72 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



(2) The forces whicli our mind discovers to be working 

 changes in these phenomena. 



(8) The intelligence whicli our mind also discovers in the unity, 

 order and adaptation of these phenomena when viewed as a whole 

 consisting of parts infinite in number and variety. 



Force may be only the operation of an intelligent cause, and 

 so the two latter may be regarded as due to the influence of a 

 spiritual being working in the sensible world. In the ^otenticdity 

 of material things are these sensible results, and possibly more 

 which is now inconceivable, but active intelligence may be 

 needed, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, to produce these results. 

 If we thus define nature, when most unusual and marvelous 

 facts are related to us by eye-witnesses, there are various possible 

 hypothe-es : 



(1) They are brought about by some one whose extraordinary 

 insight into nature's laws places him far in advance of his age, 

 and enables him to produce results which even now we cannot 

 explain ; just as if, one hundred years ago, a man in New York 

 had related an audible conversation held with another in San 

 Francisco. 



(2) The deeds were superhuman, though not supernatural in 

 any other sense of the word, i. e., according to my sixth postulate, 

 they were such as spiritual beings of a higher order than man 

 may accomplish within the order of nature. Forces, as they are 

 called, were combined to produce results which we may never be 

 able to reach. For example, man can only affect nature, so far 

 as we now know, through his own organism ; but there is no 

 antecedent impossibility in the thought of spiritual beings of a 

 higher order having a wider sphere of influence. 



(3) The deeds are " supernaturcd.'''' But here again we meet 

 with an equivocal terra. The supernatural, as Kaut points out 

 in his '■^ Beweisqrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes^^ 

 (1763), may be, (a) added qualities, properties or forces (which, for 

 our purpose, are one), imparted to substances already in existence. 



I have never heard any reason why science and philosophy 

 should pronounce this a p)riori impossible, although it is certainly 

 very improbable, and perhaps removes a fact, however well at- 

 tested, from scientific thought or investigation. For modern 



