THE SUPERNATURAL. 13 



are not superhuman now. The same lecturer 

 •who told his audience that there was nothing 

 spontaneous in Nature proceeded, by virtue of 

 his own knowledge of natural laws, and by his 

 selecting and combining power, to present a whole 

 series of phenomena — such as ice frozen in con- 

 tact with red-hot crucibles — which certainly did 

 not belong to the "ordinary course of Nature." 

 Such an exhibition a few centuries ago, would 

 beyond all doubt have subjected the lecturer on 

 Heat to painful experience of that condition of 

 matter. Nevertheless the phenomena so exhibited 

 were natural phenomena — in this sense, that they 

 were the product of natural laws. Only these 

 laws were combined in action under extraordinary 

 conditions, and these conditions were governed 

 by the purpose and design of the lecturer, which 

 design was " spontaneous," if there is any meaning 

 in the word. In like manner, if the progress of dis- 

 covery is as rapid during the next 400 years as it 

 has been during the last period of the same extent, 

 men will be able to do many things which would 

 now appear to be " supernatural." There is no diffi- 

 culty in conceiving how a complete knowledge of 



