The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE EQUINOX long as it is conditioned in Time; and that a dream is of as real a nature as awakenment, but on a different plane in existence, the conditions of which can alone be judged and measured by experimental science. Science advances by means of accumulating facts and con- solidating them, the grand generalisation of which merges into a theory when it has been accepted by universal inference. Thus, I infer that catching a ball is not a necessary sequitur to throwing a ball up in the air; however, if I had never thrown a ball up in my life, and suddenly commenced doing so, and invariably caught it, probably after the nine hundred and ninety-nine billionth time I might be excused if I con- sidered that catching balls was a necessary law of nature.* Yet nevertheless if I did arrive at such a conclusion without being fully conscious that at any moment I might have to recast the whole of these laws, I should be but a bat-headed dogmatist instead of the hawk-eyed man of science who is ever ready to re-see and to reform.” * Why is it more probable that all men must die; that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air ; that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water; unless it be that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words a miracle, to prevent them ?”—Hume, iv., p. 133. “It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country.”—Hume, iv., p. 134. + If a piece of lead were to remain suspended of itself in the air, the occurrence would be a ‘miracle,’ in the sense of a wonderful event, indeed ; but no one trained in the methods of science would imagine that any law of nature was really violated thereby. He would simply set to work to investigate the conditions under which so highly unexpected an occurrence took place ; and thereby enlarge his experience and modify his hitherto unduly narrow conception of the laws of nature.”—Huxley, “ Essay on Hume,” p. 155. “A philosopher has declared that he would discredit universal testimony 296