THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 249 



be affirmed or to be denied. In some senses Nature is obviously not 

 uniform. Take the case of the weather : what can have less of the 

 character of uniformity ? Take the seasons : and observe the appar- 

 ently absolute absence of all rule as to the sequence of fruitful and 

 unfruitful years. Take almost any instance of natural phenomena 

 that you please : and the variety, the eccentricity, the lawlessness, 

 will probalDly be quite as striking as any characteristic which can be 

 described by the word uniformity. Anyhow, in commencing a dis- 

 cussion, we ought to know precisely what the phrase to be discussed 

 means, or at least what it is held to mean by the disputants engaged 

 in the argument. 



I observe that one of the interlocutors of the Metaphysical Soci- 

 ety, Mr. Walter Bagehot, affirms that experience can not prove the 

 uniformity of Nature, because it is impossible to say what the uni- 

 formity of Nature means. If this be so, and I am not just now con- 

 tradicting the assertion, all serious discussion must be at an end. It 

 is very well to say that, although experience can never prove the ab- 

 solute uniformity of Nature, it ought to " train us to bring our expec- 

 tations into something like consistency with the uniformity of Na- 

 ture." But why should we expect Nature to be uniform, unless we can 

 give some good reason for believing in this uniformity ? And why 

 should we trouble ourselves with a principle of uniformity, the mean- 

 ing of which, by hypothesis, we are unable to assign ? 



On the other hand, Mr. Ruskin could scarcely hope to carry many 

 of the company with him when he avowed his disbelief in uniformity 

 altogether, and affirmed that if told that the sun had stood still he 

 would reply : " A miracle that the sun stands still ? Not at all — I al- 

 ways expected it would." This view of the matter would seem to 

 imply that there is no principle in Nature which can in any way be 

 described as law or uniformity — a conclusion which is opposed to all 

 our knowledge. 



In default of a clear definition of the thesis proposed to the Meta- 

 physical Society, the prevailing thought in the minds of the dispu- 

 tants seems to me to have been, how far the belief in abnormal phe- 

 nomena, commonly spoken of as miraculous, is consistent with such a 

 belief concerning the laws of Nature as scientific men find themselves 

 compelled to hold. The discussion had clearly an underlying theologi- 

 cal character : to more than half the disputants (so at least it seems 

 to me) the theological consequences of an alleged uniformity of Na- 

 ture were the uppermost thought, and the feature of most pressing 

 interest in the argument. It would be well, perhaps, if this theologi- 

 cal bearing of the question could be avoided in discussion. We 

 should be more likely to arrive at a conclusion as to what the uniform- 

 ity of Nature means, and to what extent the principle is true, if we 

 could regard it entirely as a natural question, and one to be answered 

 upon the ordinary grounds of observation and induction : and I ob- 



