230 EEV. H. C. M. WATSON 



have endeavoured to show, definitions which go too far may involve us in 

 needless difficulties ; and, on the other hand, unless we define of what kind 

 or order the 'thing' is to which we give credence, it seems difficult to 

 understand how we can reason about such things generally at all. It is, more- 

 over, a little inconvenient to have, as on the fourth page, three, or rather 

 four, parallel definitions of the word. Further on the thought appears a 

 little confused on account of the want, so common in our time, of exact defi- 

 nition of the words used. To ivhat universe does Mr. Watson refer ? Does 

 nature comprise merely what is usually termed physical phenomena, or does 

 he, with Spinoza, regard the word as embracing an infinity of other things 

 beside ? And does scientific observation pretend to deal — can it possibly 

 deal — with anything beyond the class of facts which it has been able to 

 observe ? Science needs no amending, it seems to me, but some make it to 

 step beyond its province, by declaring that there can be nothing higher than 

 the laws of the visible universe with which it professes to be concerned. In 

 page 205, if I am not mistaken, the objection to miracles on the ground of 

 the improbability of the God of Nature altering His arrangements is a little 

 inadequately put. It does not appear to me that the objectors deny the 

 existence of ' contrivances ' in creation, nor that they use the phrase * after- 

 thought.' They would object to any alteration of the ordinary course of 

 nature, fore-ordained or not, on the principle of the absolute perfection of 

 that course of nature, as coming from the Hand of God. The answer, 

 derived from the line of thought which suggested Mr. Babbage's illustra- 

 tion, seems to me complete. We do not know that there is any alteration 

 or suspension of any kind. It may be simply a case of what is constantly 

 occurring in nature itself — the modification of any one law or force when it 

 comes in contact with another. No thoughtful man can contemplate the 

 phenomena of existence without seeing that a higher law than mere physical 

 force exists, and that to it physical force is subject. To that higher law 

 belongs the human mind and will, and, rising still farther in the scale of 

 being, we are entitled to add, the Divine Mind and Will. It is this, and 

 not any mere natural power, in the ordinary sense of the word, to which 

 miracles are owing. And, it may be added, that the force which impels my 

 hand to write these words and the voice of the reader to read them, belong 

 to an order outside the sphere of that which is ordinarily assigned to nature, 

 in the sense of which science investigates it. I have no wish to enter upon 

 this vast subject at present ; but I would earnestly press upon those who 

 reason about nature to define the extent and limits of the word before they 

 do so. Mr. Watson afterwards includes man in nature, and, of course, if 

 it is understood in what sense, there can be no objection to his doing so ; 

 but it should be distinctly remembered that the laws of Mind and Will are 

 outside the range of what is known as physical or natural science, and that 

 a dangerous ambiguity lurks here. If you include them in nature at one 

 moment, and expressly exclude them the next by assigning them to the 

 sphere of metaphysics, you are involving yourself in eudle'ss possibilities of 



