68 Wisconsm Academy of Sciences, Arts, *and Letters. 



(3) I wish also to exclude any question whether some or many 

 narratives of wonderful events found in ancient and Oriental 

 sources may be presumed to be poetic and allegorical presenta- 

 tions of moral truth, e. g., the story of the tempting of man by a 

 being in the form of a serpent, or that of the Hebrew, Jonah. 

 One single narrative found in the Christian New Testament, and 

 narrated as an actual occurrence, or one of the marvelous experi- 

 ences of a distinguished English naturalist, is sufficient to deter- 

 mine the question before us. 



For the purpose of our discussion, then, it will be expedient to 

 admit, hypothetically, the narrative as a statement of facts which 

 actually occurred, i. e., of sensible phenomena stated, not scien- 

 tifically, which statement would assign the facts to a known law, 

 but as they would naturally be reported by honest and intelligent 

 eye-witnesses, telling what their eyes saw, their ears heard or 

 their hands handled. It is, of course, at once open to remark 

 from the scientific point of view, that the subjective impression of 

 the phenomenon, together with the ordinary and accepted inter- 

 pretation of it, is all that any man can report, and for all practical 

 purposes it is sufficient. Philosophy and science proceed further, 

 to some explanation, partial at least, of the marvelous occurrence. 

 For example: if, as one narrative states, the commander of an 

 army made a prayer that the sun might stand still, and the narra- 

 tive be not poetical imagination,' but a historical statement, the 

 phenomenon which followed is all that can be attested. There is 

 not, necessarily, declared to have been a suspension of the sun's 

 daily motion around the earth or any other scientific explanation 

 of what the eyes saw. 



I. 



This being premised concerning historical modes of narration, 

 I must assume some propositions as postulates, without attempting 

 any proof of them ; for some are needed, otherwise we could never 

 find a beginning for our investigation. 



(1) The world of nature is known to us as phenomena, infinite 

 in number, and, potentially, infinite in variety; phenomena empi- 



' As in the Chanson de Roland. 



