Nature and the Supernatural. 83 



ences, of which so much has been said, that, so far as I know, and 

 I have examined the matter carefully, the positions I have laid 

 down do not essentially differ from those of that great philoso- 

 pher of the fifth century to whom Sir William Hamilton refers as 

 one of the greatest lights in the world of thought, who did his 

 work so long before physical sciences took their present stand, and 

 who has done more also than any other one man to formulate the 

 faith of western Christendom. For this two-fold reason, I beg 

 leave to refer to him. S. Augustine offers no theory of the " pre- 

 ternatural." The alternatives which he recognizes are, accord- 

 ing to nature, and against it. The latter may be our [mode of 

 describing such facts as do not seem to follow such laws as we 

 know. But nothing can occur against nature's highest laws, 

 for that would be against the first great Cause. He speaks of 

 daily miracles, i. e., operations of unknown causes, and these are 

 events (e. g., he mentions the wind and rain) which, if unfamiliar, - 

 he says, would as certainly be called miracles as any which bear 

 the name, and yet we know that science is busy in tracing their 

 physical antecedents with fair success. S. Augustine accordingly 

 finds the special character of certain events in what he supposes; 

 to be the known moral end and bearing of them, not in an "inter» 

 ference," so called, of the worker in and through nature. 



Finally, I can only say that it is not my aim to offer my hy- 

 pothesis as the correct explanation of certain events, among the 

 many marvelous records of history, which are recorded in books 

 held by some of us to be inspired. I have simply taken up a 

 problem of philosophy and science, and endeavored to analyze it 

 in the light of well established principles, and to show that there 

 is no a pnbn* ground in science or philosophy for rejecting any 

 such facts. Further than this I do not desire to go. 



If I am not mistaken Mr. Huxley has taken some such position. 

 His reasons I do not know, 



I will add also, since Mr. Kinnear's paper in the Contemporary 

 Beview for December, 1879, traverses in part the same ground 

 with mine, that what I have just submitted to the Academy was 

 completed before that number of the Beview appeared. The fact 



