MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 61 



ed the Puy de Dome, carrying with him a barometric 

 column, and found that as he ascended the mountain the 

 column sank, and that as he descended the column rose. 



Between the time here referred to and the present, 

 millions of experiments have been made upon this subject. 

 Every village pump is an apparatus for such experiments. 

 In thousands of instances, moreover, pumps have refused 

 to work ; but on examination it has infallibly been found 

 that the well was dry, that the pump required priming, or 

 that some other defect in the apparatus accounted for the 

 anomalous action. In every case of the kind the skill of 

 the pump-maker has been found to be the true remedy. In 

 no case has the pressure of the atmosphere ceased ; con 

 stancy, as regards the lifting of pump-water, has been 

 hitherto the demonstrated rule of Nature. So also as regards 

 Pascal s experiment. His experience has been the universal 

 experience ever since. Men have climbed mountains, and 

 gone up in balloons ; but no deviation from Pascal s result 

 has ever been observed. Barometers, like pumps, have 

 refused to act; but instead of indicating any suspension of 

 the operations of Nature, or any interference on the part of 

 its Author with atmospheric pressure, examination has in 

 every instance fixed the anomaly upon the instruments 

 themselves. It is this welding, then, of rigid logic to veri 

 fying fact that Mr. Mozley refers to an &quot; unreasoning im 

 pulse.&quot; 



Let us now briefly consider the case of Newton. Before 

 his time men had occupied themselves with the problem of 

 the solar system. Kepler had deduced, from a vast mass 

 of observations, the general expressions of planetary motion 

 known as &quot; Kepler s laws.&quot; It had been observed that a 

 magnet attracts iron ; and by one of those flashes of inspi 

 ration which reveal to the human mind the vast in the 

 minute, the general in the particular, it occurred to Kepler, 

 that the force by which bodies fall to the earth might also 



