1875, ] Human Levitation. 61 
1679, and had four daughters, all his states of Brunswick, 
Hanover, Calemberg, and Grubenhagen, passed, for want of a 
son, to his Protestant brother, Ernest Augustus, father of 
George I. Plainly, then, if the power directing the Assisi 
miracles could have looked forward but a few years, not this 
heir-apparent, but his younger brother, also on his travels, 
and of similar education and disposition, would have been 
chosen. His conversion, though not then looking so impor- 
tant, would, in all present probability, have recovered to 
Rome by this time great part of Germany. What dynasty 
England might have chosen is of course impossible to guess; 
but his posterity would not, by being Catholics, have been 
excluded from any of the continental thrones they have 
actually filed. 
The conclusion we draw is, that the very common notion 
of our having, or philosophers having, divided all describable 
events into the “ naturally possible” and “naturally impos- 
sible,” and assuming to have fixed this limit, can 
lead to nothing but priestcraft and superstition. Unless our 
calling things “‘impossible”’ could prevent their happening, 
it only gives them prestige whenever and wherever they may 
happen. Prince John of Brunswick was probably brought 
up to hold very nearly these most falsely-called ‘“ positivist ” 
_ideas—and we see the natural result. ‘The more impossible 
or preternatural a Faraday or Comte can persuade us to 
consider any feat, the more helplessly will its occurrence 
hand us over to whatever body of men or other beings can at 
all manipulate that feat. 
IV. THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN MAN AND 
THE LOWER ANIMALS. 
educated or not; set him to arrange a crowd of things 
whatsoever, capable of classification; the probability 
is that, except specially trained in the study of the natural 
sciences, he will group them under two heads. These two 
classes he will take to be not alone mutually exclusive, but 
utterly antagonistic. He will assume them to be separated by 
a “hard and fast” landmark. We may tell him, if we think 
proper, that Nature—pardon the personification—does little 
ae any man of fair average understanding, whether 
