Nature and the Supernatural. 79 



out of view all physical antecedents because the writer was not 

 interested in them, one says that a free spirit sends the rain, and 

 makes the wind blow ; but, on special occasions, a man is said to 

 have prayed and the rain came ; and the east wind is said to have 

 driven back the waters of the sea at the head of the gulf, so that 

 fugitives might pass. What preceded in the chain of physical 

 sequences the narrator does not pretend to say, because he is not 

 a scientist. If we infer that he meant that there were no antece- 

 dents, and so dispute his narrative on a priori grounds, we are 

 putting our ov/n inferences into what he says. Some people have 

 regarded nature as a machine moving on of itself, and, occasion- 

 ally, not doing all that it ought ; whereupon the maker of it steps 

 in and adjusts it for a special work. And while this seems to be 

 irrational, we read historical statements by the light of this pre- 

 tended explanation, and judge them accordingly. There is not 

 the slightest evidence that the observers of the events had their 

 vision clouded by any such hypothesis, as a man might go to see 

 what some scientists have described as " spiritual manifestations," 

 with his mind made up in advance, and, consequently be not a 

 clear-headed and clear-sighted observer of what was under his 

 nose. 



Id a simpler age, without any scientific theory, the historian 

 may relate both familiar and strange events with the same direct 

 reference to the primary, efficient and final cause, and none at all 

 to physical antecedents. The antecedents of the Chicago fire are 

 known ; its moral bearings, if it have any, are matters of inference 

 and analogy. But the antecedents of the destruction of the fer- 

 tile plains on the lower Jordan where the Dead Sea now lies one 

 thousand, three hundred feet below the Mediterranean, are not 

 known, and the ancient narrator, whoever he was, takes the live- 

 liest interest in its moral bearings. But, if his narrative be other- 

 wise credible, we are not obliged to assume that he said that 

 physical antecedents were not in their place, and so reject his 

 story on that account. 



