Mr G. K. Chesterton, with true journalistic instinct, recently
stimulated public interest in himself and other worthy things by
engineering a discussion on "Do Miracles Happen?" The debate furnished
an opportunity of harmlessly letting off steam, but apparently each
disputant "was of his own opinion still" at the finish; though some of
the newspapers thought that the affirmative was proved, not by argument,
but by the actual occurrence of a miracle at the meeting--for Mr Bernard
Shaw was present, but remained silent! Joking apart, however, these
discussions are usually rendered nugatory by each debater attaching a
different meaning to the word. To one of them, a "miracle" involves the
action of some non-human mind; to others it is only a "wonderful"
occurrence, which is the strictly etymological meaning. It is only in
the latter sense that orthodox science has anything to say on the
subject.
David Hume, in the most famous of his essays, says that a miracle is "a
violation of the laws of nature", which laws a "firm and unalterable
experience has established". A century later, Matthew Arnold disposed of
the question in an even shorter manner. "Miracles do not happen", said
he, in the preface to _Literature and Dogma_. Modern science has,
speaking generally, concurred.
But the two statements are not very satisfactory. It is true, no doubt,
that miracles did not enter into the experience of David Hume and
Matthew Arnold; but this does not prove that they have never entered
into the experience of anybody else. If I must disbelieve all assertions
concerning phenomena which I have not personally observed, I must deny
that the sun can ever be north at mid-day, as indeed the Greeks did
(according to Herodotus), when the circumnavigators of Africa came back
with their story. But if I do, I shall be wrong. (_Histories_, book IV,
"I for my part do not believe them", says even this romantic historian.)
It is as unsafe to reject all human testimony to the marvellous as it
is to accept it all without question. The modern mind has gone to the
negative extreme, as the medieval mind went to the other. Take for
instance the twenty-five thousand Lives of the Saints in the great
Bollandist collection. They are full of miracles, of most incredible
kinds; yet in those days the accounts caused no astonishment. There was
no organised knowledge of nature, outside the narrow orbit of daily
life--and how narrow that was, we with our facile means of communication
and travel can hardly realise. Consequently there was little or no
conception of law or orderliness in nature, and therefore no criterion
by which to test stories of unusual occurrences. Anything might happen;
there was no apparent reason why it shouldn't. One saint having retired
into the desert to lead a life of mortification, the birds daily brought
him food sufficient for his wants; and when a brother joined him they
doubled the supply. When the saint died, two lions came and dug his
grave, uttered a howl of mourning over his body, and knelt to beg a
blessing from the survivor. (Cf. the curious story of St Francis taming
"Brother Wolf", of Gubbio, in chapter 21 of the _Fioretti_.) The
innumerable miracles in the _Little Flowers_ and _Life of St Francis_
are repeated in countless other lives; saints are lifted across rivers
by angels, they preach to the fishes, who swarm to the shore to listen,
they are visited by the Virgin, are lifted up in the air and suspended
there for twelve hours while in ecstasy they perceive the inner mystery
of the Most Blessed Trinity. Almost every town in Europe could produce
its relic which has produced its miraculous cures, or its image that had
opened or shut its eyes, or bowed its head to a worshipper. The Virgin
of the Pillar, at Saragossa, restored a worshipper's leg that had been
amputated. This is regarded by Spanish theologians as specially well
attested. There is a picture of it in the Cathedral at Saragossa.
(Lecky, _Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe_, vol. 1, page
141.) The saints were seen fighting for the Christian army, when the
latter battled with the infidel. In medieval times this kind of thing
was accepted without question and without surprise.
About the end of the twelfth century there came a change. The human mind
began to awake from its long lethargy; began to writhe and struggle
against the dead hand of authority which held it down. The Crusades, as
Guizot shows, had much to do with the rise of the new spirit, by causing
educative contact with a high Saracenic civilization. Men began to
wonder and to think. Heresy inevitably appeared, and became rife. In
1208 Innocent III established the Inquisition, but failed to strangle
the infant Hercules. In 1209 began the massacre of the Albigenses, which
continued more or less for about fifty years, the deaths being at least
scores of thousands; but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of
further freedom and enlightenment. Nature began to be studied, in
however rudimentary a way, by Roger Bacon and his brother alchemists.
The Reformation came, weakening ecclesiastical authority still further
by dividing the dogmatic forces into two hostile camps, and thus giving
science its chance. Galileo appeared, and did his work, though with many
waverings, for Paul V and Urban VIII kept successively a heavy hand on
him; he was imprisoned at seventy, when in failing health, and, some
think, tortured--though this is uncertain, and his famous _e pur si
muove_ is probably mythical. More important still, Francis Bacon,
teaching with enthusiasm the method of observation and experiment. The
conception of law, of rationality and regularity in nature, emerged;
Kepler and Newton laid down the ground plan of the universe, evolving
the formulae which express the facts of molar motion. Uniformity in
geology was shown by Lyell, while Darwin and his followers carried
law into biological evolution. Then man became swelled-headed; became
intoxicated with his successes. It had already been so with Hume, and
it became more so with his disciples. Man treated his own limited
experience as a criterion, and denied what was not represented by
something similar therein. Especially was this the case when alleged
facts had any connection with religion. Religion had tried to
exterminate science, and it was natural enough that, in revenge, science
should be hostile to anything associated with religion. Consequently,
the scientific man flatly denied miracles, not only such stories as the
rib of Adam and the talking serpent (concerning which even a church
father like Origen had made merry in Gnostic days fifteen hundred years
before), but also the healing miracles of Jesus, which to us are now
beginning to look possible enough.
This negative dogmatism is as regrettable as the positive variety. It
is not scientific. Science stands for a method, not for a dogma. It
observes, experiments, and infers; but it makes no claim to the
possession of absolute truth. A genuine science, confronted with
allegations of unusual facts, neither believes nor disbelieves. It
investigates. The solution of the problem is simply a question of
evidence. Huxley in his little book _Hume_, and J. S. Mill in his
_Essays on Religion_, made short work of the "impossibility" attitude.
Says the former in _Science and Christian Tradition_, page 197:
"Strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a right to the
title of an impossibility, except a contradiction in terms. There are
impossibilities logical, but none natural. A 'round square', a 'present
past', 'two parallel lines that intersect', are impossibilities, because
the ideas denoted by the predicates round, present, intersect, are
contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects square, past,
parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, are plainly
not impossibilities in this sense".
No alleged occurrence can be ruled out as impossible, then, unless the
statement is self-contradictory. Difficulty of belief is no reason. It
was found difficult to believe in Antipodes; if there were people on
the under side of the earth, "they would fall off". But the advance of
knowledge made it not only credible but quite comprehensible. People
stick on, all over the earth, because the earth attracts them more
powerfully than anything else does. Similarly with some miracles. They
may seem much more credible and comprehensible when we have learned
more. Indeed, the wonders of wireless telegraphy, radio-activity, and
aviation are intrinsically as miraculous as many of the stories in the
world's sacred writings.
This is not saying, however, that we are to believe the latter _en
bloc_. They must be taken individually, and believed or disbelieved
according to the evidence and according to the antecedent probability or
improbability. The standing still of the sun (_Joshua_, x) does not seem
credible to the scientific mind which knows that the earth is spinning
at the equator at the rate of one thousand miles an hour and that any
sudden interference with that rotation would send it to smithereens,
with all the creatures on its surface. Of course, a Being who could stop
its rotation could perhaps also prevent it from flying to smithereens;
but we have to extend the miracle in so many entirely hypothetical ways
that the whole thing becomes too dubious for acceptance. It is simpler
to look on the story as a myth.
But such things as the clairvoyance of Samuel (I _Samuel_, x), and
even the Woman of Endor story, are quite in line with what psychical
research is now establishing. And the healing miracles of Jesus are
paralleled, in kind if not in degree, by innumerable "suggestive
therapeutic" doctors. Shell-shock blindness and paralysis are cured at
Seale Hayne Hospital and elsewhere in very "miraculous" fashion. And
turning water into wine is not more wonderful than turning radium into
helium, and helium into lead, which nature is now doing before our
eyes. These things, therefore, have become credible, if the evidence
is good enough. Whether evidence nineteen hundred years old can be
good enough to take as the basis of serious belief is another matter.
Scientific method insists on a high standard of evidence. We must be
honest with ourselves, and not believe unless the evidence satisfies our
intellectual requirements. But the modern and wise tendency is to regard
religion as an attitude rather than as a belief or system of beliefs. It
does not stand or fall with the miracle-stories.