SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 



335 



3. The supernatural, or above Nature. 



In investigating any new claims whatever, experts consciously or 

 unconsciously keep this order in mind : they first inquire whether the 

 claims can be explained by laws already known to experts ; if not so 

 explained, then they are referred to the second order the unknown in 

 Nature and attempts are made to bring them into the first order, or 

 the known in Nature : such is the philosophy of all human progress in 

 science. But when men go further, and assert that these unknown 

 phenomena are of supernatural character, they bid good-by to the 

 scientific method ; for what is it that constitutes the differential diag- 

 nosis between the unknown in Nature and the supernatural ? It mat- 

 ters not, in its bearings on this question, how the supernatural is de- 

 fined, as the unusual action of natural laws or interference with natural 

 law. The supernatural manifested becomes, relatively to the human 

 faculties, the natural. For all that we know, or can know, every great 

 or minute phenomenon in Nature may be a direct, immediate, and spe- 

 cial act of a power above Nature : the movement of every star, each 

 vibration of the infinite ether, the shock of earthquakes, and the silent 

 meaning of protoplasm, may all be manifestations of a power above 

 Nature ; but, whether they are so or not, the human mind is powerless 

 to prove or disprove. The universe might swarm with demons and 

 angels ; ghosts might inhabit the earth and sky, in numbers compared 

 with which the population of the globe is as the seen to the unseen 

 stars ; spirits might speak, might rap, might materialize and yet the 

 human mind would be unable to scientifically prove the supernatural, 

 for still the question, how to distinguish what is above Nature from 

 what is unknown in Nature, would remain unanswered and unanswer- 

 able. 



Science has not, cannot have, any absolute deduction against the 

 existence of ghosts, or of spirits, evil or good, or of any imaginable 

 supernatural shapes whatsoever ; the world might be embraced and 

 permeated by an infinite spiritual ocean, as the air is believed to be 

 penetrated by a luminiferous ether ; but science would not have, and 

 could not find, either through induction or deduction, any way of de- 

 monstrating its existence. In the realm of the supposed supernatural 

 all things are possible and all things are undemonstrable. 1 Under this 

 class of claims, that from the limitations of the human brain can neither 



1 Although it hardly comes within the scope of the present outline to point out all 

 the practical bearings of this reform in logic, one thought may perhaps be briefly sug- 

 gested. For the cause of religion, it is fortunate that it cannot be scientifically proved. 

 Religion, being a recognition through the emotions of a spiritual universe and of our 

 relations to it, cannot and should not appeal to the intellect. A religion scientifically 

 proved would be a religion no longer, but a fact of science, like the Copernican theory, 

 or gravitation, and, like these and other scientific facts, would be taken cognizance of by 

 the intellect alone, consequently it would lose entirely the leverage of the emotions, by 

 which it has so powerfully influenced the destinies of mankind. The scientific demonstra- 

 tion of religion would be the destruction of religion. 



