The Eclipse of Faith Part 18

"The fact is," answered Fellowes, "that, like many other things, it is better understood--"

"Than described, as the novelists say, when they feel that their powers of description fail them. But this will hardly do for us; we are philosophers, you know (save the mark!) in search of truth.--A thing that is well known by every body, and is capable of being described by n.o.body, would be almost a miracle of itself; and I think it imports us to give some better account of the matter. I can see that my orthodox uncle there is already secretly amusing himself at the antic.i.p.ation of our perplexities."

I took no notice of the remark, but went on writing.

"Well, then, if I must give you some definition," said Fellowes, "I know not if I can do better than avail myself of the usual one, that it is a suspension or violation of a law of nature. Is not that the account which Hume gives of the matter?"

"I think it is. I am afraid, however, that at the very outset we should have some difficulty in determining one of the phrases used in this very definition,--namely, how we are to understand a law of nature. I do not ask whether law implies a lawgiver; you will a.s.sert it, and I shall not gainsay it: it is at present immaterial. But do you not mean by a law of nature (I am asking the question merely to ascertain whether or not we are thinking of the same thing) just this;--the fact that similar phenomena uniformly reappear in an observed series of antecedents and consequents, which series is invariable so far as we know, and so far as others know, whose experience we can test? Is not that what you mean? You do not, I presume, suppose you know any thing of the connection which binds together causes and effects, or the manner in which the secret bond (if there be any) which unites antecedents and consequents, in any natural phenomena, is maintained?"

"I certainly make no such pretensions; all that I mean by a law of nature is just what you have mentioned. I shall be well content to adhere to your explanation," answered Fellowes.

"So that when we observe similar phenomena reproduced in the aforesaid series of antecedents and consequents, we call that a law of nature, and affirm that violation of that law would be a miracle, and impossible?"

"Certainly."

"And further, do you not agree with me that such invariable series is sufficiently certified to us by our own uniform experience,--that of all our neighbors and friends,--and, in a word, that of all whose experience we can test?"

"I agree with you."

"I am content," replied Harrington; "but at the outset it seems to me that the expression I have used requires a little expansion to meet the sophistry of our opponents. I will either explain myself now, and then leave you to judge; or I will say no more of the matter here, but pursue our discussion, and let the difficulty (if there be one) disclose itself in the course of it, and be provided for as may be in our power."

"What is it?"

"It is this;--that it cannot, with truth, be said, in relation to many phenomena, that (so far as our experience informs us) they do follow each other in an absolutely invariable order; which phenomena, nevertheless, we believe to be as much under the dominion of law as the rest; and any violation of this law, I presume, you would think as much a miracle as any other. For example, we do not find the same remedies or the same regimen will produce the same effects upon different individuals at different times; again, the varieties of the weather, in every climate, are dependent upon so many causes, that it transcends all human skill to calculate them. Yet I dare say you can easily imagine certain degrees and continuity of change in these variable phenomena which you would not hesitate to call as much miracle as if the dead were raised, or the sun stayed in mid-heaven."

"Yes, unquestionably," replied Fellowes; "if I found, for instance that a dozen men could take an ounce of a.r.s.enic or half a pound of opium with impunity, I should not hesitate to regard it as a miracle, although the precise amount sufficient to kill in any particular case might not be capable of being ascertained. In the same manner, if I found that though the amount of heat and cold in summer and winter in our climate is subject to marked variations, yet that suddenly for several consecutive years we had more frost in July than in December; that gooseberries and currants were getting ripe on Christmas day, and men were skating on the Serpentine on the 10th of August, I should certainly argue that a change tantamount to a miracle had been wrought in nature."

"You have just expressed my own feelings on that point," said Harrington; "and it was this very consideration which made me say, that, in order to render my expression perfectly clear, and to obviate misconception and misrepresentation, we must endeavor to include this very frequent case of a certain limited variation from the order of nature as consistent with the absence of miracle, and a certain degree of that variation as inconsistent with it."

"Will you just state our criterion once more, with the limitation attached; and then I shall know better whether we are certainly agreed in the criterion we ought to employ?"

"I say, then," resumed Harrington, "that our uniform experience, that of our friends and neighbors, and of all whose experience we have the opportunity of testing, as to the order of nature,--meaning by that either an order absolutely invariable, or varying only limits which are themselves absolutely invariable,--justifies us in p.r.o.nouncing an event contradicting such experience to be all impossibility. If the principle is worth any thing, let us embrace it, and inflexibly apply it."

"And I, for one," replied Fellowes, "am quite satisfied with the principle and the limitations you have laid down; and am so confident of its correctness, that I do not hesitate to say that all the miraculous histories on record are to be summarily rejected."

"For example," said Harrington, "we have seen the sun rise every morning and set every evening all our lives; and every one whose experience we can test has seen the same. Every man who has come into the world has come into it but one way, and has as certainly gone out of it, and has not returned; and every one whose experience we can test affirms the same. We therefore conclude on this uniform and invariable experience, that the same sequences took place yesterday and the day before, and will take place tomorrow and the day after; and we may fearlessly apply this principle both to the past and the future.

I know of no other reason for rejecting a miracle; and if I am to apply the principle at all to phenomena which have not fallen under my own observation, I must apply it without restriction."

"I am quite of your mind."

"You think, with me, that our experience,--the experience of those about us,--the experience of all whose experience we have the means of testing,--is sufficient to settle the question as to the experience of those whose experience we have not the means of testing; who lived, for example, a thousand years before we were born; or in a distant part of the world, where we have never been?"

"Certainly: why should we hesitate so to apply it?"

"I am sure I know not; and you see I am not unwilling so to apply it.

Only I asked the question, because we must not forget that many say it is begging the question; for, as a 'miracle' has not been exerted on us to give us a vision of the past experience of man, or his present experience in any part of the world we never visited, our opponents affirm, that to say that the experience we trust to has been and is the universal experience of man, is a clear pet.i.tio principii."

"Surely," said Fellowes, "it may be said that the general experience of mankind has been of such a character."

"Exactly so, as a postulate from our experience, as a generalized a.s.sumption that our experience may be taken as a specimen and criterion of all experience. We a.s.sume that,--we do not prove it. It is just as in any other case of induction; we say, 'Because this is true in twenty or thirty or a hundred instances (as the case may be), which we can test, --therefore it is generally or universally true'; we do not say, because this is true in these instances, and because it is also generally or universally true, therefore it is so! No; our true premise is restricted to what alone we know from our experience and the experience of all whose experience we can test if we please. This is our real ground on which we are to justify our rejection of all miracles, and let us adhere to it. As to your general experience, you see, the advocate of miracles easily gets over that. He says, 'Why, no one pretends that miracles are as "plenty as blackberries"; otherwise they would no longer be miracles; these are comparatively rare events, of course; and, being rare, are necessarily at variance with general experience'; and, for my part, I should not know how to answer the objection."

"Well, then," said Fellowes. "let us adhere to that which is our real ground of objection, and let us consistently apply it."

"With all my heart," said Harrington; "we agree then, that our own uniform experience,--that of all our neighbors and friends,--in fact, of all whose experience we can test, is a sufficient criterion of a law of nature, and justifies us in at once rejecting as possible any alleged fact which violates it."

"Certainly."

"For example, if it were a.s.serted that last year that the sun never rose on a certain day, or, rather, for twenty-four hours the rotation of the earth ceased, we should instantly reject the story, without examination of witnesses, or any such thing."

"No doubt of that."

"And just so in other cases. This, then, is our ground. You would not (if I may advise) lay much stress on the fact that there have been so many stories of a supernatural kind false."

"Why, I do not know whether it would not be wise to insist upon that argument. It seems to be not without weight," urged Fellowes.

"Perhaps so," replied Harrington; "but it has, you see, this inconvenience, of proving more than you want. The greater part by far of all religions have been false. But you affirm that there is one little system absolutely true. The greater part of the theories of science and philosophy, which men, from time to time, have framed, have also been false; and yet you believe that there is such a thing as true philosophy and true science. Similarly, the generality of political governments have been founded on vicious principles, yet you hope for a political millennium at last. In short, the argument would go to prove, that, as there can never have been any true miracles because there have been so many false ones, so, for similar reasons, it is mere 'vanity and vexation of spirit' to search after truth in religion, or science, or politics; and though a sceptic, like myself, might not much mind it, perhaps it would trammel such a positive philosopher as you. Nay, a pertinacious opponent might even say, that, as you believe that in all these last cases there is a substance, else there would not have been the shadows, so, with reference to miracles, the very general belief of them rather argues that there have been miracles, than that there have been none. My advice is, that we adhere to these reasons we have a.s.signed, for they are our real reasons."

"Be it so; I hate miracles so much, that I care not by what means the doltish delusion is dissipated."

"Only that the weapons should be fair?"

"O, of course."

"To resume, then. I say, that, if we were told that last year an event of such a miraculous nature occurred as that the earth did not revolve for twenty-four hours together, we should at once reject it, without any examination of witnesses, or troubling ourselves with any thing of the kind."

"Unquestionably."

"And if it were said to have occurred twenty years ago we should take the same course."

"Certainly."

"And so if any such event were said to have occurred eighteen hundred years ago?"

"Agreed."

"And if such events were said at that day to have occurred eighteen hundred years previously, we believe, of course, the men of that time would have been equally ent.i.tled to reason in the same way about them as ourselves; and, in short, that we may fearlessly apply the same principle to the same epoch."

"Of course"

"And so for two thousand years before that; and, in fact, we must believe that every thing has always been going on in the same manner, --the sun always rising and setting, men dying and never rising and so forth."

"Exactly so, even from the beginning of the creation," said Fellowes.

"The beginning of the creation! My good fellow, I do not understand you. As we have been going back, we have seen that there is no period at which the same principle of judgment will not apply, and, following it fearlessly, I say that we are in all fairness bound to believe that there never has been a period when the present order has been different from what it is; in other words, that the progression has been an eternal one."

"I cannot admit that argument," said Fellowes.

"Then be pleased to provide me with a good answer to it, which will still leave us at liberty to say, that a miracle (that is, a variation from the order of nature as determined by our uniform experience, and by that of the whole circle of our contemporaries) is impossible, and that we may reject at once any pretension of the kind."