MIRABEAU 



5444 



MIRACLE 



Touraine, 1788, and was deputy for 

 the noblesse of Limoges to the 

 States-General in 1789. He was a 

 vehement opponent of reform and 

 of his brother's policy, and from 

 his figure and hard-drinking habits 

 was popularly known as Mirabeau- 

 Tonneau (i.e. Barrel Mirabeau). ' 

 After his attempt to suppress an 

 insurrection in his regiment at Per- 

 pignan in June, 1790, he was ar- 

 rested, but on his release shortly 

 afterwards joined the emigres in 

 the Rbineland. He died at Frei- 

 burg im Breisgau. Consult Le 

 Vicomte de Mirabeau (Mirabeau- 

 Tonneau), E. Berger, 1904. 

 Mirabeau, GABRIEL HONORIS 



RlQUETI, COMTE DE (1749-91). 



French statesman. He was born 

 March 9, 1749, and as a young 

 man he distinguished himself as a 

 reckless rebel against all social and 

 moral conventions. An aristocrat 

 by birth, he sprang at once into 

 the leadership of the Third Estate, 

 when the States-General met on 

 May 5, 1789. Under his leadership 

 the Third Estate refused to allow 

 itself to be adjourned. But there 

 were few round him who could 

 grasp the ideal for which he was 

 striving a strong constitutional 

 government, free alike from the 

 incubus of aristocratic privileges 

 and from the anarchy of unedu- 

 cated democracy. 



His efforts to break down the 

 prejudices of the Monarchists and 

 to open the eyes of formal Constitu- 

 tionalists to the realities of the 

 situation failed, and only caused 

 him to lose popularity with what 

 was rapidly becoming the party of 

 reckless revolution. He could not 

 win the confidence of the king and 

 queen, who under his guidance 

 would themselves have become 



Marquis de Mirabeau, 

 French economist 



From a portrait at Versailles 



the champions and the directors of 

 the reforms by which alone the 

 revolution could conceivably have 

 been averted. At the beginning of 

 1790, he was still hoping that a new 

 assembly might become the instru- 

 ment of his aims ; but the strain 

 of the gigantic task which, almost 

 unaided, he had taken upon his 

 own shoulders was too great for 

 him, and on April 2, 1791, he died. 

 See French Revolution ; National 

 Assembly Pron. Meerabo. 



Bibliography. Works, 5 vols., 

 1791-92 ; De la Monarchic Prus- 

 eienne sous Fr6deric le Grand, 1788 ; 

 Secret History of the Court of Ber- 

 lin, Eng. trans. 1895 ; Souvenir sur 

 M., E. Dumont, Eng. trans. The 

 Great Frenchman and the Little 

 Genevese, E. R. Seymour, 1904 ; 

 Lives, P. F. Willert, 1898; S. G. 

 Tallantyre, 1908 ; L. Barthou, 1913. 



Mirabeau, VICTOR RIQUETI, 

 MARQUIS DE (1715-89). French 

 economist. Of Proven$al descent, 

 he was born at 

 Pertuis (Vau- 

 cluse d e p t. ), 

 Oct. 5, 1715, 

 and served in 

 his youth as an 

 officer in the 

 army. From 

 about 1743 he 

 devoted his 

 attention to 

 economic ques- 

 tions, being a follower of Quesnay 

 (q.v.), and notable among the 

 so-called physiocratic school of 

 economists. Among his publications 

 were his popular L'Ami des Hom- 

 mes, 1750-60 ; Theorie de 1'Impot, 

 1760, for which he suffered a short 

 term of imprisonment ; Les Econ- 

 omiques, 1769-72 ; and La Science, 

 1774. A man of extravagant tastes 

 and fiery passions, the marquis, 

 famed as a political writer, was no 

 less notorious for his quarrels with 

 his wife, Marie de Vassan, and with 

 his son Gabriel Honore (q.v.). He 

 died at Argenteuil on July 13, 1789. 

 See Les Mirabeau, L. de Lomenie, 

 2 vols., 1879. 



Mirabilis OR MARVEL OF PERU. 

 Genus of perennial plants, of 

 the natural order, Nyctaginiaceae, 

 natives of tropical America. The 

 flowers are yellow and red, sweet 

 scented, and bloom from May till 

 Oct. Readily raised from seed, and 

 often treated as half-hardy an- 

 nuals, they flourish best in light soil. 



Miracle (Lat. miraculum, a mar- 

 vel.) Event transcending the known 

 laws of nature. As God transcends 

 nature, though immanent in it, all 

 His activity may be regarded as 

 supernatural ; but it is convenient 

 to use the term, in a narrower sense, 

 for all those actions of God in 

 nature which do not conform to 

 the order of nature as it is known 



in common experience.confirmed by 

 scientific observation, experiment 

 and induction. Whether there is, or 

 is not such action, is a question of 

 evidence ; but here we are concerned 

 only with defining a conception as 

 exactly as language will allow. 



A miracle is a supernatural act 

 of God in this narrower sense of 

 the term. God may be thought of 

 as acting supernaturally, either in 

 the soul of man, or in the world 

 around. Although the word miracle 

 is sometimes applied to such an in- 

 ward experience as conversion, it 

 is convenient to confine the term 

 to an outward event. The miracle 

 has been described by some theo- 

 logians of a supernaturalist type, 

 whose aim was to oppose revela- 

 tion to reason and religion to 

 science, as an act of God contrary 

 to the order of nature, a violation 

 of natural laws, and an interference 

 with natural forces. 



But more sober theologians have 

 been careful to explain that a 

 miracle need not be contrary to 

 the natural order, although it may 

 be inexplicable by that order in so 

 far as we have knowledge of it ; 

 and some of them even have main- 

 tained that it may be an occa- 

 sional manifestation in that natural 

 order of a vaster and greater order, 

 which as a whole is now inacces- 

 sible to our senses or our reason. 

 The negative aspect of miracle is 

 that it is inexplicable by our 

 present knowledge of nature ; and 

 the positive aspect is that, owing 

 to its close connexion with God's 

 self-revelation in inspired persons, 

 it is to be regarded as God's act, 

 not contrary to, and yet not con- 

 formable with, that wider activity 

 of God, which theism recognizes in 

 the whole order of nature. 



Only a deistic conception of 

 God's relation to nature, which 

 places God not only above but even 

 outside of nature as a self -enclosed 

 system, can exclude the possibility 

 of miracle. A theistic conception 

 which represents God as no less im- 

 manent than transcendent, no less 

 in and through than above and be- 

 yond nature, may distinguish two 



Mirabilis. Foliage and flowers of 

 the tropical American plant 



