76 



CANON R. B. GIRDLESTONE^ M.A.^ ON 



showed how valuable to many a professed student of science was some 

 real knowledge of the philosophy of Mill and Bain, as a safeguard 

 to specialists outside their own line of work. 



Having said so much by way of appreciation of the paper as a 

 whole, he hoped the author would pardon him for a little friendly 

 criticism of one or two minor points. He speaks of " the 

 atoms ranging themselves into the elements." The atoms, 

 however, are the elements. Did not the author really mean 

 " electrons " 1 



Again, the phrase, " the daily miracles of nature in the 

 animal and vegetable world," reminded the speaker of a remark 

 which he heard Lord Kelvin make three or four years ago at 

 University College, in the discussion of a lecture on " Darwinism " by 

 Professor Henslow. Lord Kelvin remarked that every blade of grass 

 and every living thing is a " miracle," when viewed from the stand- 

 point of physics ; and quoted a saying of the great chemist Liebig to 

 him years ago, that he no more believed that the grass and flov/ers 

 they then saw around them came to be what they are by a " fortuitous 

 concourse of atoms, than he believed the pages of a text-book of 

 Botany in which they were described, came into being by such a 

 process." The speaker was glad to see that the Unseen Universe 

 was a book not entirely forgotten, and instanced an illustration, 

 given by the authors of that work, of the intervention of Will or 

 Volition in determining the results, when a man pulls the trigger of 

 a gun or pistol ; where an act of the human will directs mechanical 

 force to the generation of heat and the consequent rousing into 

 activity of the latent energy stored up in the powder. 



While in general agreement with what the author had said on 

 the six points enumerated he thought the definition given of 

 " Miracles " about the safest definition that can be given. But 

 he must take exception to the author's introduction of the word 

 " supernatural " into the discussion. Though a favourite word with 

 theologians of a certain type, it was a foolish word : it involved 

 petitio princijiii in an argument, l)ecause it assumed that we have 

 clear and definite knowledge of what are the limits of " the 

 natural." 



As to Hume's ideas, they were a creditable and honest attempt 

 at the time to think out these matters ; but they wei'c put forward by 

 a man who lived (we might almost say) in pre-scientific days, and 



