Possibility of Divine Interference.
I will now draw the reader’s attention to pages 149 to 152. I there pointed out that all inductive inference involves the assumption that our knowledge of what exists is complete, and that the conditions of things remain unaltered between the time of our experience and the time to which our inferences refer. Recurring to the illustration of a ballot-box, employed in the chapter on the inverse method of probabilities, we assume when predicting the probable nature of the next drawing, firstly, that our previous drawings have been sufficiently numerous to give us knowledge of the contents of the box; and, secondly, that no interference with the ballot-box takes place between the previous and the next drawings. The results yielded by the theory of probability are quite plain. No finite number of casual drawings can give us sure knowledge of the contents of the box, so that, even in the absence of all disturbance, our inferences are merely the best which can be made, and do not approach to infallibility. If, however, interference be possible, even the theory of probability ceases to be applicable, for, the amount and nature of that interference being arbitrary and unknown, there ceases to be any connection between premises and conclusion. Many years of reflection have not enabled me to see the way of avoiding this hiatus in scientific certainty. The conclusions of scientific inference appear to be always of a hypothetical and provisional nature. Given certain experience, the theory of probability yields us the true interpretation of that experience and is the surest guide open to us. But the best calculated results which it can give are never absolute probabilities; they are purely relative to the extent of our information. It seems to be impossible for us to judge how far our experience gives us adequate information of the universe as a whole, and of all the forces and phenomena which can have place therein.
I feel that I cannot in the space remaining at my command in the present volume, sufficiently follow out the lines of thought suggested, or define with precision my own conclusions. This chapter contains merely Reflections upon subjects of so weighty a character that I should myself wish for many years—nay for more than a lifetime of further reflection. My purpose, as I have repeatedly said, is the purely negative one of showing that atheism and materialism are no necessary results of scientific method. From the preceding reviews of the value of our scientific knowledge, I draw one distinct conclusion, that we cannot disprove the possibility of Divine interference in the course of nature. Such interference might arise, so far as our knowledge extends, in two ways. It might consist in the disclosure of the existence of some agent or spring of energy previously unknown, but which effects a given purpose at a given moment. Like the pre-arranged change of law in Babbage’s imaginary calculating machine, there may exist pre-arranged surprises in the order of nature, as it presents itself to us. Secondly, the same Power, which created material nature, might, so far as I can see, create additions to it, or annihilate portions which do exist. Such events are in a certain sense inconceivable to us; yet they are no more inconceivable than the existence of the world as it is. The indestructibility of matter, and the conservation of energy, are very probable scientific hypotheses, which accord satisfactorily with experiments of scientific men during a few years past, but it would be gross misconception of scientific inference to suppose that they are certain in the sense that a proposition in geometry is certain. Philosophers no doubt hold that de nihilo nihil fit, that is to say, their senses give them no means of imagining to the mind how creation can take place. But we are on the horns of a trilemma; we must either deny that anything exists, or we must allow that it was created out of nothing at some moment of past time, or that it existed from eternity. The first alternative is absurd; the other two seem to me equally conceivable.