" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 805 



absolutely, indefensibly, "superabundantly" certain, or he knew no 

 more " than a baby," to use his favorite simile, about the subjects I 

 conversed with him upon. On the criticism of the New Testament, 

 for instance, he always maintained that he knew no more than a baby, 

 though really he knew a good deal about it. On the questions arising 

 out of Papal bulls he would often say that he was as absolutely and 

 superabundantly certain as he was of his own existence. Then he was 

 a very decided humorist. He looked like a country squire, and in the 

 Isle of Wight was, I believe, generally called " Squeer Ward " ; but, if 

 you talked to him about horses or land, he would look at you as if you 

 were talking in an unknown language, and would describe, in most ex- 

 travagant and humorous terms, his many rides in search of health, and 

 the profound fear with which, whenever the animal showed the least 

 sign of spirit, he would cry out, " Take me off ! take me off ! " He 

 was one of the very best and most active members of our society, as 

 long as his health lasted most friendly to everybody, though full of 

 amazement at the depth to which skepticism had undermined the creed 

 of many among us. A more candid man I never knew. He never 

 ignored a difficulty, and never attempted to express an indistinct idea. 

 His metaphysics were as sharp cut as crystals. He never seemed to 

 see the half-lights of a question at all. There was no penumbra in his 

 mind ; or, at least, what he could not grasp clearly, he treated as if he 

 could not apprehend at all. 



When dinner was over and the cloth removed, a waiter entered with 

 sheets of foolscap and pens for each of the members, of which very 

 little use was made. The ascetic Archbishop of Westminster, every 

 nerve in his face expressive of some vivid feeling, entered, and was 

 quickly followed by Dr. Martineau. Then came Mr. Hinton, glancing 

 round the room with a modest half-humorous furtiveness, as he seated 

 himself among us. Then Dr. Ward began his paper. He asked how 

 mere experience could prove a universal truth without examining in 

 detail every plausibly asserted exception to that truth, and disproving 

 the reality of the exception. He asked whether those who believe 

 most fervently in the uniformity of Nature ever show the slightest 

 anxiety to examine asserted exceptions. He imagined, he said, that 

 what impresses physicists is the fruitfulness of inductive science, with 

 the reasonable inference that inductive science could not be the fruit- 

 ful field of discovery it is, unless it rested on a legitimate basis, which 

 basis could be no other than a principle of uniformity. Dr. Ward an- 

 swered that the belief in genuine exceptions to the law of uniform 

 phenomenal antecedents and consequents does not in the least degree 

 invalidate this assumption of the general uniformity of Nature, if these 

 exceptions are announced, as in the case of miracles they always must 

 be, as demonstrating the interposition of some spiritual power which 

 is not phenomenal, between the antecedent and its natural consequent 

 which interposition it is that alone interrupts the order of phenome- 



