THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 817 



bracing all the elements of the problem, including the states of his 

 own mind. This efficient causality can be denied by no one who 

 admits the dynamic idea at all ; and no phenomenon can dispense 

 with it." 



Here we have, as I conceive, the clew to the principle of the uni- 

 formity of Nature. So far as Nature is purely dynamic, and so far as 

 force is measured by reason, we can not stray from the rigid logic of 

 fact and the equally rigid logic of thought. Doubtless it will be re- 

 plied that, as in the mind of man there is a free spring of force, which 

 is as yet undetermined, which is potential and not actual force, so 

 there is behind Nature a free spring of force which is as yet undeter- 

 mined, which is potential and not actual nature in short, a power 

 above nature and capable of modifying it ; in other words, super- 

 natural. And that doctrine I should heartily accept. The uniformity 

 of Nature is the uniformity of force, just as the uniformity of reason- 

 in o- is the uniformity of thought. But just as the indeterminateness 

 of creative will stands behind the determinateness of the orbit of 

 force, so the indeterminateness of creative purpose stands behind the 

 determinateness of the orbit of thought or inference. I hold that man 

 is not wholly immersed in dynamic laws, that though our physical 

 constitution is subject to them, our mental constitution rises above 

 them into a world where free self-determination is possible. I do not 

 wonder, therefore, that we find it difficult to realize the rigidity of 

 the laws of efficient causation even so far as it would be good for us 

 to realize them. But I can not think that any one who has once con- 

 tracted the habit of even fixing his own attention can doubt for a 

 moment that cause and effect are connected together by efficient links, 

 nor that, if force outside us means the same thing as force inside us, the 

 relation of cause and effect is as necessary unless some higher power 

 interfere to modify the cause as the relation of premises to conclu- 

 sion. "With regard to Dr. Ward's invitation to us to examine more 

 carefully the credentials of miracle, I am inclined to agree with Mr. 

 Stephen that, if there were any tangible number of incontrovertible 

 miracles, there could be no controversy on the question whether or not 

 such things can be. But then I should not apply that remark to any 

 case of internal consciousness of supernatural influence, because, from 

 the very circumstances of the case, the evidence of the existence of 

 such influence can not be open to any mind except that which is the 

 subject of it, and in my view it is quite unreasonable to deny that 

 there are indirect but yet conclusive proofs in history that such super- 

 natural influences have transformed, and do still habitually transform, 

 the characters of the very greatest of our race. But it is one thing 

 to see the evidence of spiritual influence in every page of human his- 

 tory and quite another to attach importance to such preternatural 

 occurrences as the Archbishop has recently referred to, which are usu- 

 ally so mixed up with superstitions of all kinds, and so great a variety 

 vol. xxvii. 52 



