766 THE PKINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



own conclusions. This chapter contains merely Reflections 

 upon subjects of so weighty a character that I should 

 myself wish for many years nay for more than a lifetime 

 of further reflection. My purpose, as I have repeatedly 

 said, is the purely negative one of showing that atheism 

 and materialism are no necessary results of scientific 

 method. From the preceding reviews of the value of our 

 scientific knowledge, I draw one distinct conclusion, that 

 we cannot disprove the possibility of Divine interference 

 in the course of nature. Such interference might arise, so 

 far as our knowledge extends, in two ways. It might 

 consist in the disclosure of the existence of some agent or 

 spring of energy previously unknown, but which effects a 

 given purpose at a given moment. Like the pre-arranged 

 change of law in Cabbage's imaginary calculating machine, 

 there may exist pre-arranged surprises in the order of 

 nature, as it presents itself to us. Secondly, the same 

 Power, which created material nature, might, so far as 

 I can see, create additions to it, or annihilate portions 

 which do exist. Such events are in a certain sense incon- 

 ceivable to us ; yet they are no more inconceivable than 

 the existence of the world as it is. The indestructibility of 

 matter, and the conservation of energy, are very probable 

 scientific hypotheses, which accord satisfactorily with ex- 

 periments of scientific men during a few years past, but it 

 would be gross misconception of scientific inference to 

 suppose that they are certain in the sense that a propo- 

 sition in geometry is certain. Philosophers no doubt hold 

 that de nihilo nihil Jit, that is to say, their senses give them 

 no means of imagining to the mind how creation can take 

 place. But we are on the horns of a trilemma ; we must 

 either deny that anything exists, or we must allow that it 

 was created out of nothing at some moment of past time, 

 or that it existed from eternity. The first alternative is 

 absurd ; the other two seem to me equally conceivable. 



Conclusion. 



It may seem that there is one point where our specu- 

 lations must end, namely where contradiction begins. The 

 laws of Identity and Difference and Duality were the 



