangements, and prolonged succession of phenomena so varied, and so anomalous, as to be utterly irreducible to the known laws which govern inanimate matter. ... Of the planetary system which includes the earth, our knowledge is almost entirely confined to the mathematical laws that compose it. . . . Beyond the fraction of an inch or of a second, everything be"We are incapable of comprehending longing to space and time is inappreciable anything of the manner in which the nerves by our senses; yet beyond these limits we are affected, certainly we know nothing of know that myriads of portions of space and the manner in which sensation is propagated of time must exist, too vast or too minute or the mind ultimately influenced.* to be referred to our imperfect standards. § Even in a common act of perception, the... In the phenomena of tasting and determined relations established between the smelling, the whole is involved in mystery sensation and the idea in the mind have no from beginning to end. || . . . How water is actual resemblance. How this consent which composed of gaseous elements we are unais so precise and constant is established can ble to explain, or even to comprehend the neither be explained by anatomy, nor by nature of the union or its result. ¶. . . physiology, nor by any mode of physical in- What becomes of the two electric and two quiry whatever. t... What the first im- magnetic energies in the original molecules pulse to motion is, we do not know, nor how of matter, when in a state of equilibrium? the mind is related to the body. . . . Is What is the relation between the force of heat really matter, a subtle matter capable gravitation and the polarizing forces? †† of diffusing itself in bodies, or anything... The chemical properties of light, the more than a motion, vibration, or rotation phenomena of heat, are by no means well excited among their particles ? All the ex- understood. . . The phenomena of periments that have been made up to the chemistry are so extraordinary, and often so present time have not availed to set the unexpected, that little in general can be question at rest. §... And probably the more secret operations of nature may forever remain so shrouded from human penetration, as to render it impossible to say in any one instance that we have reached the goal, ascertained the very first in the series of second causes, and drawn the exact line between the subordinate operations of matter and the immediate agency of the Infinite

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predicated of them beyond what is actually
known. §§ . . . And in the unavoidable im-
perfection of all chemical processes we can
scarcely hope to approach within the neces-
sary limits of precision." ||||

"Account of Bacon's Nov. Org.," p. 7.
↑ Ibib., p. 3.

Roget," Bridgewater Treatise," p. 8.
Prout," Bridgewater Treatise," 1st ed. p. 5.
Ibid., p. 8.
** Ibid., p. 40.

Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 137.

Ibid., p. 9.

ft Ibid., p. 47.
§§ Ibid., p. 154.

!

Is it necessary to multiply such avowals from the greatest intellects which ennoble science, even at this day, when science has discovered so much?

But why speak of the deeper mysteries of science? Look upon that ocean dashing upon yon bank of shingle. The position of every pebble in that bank, the motion of every drop of water in that ocean, the impulse on it of every breath, the formation of every air-bubble in that spray and foam, is as much a fact, involving a cause and an effect, as an eclipse of the sun or the upheaving of a continent by an earthquake. Tell us the cause of each. Attest by your experience that none but natural causes— causes with which we are familiar-have wrought any one of these effects. Prove to us that no hand, but what you call the hand of Nature-as if the hand of Nature were anything but the will of God-has interposed, or is interposing at this moment, in those millions upon millions of phenomena which, within the space of a few feet, you see evolving every moment before your eyes. Will you dare to do so? And will you then dare to assert that experimental Induction is your ground for asserting the universal immutability of nature ?

Once more. What is the age of this Inductive Science, the length of your experience ? Is not every branch of physical Science, by its own confession, in its infancy; only just emerging from the legendary, fabulous, mythological fogs of human dreams as opposed to the clear daylight of experience? Can you even venture to carry back your register of facts as far as Francis Bacon? Are you not beginning to doubt even the Inductive Soundness of the Novum Organum? Is Sir Charles Lyell satisfied with the state of our past Geological Records? Is not the terminology of science a new coinage of this day; showing how new are the discoveries? Can you even safely include as a portion of human experience the astronomical observations of the ancients ? Have not some on which you reckoned as facts, and calculated from them the antiquity of man, been proved to be retrospective guesses-not witnessed phenomena ? The experience of a few short years-is this to be put forward as the universal experience of the world is this the experience on which you rest ?

No, you will reply; not experience of this kind; not that which only asserts of a whole number what has already been proved of each unit separately; not that by which from a vast multitude of occurrences roughly examined and generally stated we rather guess than argue that others like them will occur; the experience on which we rest is the strict and careful experience of inductive logic, in which one single experiment accurately tested and repeated enables us to spring at once to an universal conclusion by means of the simple axiom that "similar causes produce similar effects."

Undoubtedly Inductive Science does not require any great multiplication of instances to give validity to such conclusions. No multiplication it can make, however vast, could really justify them. If it multiply experiments, this is done, not to strengthen the inference to universality, but to test the one experiment, to satisfy ourselves that we have accurately and precisely ascertained the real cause, the real circumstances under which the phenomenon called the effect will follow. And the wonderful skill of a Faraday is shown in so constructing his experiments, by excluding heterogeneous and superfluous ingredients, as to insulate and enucleate the circumstances with the utmost precision. Upon what, then, does the whole validity of Inductive Science rest? Upon two things: first, the exact enumeration of the circumstances of the cause and effect; and secondly, the authority of that axiom, drawn not from the outward world by human experience, but from the inner world of our own mind, that "similar causes will always produce similar effects." If either of these fail, the cogency of scientific induction, though left still perfectly adequate for all practical purposes, is reduced after all from strict certainty to moral probability. It cannot present any impassable barrier to the acknowledgment of miracles.

And now let us ask of Science, if it can prove in any one case, even where it has penetrated most deeply into the mysteries of nature, that it has succeeded in a precise and demonstrable ascertainment of a cause, or of an effect? Is it possible for it by any analysis, by any minuteness of microscopic research, by any ingenuity in the construction of experiments, by any simplification of their conditions, so to insulate and abstract

the conditions which constitute the cause, so like that of electricity or magnetism, giving to strip off the accidents and circumstances polarity and attraction to the original moleof the process, so to clear the supposed effect cules of matter, Science does not even profrom any communication with other extra-fess to decide. neous influences, as to prove to demonstra

But supposing such a power to exist, and

material universe, the heavenly bodies will be found to move in certain elliptical orbits, to be subject to certain perturbations, to appear and re-appear at certain places at predicted times. And as far as we can determine with our imperfect instruments, with our interrupted observations, with our calculations worked up on the very assumption that they are in themselves subject to constant error, and can only present an approximation to strict truth, we find that our predictions are verified. The stars do to a wonderful extent move, and appear as if influenced by the same power which draws a stone to the ground. Even then we are compelled to assume, for we cannot prove, two other conditions of their motions: First, that bodies originally propelled through space at a certain velocity will preserve that velocity, and move in a straight line forever, unless deflected by some external influence. And secondly, that there is, or is not, an atmospheric medium, through which they move, and which may or may not, according to our theories, affect their motions. Surely, our ignorance on this fact alone-the existence of an atmospheric medium-must show us that we cannot yet possess all the conditions and circumstances of astronomical phenomena, so as to say precisely that they are assignable beyond a doubt to this cause or to that. Newton himself was prepared at any moment to abandon his theory. It was the noblest of his noble qualities that he rigidly and sternly bowed down his hypothesis to facts. And if, then, even in the simplest phenomena which present to us causes and effects under the most abstract conditions of magnitude and number, time and space, it is so impossible for us to do more than suspect and imagine that a similar cause produces a similar effect;

tion that a precisely similar cause has ever to act throughout the whole range of the produced a precisely similar effect? We are as satisfied, as Science can be, with the general correctness of the inductive principle. No one will hesitate to employ it; it is adequate for all practical purposes; it is our only guide, our only hope in extending our range of sight, and deepening and strengthening the foundations of our knowledge. Induction is the key of nature. No one of common sense will disparage it; no sensible man would think of disputing its practical sufficiency, or of setting limits to its accuracy, if he were not compelled to bring its pretensions to strict examination, and to fix the rightful limits of those pretensions by the frightful consequences which ensue, if they are pushed beyond them. And yet we assert that it is utterly beyond the power of Science to prove that, in any single case, even in astronomical observations, the most insulated, the most clear from all extraneous and unknown conditions, a precisely similar cause has ever produced a precisely similar effect. A stone we observe falls to the ground with a certain calculated velocity. Even this calculation is not, and cannot be, so precise as to fix it to mathematical demonstration. No observation of matter through our imperfect senses can be such. And the greatest astronomers themselves have been prepared to admit the possibility of some slight error in the present statement of the law of gravitation, in order to account for certain newly observed phenomena in the movements of the heavens. As all movements and changes in nature must be traced by us to some external cause (this is a real law of our intellect which cannot be given up), we assume such a cause to exist, as an unknown quantity, and with it the force of gravitation. But what it is, we do not profess to know. Whether it be the immediate will of the Divine Creator, at every moment acting upon every particle of his creation, or some mysterious result of his will declared once for all at the commencement of the world, and acting, we know not how, upon unconscious and insentient matter; or some intermediate power, 786

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

When Bradley and others had observed a certain nutation of the earth which they could not account for, and were thinking it destroyed entirely the Newtonian system, they were under the greatest difficulty how to break it to Sir Isaac, and so proceeded to do so "by degrees in the softest manner." What was his only answer?-"It may be so: there is no arguing against facts and experiments."-See Rigaud's "Life of Bradley,” p. 62.

rather to divine, and augur, to guess, and hope in faith, and not by reason; and assume, with a strong moral probability, rather than prove logically, that it is so; how much more must this be the case when we have to deal with more complicated constructions and untraceable combinations of elements, influences, and conditions in other sciences!

all, upon faith, and not on proof), we may found our science of induction. But is it so stamped by God? Is it more than an instinct, a tendency, an impulse, requiring, like so many other tendencies of our nature, to be narrowly watched, balanced, and corrected by opposite tendencies? All our sins and vices may be traced up to tendencies and principles, all implanted in our being by naScience must forgive the seeming over- ture, but not, therefore, to be blindly folrefinement, the unreasonable scrupulosity of lowed without control or qualification. Are such scrutinies into its grandest assertions. we yet sufficiently acquainted with the nature There is no thought of disputing the New-of this principle to decide this question? Are tonian system, of slighting astronomical dis- there not obvious marks, which class it rather coveries, of impugning their accuracy as suf- with our instincts than with our reasonficient for all practical purposes, and as with imperfect impulses of our compound exhibiting the noblest examples and proud-nature, rather than with absolute revelations est triumphs of the human intellect. Only from God? We can break its links. We let the immutability and universality of the cannot believe gratitude to be a sin, or falseagencies of nature be reduced to the real hood meritorious; but we can imagine and limits fixed by actual experience (when all believe in the existence of a world, where all difficulty in the admission of miracles will the combinations of nature may be totally cease), and maintain them as you like. It different from our present experience. The is only when an exaggerated statement of connection between death and the swallowscience would drive the presence of the Di-ing of arsenic is of a totally different kind vine Creator from his own creation, that an- from that between injustice and the punishother science besides that of matter must able character of injustice. No one would defend its own. It would be but a misera- affirm of moral truths, as Science affirms of ble bargain to purchase the discovery of a material causes and effects, that our knowluniverse of Neptunes by the banishment of edge of them rests wholly upon experience. man from his God.

That the principle has been so little studBut then Science will turn to that axiom ied, is so little understood, would suffice to upon which, after all, the cogency of induc- warn us against asserting at once its Divine tion must rest. From the human mind, not authority and sanction for the universal imfrom outward experience, as Dr. Whewell so mutability of Nature. It would seem partly wisely reiterates, we must derive the idea to be a result of the mechanical association that "similar causes will produce similar ef- of ideas, by which the mind spontaneously fects." Our belief in the universality and and unconsciously recalls and suggests comimmutability of the operations of nature must binations once observed, forming thus our rest ultimately upon this internal instinct. memory, our habits, our character, our Trace that belief, with Hume, to custom; or pleasures, our imagination, and a very large with others to association; or with others to proportion of our practical reasoning. But a separate principle in the human mind; call every step we take in life compels us to keep it the generalizing principle, or the inductive this associating tendency under the strictprinciple: whatever account we give of it, est control, to regard it as a hundred other this only, and not experience, can be our au- tendencies in our nature necessary to existthority for assuming the continuity and sta-ence-valuable as a prompter-but never to bility of nature. And if it be a law of mind, be trusted without the check of a rigid exa law like our moral principles, so stamped perience. Or it may be also, and probably upon our being as to bear the marks of a revelation from God, then upon our faith in the veracity of God, upon our conviction that he would never engrave ineffaceably and unalterably upon the tables of our hearts and souls anything but truths (in one word, after

is, only an operation of that so-called unific principle, which is the first and most essential law of our intellect, by which we are impelled to reduce all that we see and hear to unity-to reduce disorder to a plan, anomalies to regularity, chance coincidences

First, then, in a progressive scheme such as Creation is allowed to be, it is impossible to argue absolutely from any one portion of it to another, because the different places,

to system, phenomena to generalization, ple of induction that similar causes produce varieties to classification, everything to similar effects, such as to erect it into a necunity. And this also is an universal princi- essary axiom. It requires at every step to ple in human nature more or less vigorously be kept in check by experience, by faith in developed, and implanted by the hand of testimony. man's Creator. But indulge this also blindly And Science also must remember the necand without self-control, and what is the re-essary conditions of its employment. And sult? What has been the history of science, these conditions alone preclude the possibilnot to speak of the world of morals, and the ity of applying any argument whatever of world of art, or the oscillations of political Inductive Science to the case of miracles. society, or the perversions of religious truth They strike Science dumb. The cases must -what has been the history of Science her- be precisely similar; with any new ingrediself but one series of warnings and protests ent or altered feature the reasoning is lost. against the aberration of the human intellect, when surrendered to the uncontrolled extravagance of this its fundamental law? Theory rising upon theory to crumble one upon the other into dust, partial inductions, which the two portions occupy in the scale hasty, narrow-minded views, fanciful specu- or chain present an essential difference. lations substituted for facts, half-truths, The absence of miracles at one period cancrude hypotheses, all the varied monstrous not be applied to infer their absence in anforms of intellectual idolatry which Bacon other, any more than the absence of white has denounced. Has not the history of hairs in the child, the boy, the youth, and science been an inheritance and propa- the adult, would render the fact incredible gation of these miseries flowing from a rash, in a man of eighty. The two cases are not unqualified surrender of the human reason the same, they never can be the same. to its so-called unific principle uncontrolled by experience that is by belief in testimony, that is by faith? Is it not the perfection of the scientific reason, while it possesses this unific principle in the highest a previous instance of another whole creavigor, unwearied in its analysis of phenomena, stubborn in its demand for satisfaction, fertile in conceptions of new hypotheses to satisfy its craving for analogy and unity in all which it perceives, yet still to listen docilely and submissively to every new anomaly and marvel which due testimony brings before it, even though in Brewster's words of wisdom" it may put our own views to the torture; and to hold both theory and facts suspended together in the mind, until either is certainly disproved, or the anomaly is resolved into the law?

Is there a single principle or movement in the human mind, which is not provided, as it were, with its fly-wheel to regulate it? And is not faith or belief in testimony the fly-wheel to the unific tendency, which, without it, must at every moment sacrifice experience to theory, reality to fancy, truth to falsehood, science to speculation?

There is, then, no internal authority for the Divine infallibility of the great princi*Life of Newton, vol. i. p. 91.

Secondly, as Bishop Butler has warned us already, if we are to argue by analogy for the exclusion of miracles from the whole of a created system, we must have before us

tion with which to compare it. Where is the other creation precisely similar to this in which we live, from which we know by experience that miracles have been excluded?

And, thirdly, even if we did possess such a previous instance, may it not be true that no argument of analogy could be legitimately drawn from a mere negation-that we can no more build up an inductive reasoning upon a non-experience than a syllogism upon negative premises?

It is something to have advanced thus far -to have seen that legitimate inductive science has absolutely no experience-no induction with which to encounter miracles. But, before we close, let us advance one step farther. Has it not a vast amount of experience to confirm them? Would not the true inductive philosopher, thoroughly conversant with the whole range of nature, alive to the snares of his own imagination, and honestly observant of facts, even expect them-even prophesy them? What is his stumbling-block? It is his assumption-his

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