440 INDUCTION. 



and better established law of nature. This extreme case, of a conflict be- 

 tween two supposed laws of nature, has probably never actually occurred 

 where, in the process of investigating both the laws, the true canons of 

 scientific induction had been kept in view ; but if it did occur, it must ter- 

 minate in the total rejection of one of the supposed laws. It would prove 

 that there must be a flaw in the logical process by which either one or the 

 other was established ; and if there be so, that supposed general truth is 

 no truth at all. We can not admit a proposition as a law of nature, and 

 yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. We must disbelieve the al- 

 leged fact, or believe that we were mistaken in admitting the supposed law. 



But in order that any alleged fact should be contradictory to a law of 

 causation, the allegation must be, not simply that the cause existed with- 

 out being followed by the effect, for that would be no uncommon occur- 

 rence ; but that this happened in the absence of any adequate counteract- 

 ing cause. Now in the case of an alleged miracle, the assertion is the ex- 

 act opposite of this. It is, that the effect was defeated, not in the absence, 

 but in consequence of a counteracting cause, namely, a direct interposition 

 of an act of the will of some being who has power over nature ; and in 

 particular of a Being, whose will being assumed to have endowed all the 

 causes with the powers by which they produce their effects, may well be 

 supposed able to counteract them. A miracle (as was justly remarked by 

 Brown)* is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new ef- 

 fect, supposed to be produced by the introduction of a new cause. Of the 

 adequacy of that cause, if present, there can be no doubt; and the only 

 antecedent improbabilty which can be ascribed to the miracle, is the im- 

 probability that any such cause existed. 



All, therefore, which Hume has made out, and this he must be consider- 

 ed to have made out, is, that (at least in the imperfect state of our knowl- 

 edge of natural agencies, which leaves it always jDOSsible that some of the 

 physical antecedents may have been hidden from us) no evidence can prove 

 a miracle to any one who did not previously believe the existence of a be- 

 ing or beings with supernatural power; or who believes himself to have 

 full proof that the character of the Being whom he recognizes is inconsist- 

 ent Avith his having seen fit to interfere on the occasion in question. 



If we do not already believe in supernatural agencies, no miracle can 

 prove to us their existence. The miracle itself, considered merely as an 

 extraordinary fact, may be satisfactorily certified by our senses or by testi- 

 mony ; but nothing can ever prove that it is a miracle ; there is still anoth- 

 er possible hypothesis, that of its being the result of some unknown nat- 

 ural cause ; and this possibility can not be so completely shut out, as to 

 leave no alternative but that of admitting the existence and intervention of 

 a being superior to nature. Those, however, who already believe in such 

 a being have two hypotheses to choose from, a supernatural and an un- 

 known natural agency; and they have to judge which of the two is the 

 most probable in the particular case. In forming this judgment, an im- 

 portant element of the question will be the conformity of the result to the 

 laws of the supposed agent, that is, to the character of the Deity as they 

 conceive it. But with the knowledge which we now possess of the gen- 

 eral uniformity of the course of nature, religion, following in the wake of 

 i science, has been compelled to acknowledge the government of the uni- 

 verse as being on the whole carried on by general laws, and not by special 



* See the two remarkable notes (A) and (F), appended to his Inquiry into the Relation of 

 Cause and Effect. 



