Reader. You dream, doctor. Has “the torch of science” made known those hitherto unknown forces? No scientific work has yet explained how, by an act of the will, water can be changed into wine, how the deaf and dumb can be instantaneously cured, how the blind can be made to see, the paralytic to walk, and the dead to rise, at the sound of a voice, four days after burial, and when already in a state of advanced putrefaction. You may of course deny these facts, as you deny that the sun ever received a command to stand still; but to say that “the torch of science” has shown these facts to be the effect of unknown natural forces is to tell us the most stupid lie that can be uttered. Lies, you know, should at least be credible.
Büchner. “We have the fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting that there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything that happens does so in a natural way—i.e., [pg 824] in a mode determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing materials and their immanent natural forces. No revolution on earth or in heaven, however stupendous, could occur in any other manner” (p. 34).
Reader. These are mere words. I deny that science gives you the least right to suppress miracles. How can you establish such a right?
Büchner. “Wherever fire and water meet, vapors must arise and exert their irresistible power. Where the seed falls in the ground, there it will grow; where the thunderbolt is attracted, there it will strike. Can there exist any doubt as to these truths?” (p. 35).
Reader. Please, doctor, come to the point.
Büchner. “How is it possible that the unalterable order in which things move should ever be disturbed without producing an irremediable gap in the world, without delivering us and everything up to arbitrary power, without reducing all science, every earthly endeavor, to a vain and childish effort?” (p. 36).
Reader. All this rhetoric is most absurd, doctor. “The order in which things move” is not unalterable; and He whom you call an “arbitrary power” can alter it when he pleases without asking your permission, or without reducing science to a childish effort.
Büchner. What? You contradict yourself, sir. For, if the order in which things move is changeable, the laws of nature cannot be unchangeable.
Reader. Not at all. You sophistically confound two things entirely different—the law of nature, and the course of nature. The first is unchangeable, because it is connected with the essence of things; but the second is changeable, as a constant and universal experience compels us to admit. However much you may hate “arbitrary power,” you cannot deny that, besides necessary causes, there are others which are free in their exertions. Can you deny, for instance, that a stone may be thrown upwards in spite of gravitation, or that we can catch hold of the stone from the window, and, in spite of gravitation, we can prevent it from falling back to the ground? Now, if we do this, we do not change the law of nature, and nevertheless we modify the course of nature by freely producing a phenomenon which nature would not produce.
Büchner. Would you call this a miracle?