MIRACLES, SCIENCE, AND PRAYEE. 271 



of choice, and if they possess that power, it must be 

 exercised under the influence of a reasoning faculty, though 

 doubtless of a low type. And that the course of the world 

 may be largely affected even by this power of choice is an 

 undeniable fact. A mad dog, to take the exercise of reason in 

 the lowest possible form, may choose to bite one man rather 

 than another, or may communicate the virus of hydrophobia to 

 one or to twenty animals of his own species, and thus diffuse 

 it more or less widely abroad, to the great danger and 

 misery of mankind. An infuriated elephant or tiger may 

 choose to attack a person of low degree, or the heir apparent 

 to the throne, and the most important consequences may 

 result to thousands of people from this act of choice. Yet 

 can it be said to be the result of a simply natural lavv^? If 

 so, can science formulate that law? Has it given us any 

 reason to believe that it ever will be able to do so ? Are we 

 not, even in the case of volition in the lower animals, face to 

 face with the action of a power we cannot define or measure, 

 and are we not tliereby brought into contact Avith realms 

 which are beyond the power of man's intellect to penetrate ? 

 But if we find that even in the case of the lower animals 

 a force of a nature not purely physical is able to intrude 

 into the physical order, and to produce their effects incal- 

 culably great, how much more is this true of the will of 

 man. What extraordinary physical and climatic changes 

 have been wrought on the earth by cultivation alone ! The 

 clearing of forests has, it is now well known, an immense 

 effect upon the amount of rainfall. We are told that it is to 

 the recklessness of man alone, in destroying the forests by 

 fire, that the conversion of a large part of Australia into a 

 sandy and uninhabitable desert is attributable. The notorious 

 unhealthiness of some parts of Italy is similarly attributed to 

 the desolatmg wars which have robbed the plains of that 

 country of their inhabitants, and have for centuries rendered 

 cultivation a hazardous and unprofitable occupation. Who 

 can trace what the results of the extirpation of one species, or 

 the introduction of another — witness the recent introduction 

 of the rabbit into Australia or the sparrow into America — may 

 produce upon a country? The chance act of a botanist in 

 casting a few sprigs of an aquatic plant into an English 

 river bade fail-, it was said, to choke up all the rivers in 

 England, and we were further told that we only escaped that 

 calamity by the fact that the plant in question was not 

 monogamous. And Professor Sedgwick was wont in 



T 



