NATURAL LAW AND MIRACLE. 



39 



Let lis examine the second question — How does modern 

 science establish its foundation principle of the absolute validity 

 of the Law of Causation ? 



The investigator represents human reason, methodically 

 trained. It is well, therefore, first to inquire what impressions 

 are made upon the less cultivated, the simple person, or even upon 

 the brute beast by the fact of Natural Law. 



We commence with brute creation. It is an incontrovertible 

 fact that the brute creation has a sort of intuition concerning 

 those fixed rules by which the processes of Nature are governed. 

 We give some instances of this statement. 



No one would believe that the pike stands on a very high 

 plane of brute intelligence. Yet the Berlin zoologist, Mobius, 

 relates the following interesting observations with a pike. A 

 bowl of water was divided into two contiguous compartments 

 by a piece of glass. On the one side was a pike, on the other a 

 variety of small living creatures specially to his taste. The 

 pike went straight for his prey, but received for his pains, not 

 the expected honne houclie, but a disquieting shock from the 

 invisible piece of glass. After repeating the process for some 

 time, the pike finally learnt to deny himself. Several weeks 

 after, the glass division was removed. The pike now swam 

 freely amongst the other creatures. But it never entered his 

 head to attack them. He had — if in this case without justifi- 

 cation — apparently made a " Law of Nature " for himself — 

 namely, that to attack his prey resulted in a revengeful blow 

 upon himself. 



Brutes have, like men, the power of holding impressions in 

 the memory. The dog will recollect his master after years of 

 separation. Without this feature of animal intelligence the 

 circus performances for which animals are trained would be 

 impossible. Animals are therefore able to note the sequence 

 by which events follow one upon the other according to natural 

 processes. They can, under certain conditions, by a mechanical 

 instinct, reproduce this sequence by means of the rules impressed 

 in their memory. If a dog has been often struck by his master, 

 he knows, by experience, the regular sequence of events : the 

 raised whip, the pain that follows. And every time that the 

 master raises the whip, instinctively, that is, involuntarily and 

 unconsciously, the sensation of the approaching pain forces 

 itself upon him. The dog betrays this feeling plainly by his 

 plaintive cries and croiichings, before even the blow has 

 descended. He anticipates the blow with certainty. Indeed 



