NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 309 



Natural and Supernatural. A rather serious consequence 

 of dropping causality in the external world is that it 

 leaves us with no clear distinction between the Natural 

 and the Supernatural. In an earlier chapter I compared 

 the invisible agent invented to account for the tug of 

 gravitation to a "demon". Is a view of the world which 

 admits such an agent any more scientific than that of a 

 savage who attributes all that he finds mysterious in 

 Nature to the work of invisible demons? The New- 

 tonian physicist had a valid defence. He could point 

 out that his demon Gravitation was supposed to act 

 according to fixed causal laws and was therefore not to 

 be compared with the irresponsible demons of the 

 savage. Once a deviation from strict causality is ad- 

 mitted the distinction melts away. I suppose that the 

 savage would admit that his demon was to some extent 

 a creature of habit and that it would be possible to make 

 a fair guess as to what he would do in the future; but 

 that sometimes he would show a will of his own. It is 

 that imperfect consistency which formerly disqualified 

 him from admission as an entity of physics along with 

 his brother Gravitation. 



That is largely why there has been so much bother 

 about "me"; because I have, or am persuaded that I 

 have, "a will of my own". Either the physicist must 

 leave his causal scheme at the mercy of supernatural 

 interference from me, or he must explain away my 

 supernatural qualities. In self-defence the materialist 

 favoured the latter course; he decided that I was not 

 supernatural — only complicated. We on the other hand 

 have concluded that there is no strict causal behaviour 

 anywhere. We can scarcely deny the charge that in 

 abolishing the criterion of causality we are opening the 

 door to the savage's demons. It is a serious step, but 



