SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM. 799 



skepticism, with which most scientific men receive these statements, is 

 due to the fact that they feel themselves justified in denying the pos- 

 sibility of any such metamorphosis of water or of any such levitation, 

 because such events are contrary to the laws of Nature. So the ques- 

 tion of the preacher is triumphantly put : How do you know that there 

 are not "higher" laws of Nature than your chemical and physical 

 laws, and that these higher laws may not intervene and "wreck" the 

 latter ? 



The plain answer to this question is, Why should anybody be called 

 upon to say how he knows that which he does not know ? You are 

 assuming that laws are agents — efficient causes of that which happens 

 — and that one law can interfere with another. To us that assump- 

 tion is as nonsensical as if you were to talk of a proposition of Euclid 

 being the cause of the diagram which illustrates it, or of the integral 

 calculus interfering with the rule of three. Your question really im- 

 plies that we pretend to complete knowledge not only of all past and 

 present phenomena, but of all that are possible in the future, and we 

 leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of esoteric Buddhism. Our 

 pretensions are infinitely more modest. We have succeeded in find- 

 ing out the rules of action of a little bit of the universe ; we call these 

 rules "laws of Nature," not because anybody knows whether they 

 bind Nature or not, but because we find it is obligatory on us to take 

 them into account, both as actors under Nature, and as interpreters of 

 Nature. We have any quantity of genuine miracles of our own, and, 

 if you will furnish us with as good evidence of your miracles as we 

 have of ours, we shall be quite happy to accept them and to amend 

 our expression of the laws of Nature in accordance with the new facts. 



As to the particular cases adduced, we are so perfectly fair-minded 

 as to be willing to help your case as far as we can. You are quite 

 mistaken in supposing that anybody who is acquainted with the possi- 

 bilities of physical science will undertake categorically to deny that 

 water may be turned into wine. Many very competent judges are 

 already inclined to think that the bodies, which we have hitherto 

 called elementary, are really composite arrangements of the particles 

 of a uniform primitive matter. Supposing that view to be correct, 

 there would be no more theoretical difficulty about turning water into 

 alcohol, ethereal and coloring matters, than there is at this present 

 moment any practical difficulty in working other such miracles ; as 

 when we turn sugar into alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, and succinic 

 acid ; or transmute gas-refuse into perfumes rarer than musk, and dyes 

 richer than Tyrian purple. If the so-called " elements," oxygen and 

 hydrogen, which compose water, are aggregates of the same ultimate 

 particles or physical units, as those which enter into the structure of 

 the so-called element " carbon," it is obvious that alcohol and other 

 substances — composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen — may be pro- 

 duced by a rearrangement of some of the units of oxygen and hydro- 



