Nature and the Supernatural. 73 



physics seem to show that it would involve a modification of the 

 whole universe, viewed as a mechanism of mechanically conjoined 

 parts, which is very hard to receive. 



(5) The supernatural means an increment or diminution of 

 some existing force in its relations to other?, as if a man were sus- 

 pended in the air or walked on the water, through his being spe- 

 cifically lighter than he was before ; or as if, which as one theolo- 

 gian of high repute asserts/ babies are lighter when awake than 

 asleep, through the influence of their spirit. 



This also, I think, cannot be pronounced a jpriori impossible, 

 though the difficulty is the same as before. 



(c) There is what Kant calls the " formally " supernatural, 

 where qualities, properties, or forces remaining unchanged, the 

 method, connection or intelligible bearing, and consequent result, 

 of existing forces, are different from what the laws of material 

 nature, by themselves, would produce. Here, of course, we are 

 carried back to the first and second hypothesis concerning mar- 

 velous events, sc, that they are the effects of the action of man's 

 spirit, or some other spirit, upon the phenomenal world. But 

 here we view the free spirit operating upon nature (which is not 

 free), as from without and from above. It may be the finite spirit 

 making use of powers supplied by the infinite one, as when the 

 free will of man introduces supernatural results into nature by 

 freely combining agents, bringing forces into special application 

 and producing intelligible results. "We are so familiar with these 

 that we do not ordinarily call them supernatural, since in com- 

 mon application the word may mean almost anything that is ex- 

 tremely unfamiliar and wonderful; and yet these results maybe 

 widely different from anything which nature itself would have 

 produced. Such are, the mule among beasts, the gardener's 

 flowers, the diverted water-courses, the rough made smooth, the 

 crooked straight, the high places laid low, and rock and swamp 

 made to bloom like Dante's terrestrial Paradise. 



If, then, any one find it not unscientific or unphilosophic to recog- 

 nize a conscious being of infinite wisdom, it will not be unscien- 



1 The present (1880) Archbishop of Dublin. 



