The Relations Between Religion and Science | Page 9

head as other motions, either those
which originate in ourselves and are propagated from our bodies to
external objects, or those which, springing from an unknown beginning,
are for ever continuing as before.
This then is the answer to the question, Why do we believe in the
uniformity of Nature? We believe in it because we find it so. Millions
on millions of observations concur in exhibiting this uniformity. And
the longer our observation of Nature goes on, the greater do we find the
extent of it. Things that once seemed irregular are now known to be
regular. Things that seemed inexplicable on this hypothesis are now
explained. Every day seems to add not merely to the instances but to
the wide-ranging classes of phenomena that come under the rule. We
had reason long ago to hold that the quantity of matter was invariable.
We now have reason to think that the quantity of force acting on matter
is invariable. And to this is to be added the evidence of scientific
prediction, the range of which is perpetually increasing, and which
would be obviously impossible if Nature were not uniform. And yet
again to this is to be added that this uniformity does not consist in a
vast number of separate and independent laws, but that these laws
already form a system with one another, and that that system is daily
becoming more complete. We believe in the uniformity of Nature
because, as far as we can observe it, that is the character of Nature.
And I use the word character on purpose, because it indicates better
than any other word that I could find at once the nature and limitation
of our belief.
For, if the origin of this belief be what I have described, it is perfectly
clear that, however vast may be the evidence to prove this uniformity,
the conclusion can never go beyond the limits of this evidence, and
generality can never be confounded with universality. The certainty
that Nature is uniform is not at all, and never can be, a certainty of the
same kind as the certainty that four times five are twenty.

We can assert that the general character of Nature is uniformity, but we
cannot go beyond this. Every separate law of nature is established by
induction from the facts, and so too is the general uniformity. Every
separate law of Nature is a working hypothesis. So too is the uniformity
of Nature a working hypothesis, and it never can be more. It is true that
there is far more evidence for the uniformity of Nature as a whole than
for any one law of Nature; because a law of Nature is established by the
uniformity of sequences in those phenomena to which it applies;
whereas every uniformity of sequence, of whatever kind, is an evidence
of the general uniformity. The evidence for the uniformity of nature is
the accumulated evidence for all the separate uniformities. But,
however much greater the quantity of evidence, the kind ever remains
the same. There is no means by which we can demonstrate this
uniformity. We can only make it probable. We can say that in almost
every case all the evidence is one way; but whenever there is evidence
to the contrary we cannot refuse to examine it.
If a miracle were worked science could not prove that it was a miracle,
nor of course prove that it was not a miracle. To prove it to be a miracle
would require not a vast range of knowledge, but absolutely universal
knowledge, which it is entirely beyond our faculties to attain. To say
that any event was a miracle would be to say that we knew that there
was no higher law that could explain it, and this we could not say
unless we knew all laws: to say that it was not a miracle would be ex
hypothesi to assert what was false. In fact, to assert the occurrence of a
miracle is simply to go back to the beginning of science, and to say:
Here is an event which we cannot assign to that derivative action to
which we have been led to assign the great body of events; we cannot
explain it except by referring it to direct and spontaneous action, to a
will like our own will. Science has shown that the vast majority of
events are due to derivative action regulated by laws. Here is an event
which cannot be so explained, any more than the action of our own free
will can be so explained. Science may fairly claim to have shown that
miracles, if they happen at all, are exceedingly rare. To demonstrate
that they never happen at all is impossible, from the very nature of the
evidence on which