8i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bar will fall to the earth, have been verified, and that the imaginative 

 illusion which half-educated people still so often indulge, that excep- 

 tions will occur for the occurrence of which there is no rational evi- 

 dence, is a most mischievous one, which we ought to try to eradicate. 

 We ought to engage what I have ventured in this society to call the 

 " emotion of conviction," the caprices of which are so extravagant and 

 so dangerous, much more seriously on the side of the uniformity of 

 Nature than we have ever hitherto done. We should all try to distin- 

 guish more carefully than we do between possibility, probability, and 

 certainty. It is not as certain that the sun will rise to-morrow as it is 

 that I was cold before I entered this room ; it is not as certain that 

 Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid as it is that the sun will rise 

 to-morrow ; it is not as certain that Peel's Act will always be sus- 

 pended in a panic as it is that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be 

 paid. And it is difficult for " such creatures as we are " to accommo- 

 date our expectations to these varying degrees of reasonable evidence. 

 But though experience, however long and cumulative, can never prove 

 he absolute uniformity of Nature, it surely ought to train us to bring 

 our expectations into something like consistency with the uniformity 

 of Nature. And as I endeavor to effect this in my own mind, I 

 certainly can not agree with Mr. Ruskin that I have always been 

 " expecting " the sun to stand still. Probably as a child I was 

 always expecting things quite as improbable as that. But if I ex- 

 pected them now I should not have profited as much by the disillu- 

 sionizing character of my experience as I endeavor to hope that I 

 actually have. 



There was a general smile as Bagehot ceased, but the smile ceased 

 as Mr. Fitzjames Stephen the present Sir James Stephen took up 

 the discussion by remarking, in the mighty bass that always exerted a 

 sort of physical authority over us, that while the society seemed to be 

 pretty well agreed upon the main question, namely, tLat the uniformity 

 of Nature could not be absolutely proved by experience, or, indeed, by 

 any other method, there was a point in Dr. Ward's paper, namely, the 

 challenge to examine seriously into the authenticity of miracles, which 

 had not been dealt with. For my part, he said, I am quite ready to 

 examine into the evidence of any so-called miracle, that is, into the 

 evidence of any unusual event which is offered to prove Divine inter- 

 ference in our affairs, when it comes before me with sufficient presump- 

 tion of authority to render it worth my while to investigate it ; though 

 I probably should not agree with Dr. Ward as to what constitutes 

 such a presumption. Certainly " a bare, uncorroborated assertion by a 

 person professing to be an eye-witness of an event is not sufficient evi- 

 dence of that event to warrant action of an important kind based upon 

 the supposition of its occurrence. When you are obliged to guess, 

 such an assertion may be a reason for making one guess rather than 

 another. Less evidence than this would make a banker hesitate as to a 



