be no intelligence as much greater than man's
as his is greater than a blackbeetle's; no being endowed with powers of
influencing the course of Nature as much greater than his as his is
greater than a snail's, seems to me not merely baseless, but
impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known,
it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until
we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence,
omnipresence and omniscience. If our intelligence can, in some matters,
surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago and anticipate the
future thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the limits of
possibility that some greater intellect, even of the same order, may be
able to mirror the whole past and the whole future; if the universe is
penetrated by a medium of such a nature that a magnetic needle on the
earth answers to a commotion in the sun, an omnipresent agent is also
conceivable; if our insignificant knowledge gives us some influence over
events, practical omniscience may confer indefinably greater power.
Finally, if evidence that a thing may be were equivalent to proof that
it is, analogy might justify the construction of a naturalistic theology
and demonology not less wonderful than the current supernatural; just as
it might justify the peopling of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living forms
to which terrestrial biology offers no parallel. Until human life is
longer and the duties of the present press less heavily, I do not think
that wise men will occupy themselves with Jovian, or Martian, natural
history; and they will probably agree to a verdict of "not proven" in
respect of naturalistic theology, taking refuge in that agnostic
confession, which appears to me to be the only position for people who
object to say that they know what they are quite aware they do not know.
As to the interests of morality, I am disposed to think that if mankind
could be got to act up to this last principle in every relation of life,
a reformation would be effected such as the world has not yet seen; an
approximation to the millennium, such as no supernaturalistic religion
has ever yet succeeded, or seems likely ever to succeed, in effecting.

THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS

[1889]

Charles, or more properly, Karl, King of the Franks, consecrated Roman
Emperor in St. Peter's on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known to
posterity as the Great (chiefly by h