rror for
which he might find good precedents. But it is one of those errors
which, in the case of a person engaged in scientific pursuits, do
little harm, because it is corrected as soon as its consequences
become obvious; while those who know physical science only by name
are, as has been seen, easily led to build a mighty fabric of
unrealities on this fundamental fallacy. In fact, the habitual use of
the word "law," in the sense of an active thing, is almost a mark of
pseudo-science; it characterises the writings of those who have
appropriated the forms of science without knowing anything of its
substance.

There are two classes of these people: those who are ready to believe
in any miracle so long as it is guaranteed by ecclesiastical
authority; and those who are ready to believe in any miracle so long
as it has some different guarantee. The believers in what are
ordinarily called miracles--those who accept the miraculous narratives
which they are taught to think are essential elements of religious
doctrine--are in the one category; the spirit-rappers, table-turners,
and all the other devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in
the other: and, if they disagree in most things they agree in this,
namely, that they ascribe to science a dictum that is not scientific;
and that they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted on science by
a realistic argument which is equally unscientific.

It is asserted, for example, that, on a particular occasion, water
was turned into wine; and, on the other hand, it is asserted that a
man or a woman "levitated" to the ceiling, floated about there, and
finally sailed out by the window. And it is assumed that the
pardonable scepticism, with which most scientific men receive these
statements, is due to the fact that they feel themselves justified in
denying the possibility of any such metamorphosis of water, or of any
such levitation, because such events are contrary to the laws of
nature. So the question of the preacher is triumphantly put: How do
you know that there are not "higher" laws of nature than your chemical
and physical laws, and that these higher laws may not intervene and
"wreck" the latter?

The plain answer to this question is, Why should anybody be called
upon to say how he knows that which he does not know? You are assuming
that laws are agents--efficient causes of that which happens--and that
one law can interfere with another. To us, that assumption is as
no