Introduction 1 3 



credulity may arise not from ignoring experience, but from refusing 

 to correct it, that the most ruthless editing is required to force 

 the uncensored messages we receive from the external world into 

 the ideal mould which satisfies our individual convictions ? 



But what is this ideal mould ? We sometimes talk as if by 

 the help of Scientific Method or Inductive Logic we could map 

 out all reality into a scheme of well-defined causes indissolubly 

 connected with well-defined effects, together forming sequences 

 whose recurrence in different combinations constitutes the changing 

 pattern of the universe. 



But can such hopes be realised ? In the world of concrete 

 fact nothing occurs through the action of a single cause, nor yet 

 through the simple co-operation of many causes, each adding 

 its own unqualified contribution to the total effect, as we picture 

 horse helping horse to draw a loaded dray. Our world is a much 

 more complicated affair. Sequences are never exactly repeated. 

 Causes can never be completely isolated. Their operation is 

 never unqualified. Fence round your laboratory experiments 

 with what precautions you will, no two of them will ever be per- 

 formed under exactly the same conditions. For the purpose in 

 hand the differences may be negligible. With skilled observers 

 they commonly are. But the differences exist, and they must 

 certainly modify, however imperceptibly, the observed result. 



It seems evident from considerations like these that no argu- 

 ment directly based on mere experience can be urged either for 

 or against the possibility of " miracles." Common-sense looks 

 doubtfully upon anything out of the common ; and science follows 

 suit. But this is very different from the speculative assertion 

 that, since " miracles " are a violation of natural law, their occur- 

 rence must be regarded as impossible. The intrusion of an un- 

 expected and perhaps anomalous element into the company of 

 more familiar factors in world development may excite suspicion, 

 but it does not of necessity violate anything more important than 

 our preconceived expectations. 



I think it will be found that those who most vehemently 

 reject this way of regarding the world are unconsciously moved 

 not by their knowledge of scientific laws, but by preference for a 



