He went on to argue for the immortality of the soul, and as a consequence for its pre-existence and the transmigration of souls, from the conservation of energy; and concluded his argument against the creation and government of the world by a comprehensible, anthropomorphic Creator, by adducing the existence of evil.
‘There is a sickness,’ he said, ‘called fever and ague; what do you call the medicine to cure that?’
‘Quinine.’
‘Yes; now we have not found that long; a good God would not have let so many people suffer if He could have given them that. A man found it by chance. The sickness and suffering in this life are for wrong done in another life.’
We may not accept this unproved theory of the cause of sickness and suffering, but it is very interesting to find that candid and intelligent minds, brought up in a society and religious beliefs so widely different from our own, have arrived practically at the same conclusions as John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and other leaders of advanced thought in modern Europe, and drawn almost identically the same line between that which is knowable and that which is unknowable by the human mind.
But, however large-minded we may become in seeing the good in other forms of creed, we English of the nineteenth century are not going to turn either pantheists or Buddhists, and practically the contest of the present day is between the supernatural or miraculous, and the natural or scientific, hypotheses.
According to the former the operations of the universe are carried on to a considerable extent by what may be called secondary interferences of a supernatural being, who with will, intelligence, and design, like human though vastly superior, frequently interposes to alter the course of events and bring about something which natural law would not have brought about. The other hypothesis cannot be stated better than in Bishop Temple’s words, that the Great First Cause created things so perfect from the first, that no such secondary interferences have ever been necessary, and everything has been and is evolved from the primary atoms and energies in a necessary and invariable succession. The supernatural and the natural theories of the universe are thus brought into direct antagonism.
For the supernatural theory it must be conceded that it is quite conceivable, as is proved by the fact that it has been the almost universal conception of mankind for ages, and remains so still for the greater number. It is, as I have said, the inevitable first conception when men began to reflect on the phenomena of the universe, and to reason from effects to causes. I have always thought that Hume went too far in condemning miracles as absolutely incredible a priori. It is a question of evidence. A priori, I can conceive that the true explanation of the universe might have been natural law, as the general rule, supplemented by miracles; just as readily as that it is law always, and miracle never. The verdict must be decided by the weight of evidence. The two theories must be called, face to face, before the tribunal of fact, and its decision must be respected. This is exactly what has been going on for the last two centuries, and specially for the last half century, and the record of decisions is now a very ample one. In every single instance law has carried the day against miracle.
Instance after instance has occurred in which phenomena which in former ages were attributed without hesitation to supernatural agencies have been conclusively proved to be due to natural laws. Take the obvious instance of thunder. When Horace wrote:—
Jam satis terris nivis, atque diræ