Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/567

566 N. PEARSON : cent, at least of scientific authorities. Let us assume, a/-</t//n"/if/ (//atid at all events, that the testimony of experience shows that life invariably springs only from some antecedent life. Can we therefore say that Biogenesis is a law of nature ? In a sense we can ; and my postulate being granted we are perfectly justified in so saying. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the justification for this assertion rests on experience only ; and therefore, that we cannot legitimately extend the scope of the law beyond the realm which experience illumines for us. We may be entitled to say : All life springs from antecedent life now . We are not entitled to say : All life has sprung from antecedent life ; for it is obvious, on any theory of the universe, that at some period or other life must have sprung either from non-life or from nothing. Under these circumstances therefore, whatever they may have been, not Biogenesis but ' Archebiosis ' was the biological law of nature that then obtained. The facts seem so simple when put before us -in extenso that error appears impossible ; and so long as we keep to the facts, error is impossible. But we have a persistent tendency to stretch the mantle of experience over conditions of existence which lie necessarily outside it ; and in this w r ay we come to pervert a natural law, which is merely an enunciation of what is under given conditions, into a prophetic enunciation of what must le under conditions of which experience can tell us little or nothing. Take again the famous saying that " Miracles do not happen ". In a sense this is indisputable from a scientific point of view. We may even go further, and say that a miracle, in the sense of a violation of the order of nature, never could happen. But then comes the question, What is the order of nature ? The order of nature is constant in the sense that causation pervades its minutest detail. Nature's accounts, so to speak, are most strictly kept. No force appears on one side of a natural equation which is not fully accounted for on the other, even though it be not always within our power to analyse the force-distribution which takes place. But the order of nature, as we perceive it, is not constant in the sense of being identical identical, that is, from the beginning till now, and from now into the future of eternity. Just so far as science insists on applying the ascertainment- clause universally to the interpretation of nature, so far will theology be able to insist triumphantly on the occurrence of miracle. If from our present observation that life springs in- variably from antecedent life, we proceed to declare that this observed iniipn-mihj is an absolute natural law, it is open to any critic to retort that in this case natural law must at some time or other have been violated, since at some time or other the original life must have arisen from some other than an antecedent living source. The error lies in restricting " Natural Law " to " an obsei-ved uniformity " ; which amounts, in fact, to an attempt to impose the transient conditions of the present upon an unknown