A Modern Zoroastrian

by S. Laing

Grandinis misit Pater, et rubente

Dextera sacras jaculatus arces

Terruit urbem,

he wrote to a public to whom it was an undoubted article of faith that thunder and lightning, hail and snowstorms, came direct from the Father of the gods in the sky. Even to a late period this was the general faith, and the prayers in our rubric for rain or fine weather remain as a survival of the belief that these things, when unusual or in excess, are supernatural manifestations. But Benjamin Franklin said, ‘No, there is nothing supernatural about lightning. I will bring it down from the clouds and manufacture it by turning a wheel.’ Appeal being made to fact, the verdict is that Franklin was right, and that lightning-conductors protect ships and houses better than prayers or incantations. Again, when Galileo and the Church joined issue as to whether the earth was round or flat, inspiration and authority were cited in vain for the received theory; fact said it was round, and it was proved to be so by men sailing round it. The law of gravity was considered a very dangerous heresy, and for a long time pious divines held out against its conclusions, and contended that it was no better than atheism to doubt that comets were signs of God’s anger sent to warn a sinful world. But Halley calculated the time of his comet’s return according to the laws of gravity, and appeal being made to fact, the comet returned true to time.

This has occurred so often that few are left who doubt the universal prevalence of law in the material universe, where former generations saw miracles at every turn. Nor is the defeat of miracle less conspicuous in the spiritual world. Where former ages and rude races saw, and still see, possession by evil spirits, modern doctors see fevers, epilepsies, or insanity. Once more appeal being made to fact, the old medicine-men administered incantations, the new ones quinine—which cure the most patients?

In like manner demonology and witchcraft, with all their train of cruelties and horrors, once universally believed even by men like Justice Hale, have passed into oblivion as completely as the Lamiæ, Phorkyads, and other fantastic figures of the classical Walpurgisnight. Is the world the better or the worse for this triumph of natural law over supernaturalism?

The triumph has been so complete in innumerable instances, without a single one to the contrary, that belief in the permanence and universality of natural law has become almost an instinct in all educated minds, and even those who cling to old beliefs must admit that the most cogent and irresistible evidence is requisite to establish the fact of a real supernatural interference. It may be taken as an axiom that wherever a natural explanation is possible, a miraculous one is impossible.

Now this is just the point on which, as knowledge has increased, the evidence for miracles has become weaker, almost in the exact ratio in which the necessity for evidence has become stronger.

Take, for instance, the following case recorded by Dr. Braid of Glasgow. Miss R. had suffered from ophthalmia and was totally blind. She could not discern a single letter of the title-page of a book placed close to her, though some of the letters were a quarter of an inch long. Dr. Braid placed the patient in a condition of hypnotism or artificial somnambulism, and directed the nervous force, or sustained attention of the mind, to the eyes by wafting over them. After a first sitting of about ten minutes she was able to read a great part of the title-page, and after four more sittings she was able to read the smallest-sized print in a newspaper, and was quite cured for the rest of her life. In another case, that of Mrs. S., blindness of the left eye had occurred owing to an attack of rheumatic fever, the structure of the eye, both external and internal, being considerably injured, and more than half the cornea covered by an opaque film. After a few sittings the cornea became transparent, and the patient was cured.

In both these cases the blind were made to see by processes which were purely mechanical, for hypnotism was induced by the simple means of making the patient strain her attention on some fixed idea or object, commonly on a black wafer stuck on a white wall, and the stimulation of the optic nerve to greater activity did the rest. And if the blind could be made to see, a fortiori the deaf were made to hear, and the lame and halt to walk, by the same mechanical process. Here there is an explanation of nine-tenths of all recorded miracles by purely natural causes.