Who has ever been able to determine precisely how a billet of wood is changed into red-hot charcoal, and by what mechanism lime is heated by cold water?
The first motion of the heart in animals—is that accounted for? Has it been exactly discovered how the business of generation is arranged? Has any one divined the cause of sensation, ideas, and memory? We know no more of the essence of matter than the children who touch its superficies.
Who will instruct us in the mechanism by which the grain of corn, which we cast into the earth, disposes itself to produce a stalk surmounted with an ear; or why the sun produces an apple on one tree and a chestnut on the next to it? Many doctors have said: "What know I not?" Montaigne said: "What know I?"
Unbending decider! pedagogue in phrases! furred reasoner! thou inquirest after the limits of the human mind—they are at the end of thy nose.
MIRACLES.
SECTION I.
A miracle, according to the true meaning of the word, is something admirable; and agreeable to this, all is miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles.
According to common acceptation, we call a miracle the violation of these divine and eternal laws. A solar eclipse at the time of the full moon, or a dead man walking two leagues and carrying his head in his arms, we denominate a miracle.
Many natural philosophers maintain, that in this sense there are no miracles; and advance the following arguments: