IMPOSSIBILITIES AND IMPROBABILITIES 



297 



edge, the miracles of to-day may be science of to-morrow. 

 Improbable they are, certainly, by all experience, and there- 

 fore they require specially strong evidence. But this is 

 precisely what they lack ; the evidence to them, when ex- 

 amined, turns out to be of doubtful value. 



I am anxious (he says) to bring about a clear understanding 

 of the difference between " impossibilities " and " improbabili- 

 ties," because mistakes on this point lay us open to the attacks 

 of ecclesiastical apologists of the type of the late Cardinal New- 

 man. . . . 



When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of " miracles " 

 is, in my judgment, unassailable. We are not justified in the 

 a priori assertion that the order of nature, as experience has 

 revealed it to us, cannot change. In arguing about the miracu- 

 lous, the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves the whole 

 point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an assumption which takes 

 us beyond the range of our faculties. Obviously, no amount of 

 past experience can warrant us in anything more than a corre- 

 spondingly strong expectation for the present and future. We 

 find, practically, that expectations, based upon careful observa- 

 tions of past events, are, as a rule, trustworthy. We should be 

 foolish indeed not to follow the only guide we have through life. 

 But, for all that, our highest and surest generalisations remain 

 on the level of justifiable expectations; that is, very high proba- 

 bilities. For my part, I am unable to conceive of an intelli- 

 gence shaped on the model of that of men, however superior it 

 might be, which could be any better off than our own in this 

 respect; that is, which could possess logically justifiable grounds 

 for certainty about the constancy of the order of things, and 

 therefore be in a position to declare that such and such events 

 are impossible. Some of the old mythologies recognised this 

 clearly enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there lay the 

 unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one day or other, would 

 crumple up them and the world they ruled to give place to a 

 new order of things. 



I sincerely hope that I shall not be accused of Pyrrhonism, 

 or of any desire to weaken the foundations of rational certainty. 

 I have merely desired to point out that rational certainty is one 

 thing, and talk about " impossibilities," or " violation of natural 

 laws," another. Rational certainty rests upon two grounds : the 

 one that the evidence in favour of a given statement is as good 

 as it can be; the other, that such evidence is plainly insufficient. 



