548 THE LAWS OF NATURE. 



doubtless could have been anticipated, but yet which we may not have 

 wholly expected. It is, that the more we know, the more we recog- 

 nize our ignorance, and the more we have a sense of the mystery of 

 the universe and the limitations of our knowledge. 



I believe it may be said that if not to Hume, at any rate to the 

 majority of those about him, and to his later contemporaries, there 

 was ver}^ much less m3'ster3^ in the world than we see in it, and if it 

 were then still occasionally said that there were "things in heaven and 

 earth not dreamt of in 'their' philosophy," these words must have 

 struck on the self-complacent minds of his generation, as something to 

 be tolerated as poetic license, rather than as accurate in philosophic 

 meaning. Compared with ours, that whole century was satisfied with 

 itself and its knowledge of the infinite, and content in its happy belief 

 that it knew nearly everything that was really worth knowing. This 

 'nearly ever3"thing' which it thought it knew about the universe, it 

 called the "laws of nature.' 



It was to this belief in the general mind, I think, that the success of 

 Hume's argument was due. 



The present generation has begun, if not to be modest or humble, 

 to be somewhat less arrogant in the assumption of its knowledge. We 

 are perhaps beginning to understand, not in a purely poetical sense, 

 but in a very real one, that there may be all around us in heaven and 

 earth things beyond measure, of which 'philosophy' not only knows 

 nothing, but has not dreamed. 



As a consequence of this, there is growing to be an unspoken, rather 

 than clearly formulated admission, that we know little of the order of 

 nature, and nothing at all of the ' laws' of nature. 



Now if we are, at present at least, disposed to speak of an observed 

 'order' of nature (not carrjnng with it the implication of necessity 

 denoted by 'law'), I think we have some reason to say that there is a 

 prescience of a change in common thought about this manner, and 

 that it is owing to this that we are coming to be where we are. 



I do not know that there is a less wide belief in the gospel miracles 

 in our day, but if it were so, the decline in the weight given Hume's 

 argument is not due soleW to that, for it maj' surely be said that it 

 was not merely an argument against gospel miracles, but against all 

 the prodigies to be found in history, sacred and profane, where he 

 doulitless had in mind traditions of stones falling out of heaven, cures 

 wrought by psychological agency, and the like, all 'superstitions' to 

 the men of his day, who, if they no longer believed in a deity, were 

 none the less shocked b}^ the culpable existence of such vulgar beliefs 

 in conflict with the deified 'laws of nature,' while such 'supersti- 

 tions' have in our day become subjects of modest inquiry. 



Let me quote from a later writer, whose point of view is singularly 

 different from that of Hume and his contemporaries, and who in 



