Nature and the Supernatural. 75 



results from a fire or from illness. He may discover these in the 

 history of a community, as he does again when that community, 

 accumulating wealth, becomes dissolute and luxurious, which is 

 a moral consequence from physical antecedents (not necessary, 

 like physical sequences); or, by war, is reduced to poverty, with 

 certain other moral results. 



When we look merely at the scientific sequence of phenomena 

 these results may be said to be accidental, or contingent, but there 

 they are, and the explanation of them involves the prior question 

 whether, as some of the ancient philosophers agreed, there is an 

 intelligent providence in nature, adapting physical consequents to 

 moral results. 



Our search for a definition of the supernatural has landed us in 

 the providential, which latter is surely an admissible scientific 

 hypothesis. And what does the supernatural add ? Or is 

 the providential itself supernatural, as something superadded, 

 upon nature, and vice versa, except that a certain element 

 of unusualness is added ? The answer must be deferred. But 

 let us observe that if the providential is not in nature, cadit 

 qucestio. If it be present, we may call all this moral adaptation 

 supernatural, as not directly implied in the physical laws, nor 

 capable of reduction under them. 



Ill- 

 Proceeding now to the proof of my main proposition. I rest it 

 on the following principles : 



(1) Ap)pearances or events, no matter what they may be, common 

 or most rare and strange, may have various antecedents, hnoivn or 

 unknown. Science proceeds with sure steps from antecedent to 

 consequent. For each cause has some certain invariable effects. 

 But it is otherwise in going back from observed results. We 

 must assume physical antecedents, or rather, combinations of 

 them, we are never absolutely certain what they are. Various 

 causes, infinite combinations of them, may produce a given effect. 

 For example, the so-called " diluvial scratches " are now referred 

 to the action of glaciers. An antecedent is found to have existed, 

 a sufficient one, but a different one from what was assigned only 



