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Miracles
Miracles
Miracles
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Miracles

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Do Miracles Really Happen?

In Miracles, C.S. Lewis argues that a Christian must not only accept but rejoice in miracles as a testimony of the unique personal involvement of God in his creation. Using his charismatic warmth, lucidity, and wit, Lewis challenges the rationalists and cynics who are mired in their lack of imagination and provides a poetic and joyous affirmation that miracles really do occur in everyday lives.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateJun 16, 2009
ISBN9780061949760
Author

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and have been transformed into three major motion pictures. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) fue uno de los intelectuales más importantes del siglo veinte y podría decirse que fue el escritor cristiano más influyente de su tiempo. Fue profesor particular de literatura inglesa y miembro de la junta de gobierno en la Universidad Oxford hasta 1954, cuando fue nombrado profesor de literatura medieval y renacentista en la Universidad Cambridge, cargo que desempeñó hasta que se jubiló. Sus contribuciones a la crítica literaria, literatura infantil, literatura fantástica y teología popular le trajeron fama y aclamación a nivel internacional. C. S. Lewis escribió más de treinta libros, lo cual le permitió alcanzar una enorme audiencia, y sus obras aún atraen a miles de nuevos lectores cada año. Sus más distinguidas y populares obras incluyen Las Crónicas de Narnia, Los Cuatro Amores, Cartas del Diablo a Su Sobrino y Mero Cristianismo.

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Rating: 4.081632653061225 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Apologetics at its best. Not so academic as to be opaque to all but the trained philosopher, not so popular as to be diluted and ineffective. A pointed critique of naturalism.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very in-depth and intriguing thoughts.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have given up on this one about two thirds of the way through. Lewis is a very powerful thinker and his ratiocination is generally very good, but I could not click with much of this. As in Mere Christianity, he is at his best and most persuasive on the origins of human morality. However, I was less convinced about his arguments on naturalism and about how the power to reason must necessarily originate from beyond nature, and by his reasoning on probability. In the end belief in miracles comes down just to that - belief or otherwise, and I remain agnostic on this point.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is challenging reading, primarily because Mr. Lewis takes such a philosophical look at the problem of miracles. Too often, arguments about the tenants of Christianity seem to be nothing more than name calling - but this book makes a reasoned case for the possibility that miracles are not only possible, but make a lot of sense. There are some truly exalting ideas of the state of man and God in this book, which is always fun to come across.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The book was alright but I doubt I will read it again. C.S. Lewis goes through and starts at the beginning arguing that miracles do exist. He starts out with the idea that there is nature and then a supernature or something that exists outside of nature itself. Then he explains how the supernature (God) can affect nature without knocking nature off balance but that all of the miracles of God occur in perfect harmony with how God has created nature to behave. Mr. Lewis ends the book with explaining the different miracles that occured in the Bible and how they fit into the grand scheme of miracles. It was a difficult book to read and I found myself unable to sit more than about an hour at a time and read it without taking some time as a break or to let my brain digest everything I had read
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I haven't finished it yet...or ever...but it is rich and crafted. Creatively intelligent.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a fairly heavy book, although quite comprehensible if taken reasonably slowly. Although the topic is miracles, Lewis's first few chapters present his clear and logical arguments for the existence of the supernatural, and - eventually - for God as creator. He explains that, without this philosophical background and an openness to something outside the natural world of our senses, then any discussion of miracles is pointless.

    I can see why he began that way, although it's doubtful whether an atheist or committed materialist would bother with a book on this topic; moreover, I could see a few holes in his arguments even from a Christian perspective, so while I agree with his conclusions I suspect that many wouldn't. Still, it made interesting reading.

    The latter part of the book discusses various kinds of miracles - the huge miracle of the Incarnation, those he calls 'miracles of the old nature' and those of the 'new nature'. It's been at least twelve years since I last read this, but I did remember something that made quite a big impact on me last time: the idea that in the 'old nature' miracles, God works by speeding up a process that would happen naturally over time (water into wine, for instance, bypassing the growth and harvesting and fermenting of the grapes).

    This time, the thought that will remain with me is the idea that miracles, once impinged upon the natural world, continue to obey its laws. They have no 'past' - by definition, they happen outside of normal events - but are then absorbed, so to speak. Miraculous wine can still lead to hangovers.

    I read a few pages every day for about three weeks, and mostly enjoyed it. The style feels dated, unsurprisingly, although it's clear and extremely well-written. But I found my mind wandered far too easily if I attempted more than about half a chapter at a time.

    Lewis fans will almost certainly have this on their shelves; for those who haven't read any of his theological works, this isn't one of the best introductions, in my view. I think Mere Christianity', or even 'Surprised by Joy' would be more accessible.

    Still, it's well worth reading for anyone interested in the topic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How I’ve missed C. S. Lewis! I picked this book up to read for a book club, and settled into it like conversing with an old friend.The topic is miracles. Do they exist or not? Do they contradict with Nature or not? This is not a nuts and bolts proof book; it is a call to see miracles in a different light. There is, for instance, nothing miraculous about turning water into wine … nature itself can do this. God has created a vegetable organism that can turn water, soil and sunlight into a juice which will, under proper conditions, become wine. Wine is merely water modified. Should it surprise you that one day, God short circuited the process, using earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water?As in this example, Lewis’s arguments sometimes amount only to warm fuzzies. Pantheism, he explains, is nothing special, for people are merely predisposed to believe this way … pantheism has hung around like an unwanted parasite from the beginning. In contrast, a the story of a dying and rising God is surely true because nature itself teaches this concept, as any farmer knows. Now, beneath the surface, these two arguments are similar, but Lewis manages to draw the desired results from each with a bit of conversation made elegant in one circumstance and ugly in another.Lewis errs also in his science, imagining that “every event in Nature must be connected with previous events in the Cause and Effect relation.” We know better today (Lewis was writing in 1947), and thus the foundation crumbles for many of his arguments against Naturalism. (Lewis attempts to argue that there must be a God who is not a part of Nature, and reasons that this God must surely be our creator.)But it’s the way Lewis writes that so grabs the imagination! I absolutely love reading his books. There is a spellbinding discussion of Morality and Human Reason herein (their divinity earns their capitalization). Yet I cannot honestly award the book five stars, because Lewis never accomplishes what he sets out to do. Lewis’s God is elegant and beautiful, but no less unlikely for Lewis’s efforts, and must remain a matter of faith. Yet for those who already believe in this particular God, this book cannot fail to lift their spirits.Very much recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is not the best of Lewis's works. At first it makes sense, but dont trot these arguments out in your philosophy class. Essentially Lewis makes a place for God's work in the universe, but miracles are merely Gods' interaction with reality.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lewis attempts to reconcile miracles with science. Whether or not he succeeded remains up to the reader. He does however present his arguments in a scientific way rather than relying on arguments strictly based on faith. In other words he argues from beyond Christianity and its beliefs. Well worth the time to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hardest of the CS Lewis books I've read! But if you can fight through it, there's some great stuff about the relationship between body and spirit.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The first four or five chapters of C. S. Lewis' Miracles are an excellent analysis and discussion of the differences between Naturalism and Super-naturalism, from which he begins to tackle the question whether miracles have historically occurred. Lewis does this admirably and he presents an interesting and cogent argument not only for the historical occurrence of miracles but the Super-natural Deity behind them. For the Christian reader, this book is an excellent resource for tackling discussions on Naturalism, and for investigating and supporting the argument for historically-occurring miracles. Lewis starts by addressing the Incarnation and thence to all the other miracles Jesus performed. Even if one is not a Christian, this book is worth reading for the first five chapters alone, but the intrepid reader should progress further to analyse their own beliefs about miracles and investigate them without the pre-existing Naturalist bias present in all of us.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    C.S. Lewis sets out to prove by logical argument that miracles are possible. The clear-headed writing style helps to draw you in, he anticipates a lot of the criticisms people will have, and I just like the attempt to argue from a position of rigorous logic something which mostly just comes down to “you believe it or you don’t”.The trouble is that, in the end, it comes down to that anyway. The calm logic proceeds slowly from step to step, and I am with him all the way, until he makes a big leap, which is that scientific theories of evolution cannot explain the development of human rational thought. Because the process of reasoning is so completely different from anything we can find in the animal world, he argues, it cannot come from that world. Therefore it must come from outside, i.e. from God. On this point his whole argument rests - because each human brain is an intrusion of the supernatural into the world of Nature, so other intrusions are plausible too. He sees miracles in this way - not as breaking the rules of nature, but as sporadic intrusions by God, after which the rules of nature continue to work with the new situation.In the framework he has constructed, most of his arguments are logical. But his framework is based on a logical leap I don’t think is justified. It’s very hard to understand a lot of evolutionary theory intuitively. I can’t imagine basic organisms evolving into giraffes, or a fish coming out of the water, developing the ability to breathe and becoming an amphibian. But I can accept that over countless millions of years, countless tiny, incremental changes could add up to huge, incomprehensible changes. The development of reason doesn’t seem to me so different from anything else that we have to give it a supernatural cause.Another problem with the book is that all of the miracles are Christian. This is Lewis’s belief system, so it’s understandable that he would be interested in proving the viability of the virgin birth more than anything else. But he is completely dismissive of other religions, without making any attempt to explain why. If Christian miracles are possible, then are Hindu or animist ones possible. Presumably not, because Christians say there can only be one God.But the reason for believing the Christian miracles specifically comes down to an absurd criterion called “our innate sense of the fitness of things.” The last few chapters are devoted to trying to prove that the Christian miracles meet this bizarrely vague standard of “fitness.” Lewis does not seem to consider that his own assumptions of how the universe should be are unlikely to be the same as someone else’s. People like him, the “we” of his definition, white male Oxford dons, might agree with his “innate sense of the fitness of things”, although many, clearly, would not. As for people all over the world of different origins, different religions, different social status, etc etc, surely they would have their own sense of what is “fit”? And, perhaps, they would have their own ways of describing the supernatural, and different religions would form, each as valid in its generalities and false in its details as Christianity.I am willing to believe that miracles could happen, but not because of this book. C.S. Lewis raises some interesting ideas, but after all the long philosophical arguments it comes down once again to a question of belief.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fantastic and excellent apology for belief in supernaturalism and, more specifically, the divinity and acts of the God of Israel. Lewis confronts a skeptical and naturalistic world with excellent arguments demonstrating how there is more to the universe than what is perceptible on the natural plane, defining miracles and how miracles truly work, demolishing Hume's argument from probability, and providing robust defenses for the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Jesus' miracle-working powers. A most excellent book to encourage the believer and challenge the skeptic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is part of my C.S. Lewis collection. I went through a huge phase where I was just obsessed with anything and everything by him. While I don't agree with all of his theology, I do love his writing style and the things he has to say about faith. He was a good one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book presents a philosophical case for the rationality of a belief in miracles, and a support for a Christian world view. I've previously been impressed with C S Lewis's works due to his sound use of logic, however there are oversights in reasoning here that significantly weaken the persuasiveness of some of his arguments. This is not to say that the final conclusions are no longer supported, but that a better case could have been made. Either way, a reader who has understood the case presented in this book, what is wrong with it, and how it could be amended, will not be convinced that miracles do or have occurred, or that they are probable, only that a belief in their possibility is rationally defensible within a coherent worldview. In this way, Lewis achieves at least in part what he set out to do.In the opening chapters, Lewis describes the difference between Naturalist and Supernaturalist world views, defining the former as a belief that the material world is all that there is, and that everything could in theory be understood from a knowledge of material causes and the observable laws of Nature. Presented as an alternative is what he defines as the Supernaturalist word view, that something exists apart from the material, and that this is useful to explain certain things such as the origin of the universe, and the existence of reason and rationality. Specifically, Lewis presents an argument in favour of the Supernatural world view based on his claim that rationality and human reason could not result from causal material laws alone and that instead they must be given to us from God. This is the biggest error in the book, and several further arguments are based on this conclusion. While part of this reasoning is correct (that material causes alone could not lead to the formation of rationality), his definition of Naturalism is too narrow, as he overlooks the existence of necessary mathematical truths that would be present in any given universe (Naturalist or Supernaturalist), and which are clearly not part of the material universe per se but would always accompany it; that these necessary truths are eternal and uncaused, and that their effects on any logical material universe is inevitable (minds would only evolve in a universe which was logical, where the laws were broadly consistent, as there would be no advantage to having a mind in a situation where nothing was predictable). There are then two broad ways in which these necessary mathematical and logical truths could have been dealt with: either within a Naturalist world view (expanded beyond Lewis's definition), or within a Supernaturalist world view (for example as their incorporation into God as what the Neoplatonists called the Logos, or what modern Christians might translate as being the co-eternal Word of God). Either of these could be logically consistent, but neither are considered by Lewis. Instead, he takes the ability of humans to think rationally as being a support solely for the Supernaturalist world view. If we leave the argument at this point we are agnostic, being unable to decide in favour of the Naturalist or Supernaturalist world view. The bulk of the remaining ammo left to Lewis then for his apologetics is the origin of the universe (Creation), and the scriptures themselves. The case he then makes using these and other arguments is somewhat better. While he might not convert a staunch Naturalist, it will at least expose several presuppositions that are held without evidence and lead to further questions. The possibility of miracles is reconciled with a universe that acts according to scientific laws, and several other barriers to an acceptance of their possibility are removed. For all its flaws, what is left of this book is a considered and coercive argument for having an open mind on the matter of miracles, but not a definitive answer one way or the other. Much of the logic deployed throughout this book is fine, and used to good effect, and overall this provides a good philosophical introduction to the topic of Miracles for the inquisitive.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    a man after Gods own heart. cs lewis. thanks for equipping us
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It is a great book written by a great philosopher. It is worthy of reading and analyzing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the book that changed my life. Until this, I'd taken to Christian doctrine and apologetics eagerly, weathering the difficulties with the usual shrug of the pious. But then, Lewis here poses a philosophical problem, that of determinism, and asserted that naturalistic science was philosophically committed to this. I thought: nonsense. Poppycock. In fact, I thought it a dishonest argument. I became ashamed of my hero. And the more I thought about the explanatory power of naturalistic humanism versus theism, the more impressed with the former I became. This book, which helped so many people become Christians, is the main work that set me in the other direction.

Book preview

Miracles - C. S. Lewis

1

THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions.

ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics, II, (III), i.

In all my life I have met only one person who claims to have seen a ghost. And the interesting thing about the story is that that person disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves after seeing it. She says that what she saw must have been an illusion or a trick of the nerves. And obviously she may be right. Seeing is not believing.

For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

If immediate experience cannot prove or disprove the miraculous, still less can history do so. Many people think one can decide whether a miracle occurred in the past by examining the evidence ‘according to the ordinary rules of historical inquiry’. But the ordinary rules cannot be worked until we have decided whether miracles are possible, and if so, how probable they are. For if they are impossible, then no amount of historical evidence will convince us. If they are possible but immensely improbable, then only mathematically demonstrative evidence will convince us: and since history never provides that degree of evidence for any event, history can never convince us that a miracle occurred. If, on the other hand, miracles are not intrinsically improbable, then the existing evidence will be sufficient to convince us that quite a number of miracles have occurred. The result of our historical enquiries thus depends on the philosophical views which we have been holding before we even began to look at the evidence. This philosophical question must therefore come first.

Here is an example of the sort of thing that happens if we omit the preliminary philosophical task, and rush on to the historical. In a popular commentary on the Bible you will find a discussion of the date at which the Fourth Gospel was written. The author says it must have been written after the execution of St Peter, because, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ is represented as predicting the execution of St Peter. ‘A book’, thinks the author, ‘cannot be written before events which it refers to’. Of course it cannot—unless real predictions ever occur. If they do, then this argument for the date is in ruins. And the author has not discussed at all whether real predictions are possible. He takes it for granted (perhaps unconsciously) that they are not. Perhaps he is right: but if he is, he has not discovered this principle by historical inquiry. He has brought his disbelief in predictions to his historical work, so to speak, ready made. Unless he had done so his historical conclusion about the date of the Fourth Gospel could not have been reached at all. His work is therefore quite useless to a person who wants to know whether predictions occur. The author gets to work only after he has already answered that question in the negative, and on grounds which he never communicates to us.

This book is intended as a preliminary to historical inquiry. I am not a trained historian and I shall not examine the historical evidence for the Christian miracles. My effort is to put my readers in a position to do so. It is no use going to the texts until we have some idea about the possibility or probability of the miraculous. Those who assume that miracles cannot happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the texts: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.

2

THE NATURALIST AND THE SUPERNATURALIST

‘Gracious!’ exclaimed Mrs Snip, ‘and is there a place where people venture to live above ground?’

‘I never heard of people living under ground," replied Tim, ‘before I came to Giant-Land’. ‘Came to Giant-Land!’ cried Mrs Snip, ‘why, isn’t everywhere Giant-Land?’

ROLAND QUIZZ, Giant-Land, chap xxxii.

I use the word Miracle to mean an interference with Nature by supernatural power.¹ Unless there exists, in addition to Nature, something else which we may call the supernatural, there can be no miracles. Some people believe that nothing exists except Nature; I call these people Naturalists. Others think that, besides Nature, there exists something else: I call them Supernaturalists. Our first question, therefore, is whether the Naturalists or the Supernaturalists are right. And here comes our first difficulty.

Before the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist can begin to discuss their difference of opinion, they must surely have an agreed definition both of Nature and of Supernature. But unfortunately it is almost impossible to get such a definition. Just because the Naturalist thinks that nothing but Nature exists, the word Nature means to him merely ‘everything’ or ‘the whole show’ or ‘whatever there is’. And if that is what we mean by Nature, then of course nothing else exists. The real question between him and the Supernaturalist has evaded us. Some philosophers have defined Nature as ‘What we perceive with our five senses’. But this also is unsatisfactory; for we do not perceive our own emotions in that way, and yet they are presumably ‘natural’ events. In order to avoid this deadlock and to discover what the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist are really differing about, we must approach our problem in a more roundabout way.

I begin by considering the following sentences (I) Are those his natural teeth or a set? (2) The dog in his natural state is covered with fleas. (3) I love to get away from tilled lands and metalled roads and be alone with Nature. (4) Do be natural. Why are you so affected? (5) It may have been wrong to kiss her but it was very natural.

A common thread of meaning in all these usages can easily be discovered. The natural teeth are those which grow in the mouth; we do not have to design them, make them, or fit them. The dog’s natural state is the one he will be in if no one takes soap and water and prevents it. The countryside where Nature reigns supreme is the one where soil, weather and vegetation produce their results unhelped and unimpeded by man. Natural behaviour is the behaviour which people would exhibit if they were not at pains to alter it. The natural kiss is the kiss which will be given if moral or prudential considerations do not intervene. In all the examples Nature means what happens ‘of itself’ or ‘of its own accord’: what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it. The Greek word for Nature (Physis) is connected with the Greek verb for ‘to grow’; Latin Natura, with the verb ‘to be born’. The Natural is what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given, what is there already: the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited.

What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can’t go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord. Inside that total system every particular event (such as your sitting reading this book) happens because some other event has happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is happening. Each particular thing (such as this page) is what it is because other things are what they are; and so, eventually, because the whole system is what it is. All the things and events are so completely interlocked that no one of them can claim the slightest independence from ‘the whole show’. None of them exists ‘on its own’ or ‘goes on of its own accord’ except in the sense that it exhibits, at some particular place and time, that general ‘existence on its own’ or ‘behaviour of its own accord’ which belongs to ‘Nature’ (the great total interlocked event) as a whole. Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, action ‘on its own’, is a privilege reserved for ‘the whole show’, which he calls Nature.

The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical to try to explain because this Fact is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. But he does not identify this Fact with ‘the whole show’. He thinks that things fall into two classes. In the first class we find either things or (more probably) One Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In the second we find things which are merely derivative from that One Thing. The one basic Thing has caused all the other things to be. It exists on its own; they exist because it exists. They will cease to exist if it ever ceases to maintain them in existence; they will be altered if it ever alters them.

The difference between the two views might be expressed by saying that Naturalism gives us a democratic, Supernaturalism a monarchical, picture of reality. The Naturalist thinks that the privilege of ‘being on its own’ resides in the total mass of things, just as in a democracy sovereignty resides in the whole mass of the people. The Supernaturalist thinks that this privilege belongs to some things or (more probably) One Thing and not to others—just as, in a real monarchy, the king has sovereignty and the people have not. And just as, in a democracy, all citizens are equal, so for the Naturalist one thing or event is as good as another, in the sense that they are all equally dependent on the total system of things. Indeed each of them is only the way in which the character of that total system exhibits itself at a particular point in space and time. The Super-naturalist, on the other hand, believes that the one original or self-existent thing is on a different level from, and more important than, all other things.

At this point a suspicion may occur that Supernaturalism first arose from reading into the universe the structure of monarchical societies. But then of course it may with equal reason be suspected that Naturalism has arisen from reading into it the structure of modern democracies. The two suspicions thus cancel out and give us no help in deciding which theory is more likely to be true. They do indeed remind us that Supernaturalism is the characteristic philosophy of a monarchical age and Naturalism of a democratic, in the sense that Supernaturalism, even if false, would have been believed by the great mass of unthinking people four hundred years ago, just as Naturalism, even if false, will be believed by the great mass of unthinking people today.

Everyone will have seen that the One Self-existent Thing–or the small class of self-existent things–in which Supernaturalists believe, is what we call God or the gods. I propose for the rest of this book to treat only that form of Supernaturalism which believes in one God; partly because polytheism is not likely to be a live issue for most of my readers, and partly because those who believed in many gods very seldom, in fact, regarded their gods as creators of the universe and as self-existent. The gods of Greece were not really supernatural in the strict sense which I am giving to the word. They were products of the total system of things and included within it. This introduces an important distinction.

The difference between Naturalism and Supernaturalism is not exactly the same as the difference between belief in a God and disbelief. Naturalism, without ceasing to be itself, could admit a certain kind of God. The great interlocking event called Nature might be such as to produce at some stage a great cosmic consciousness, an indwelling ‘God’ arising from the whole process as human mind arises (according to the Naturalists) from human organisms. A Naturalist would not object to that sort of God. The reason is this. Such a God would not stand outside Nature or the total system, would not be existing ‘on his own’. It would still be ‘the whole show’ which was the basic Fact, and such a God would merely be one of the things (even if he were the most interesting) which the basic Fact contained. What Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it.

We are now in a position to state the difference between the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist despite the fact that they do not mean the same by the word Nature. The Naturalist believes that a great process, of ‘becoming’, exists ‘on its own’ in space and time, and that nothing else exists—we call particular things and events being only the parts into which we analyse the great process or the shapes which that process takes at given moments and given points in space. This single, total reality he calls Nature. The Supernaturalist believes that one Thing exists on its own and has produced the framework of space and time and the procession of systematically connected events which fill them. This framework, and this filling, he calls Nature. It may, or may not, be the only reality which the one Primary Thing has produced. There might be other systems in addition to the one we call Nature.

In that sense there might be several ‘Natures’. This conception must be kept quite distinct from what is commonly called ‘plurality of worlds’—i.e. different solar systems or different galaxies, ‘island universes’ existing in widely separated parts of a single space and time. These, however remote, would be parts of the same Nature as our own sun: it and they would be interlocked by being in relations to one another, spatial and temporal relations and casual relations as well. And it is just this reciprocal interlocking within a system which makes it what we call a Nature. Other Natures might not be spatio-temporal at all: or, if any of them were, their space and time would have no spatial or temporal relation to ours. It is just this discontinuity, this failure of interlocking, which would justify us in calling them different Natures. This does not mean that there would be absolutely no relation between them; they would be related by their common derivation from a single Supernatural source. They would, in this respect, be like different novels by a single author; the events in one story have no relation to the events in another except that they are invented by the same author. To find the relation between them you must go right back to the author’s mind: there is no cutting across from anything Mr Pickwick says in Pickwick Papers to anything Mrs Gamp hears in Martin Chuzzlewit. Similarly there would be no normal cutting across from an event in one Nature to an event in any other. By a ‘normal’ relation I mean one which occurs in virtue of the character of the two systems. We have to put in the qualification ‘normal’ because we do not know in advance that God might not bring two Natures into partial contact at some particular point: that is, He might allow selected events in the one to produce results in the other. There would thus be, at certain points, a partial interlocking; but this would not turn the two Natures into one, for the total reciprocity which makes a Nature would still be lacking, and the anomalous interlockings would arise not from what either system was in itself but from the Divine act which was bringing them together. If this occurred each of the two Natures would be ‘supernatural’ in relation to the other: but the fact of their contact would be supernatural in a more absolute sense—not as being beyond this or that Nature but beyond any and every Nature. It would be one kind of miracle. The other kind would be Divine ‘interference’ not by the bringing together of two Natures, but simply.

All this is, at present purely speculative. It by no means follows from Supernaturalism that Miracles of any sort do in fact occur. God (the primary thing) may never in fact interfere with the natural system He has created. If He has created more natural systems than one, He may never cause them to impinge on one another.

But that is a question for further consideration. If we decide that Nature is not the only thing there is, then we cannot say in advance whether she is safe from miracles or not. There are things outside her: we do not yet know whether they can get in. The gates may be barred, or they may not. But if Naturalism is true, then we do know in advance that miracles are impossible: nothing can come into Nature from the outside because there is nothing outside to come in, Nature being everything. No doubt, events which we in our ignorance should mistake for miracles might occur: but they would in reality be (just like the commonest events) an inevitable result of the character of the whole system.

Our first choice, therefore, must be between Naturalism and Supernaturalism.

3

THE CARDINAL DIFFICULTY OF NATURALISM

We cannot have it both ways, and no sneers at the limitations of logic…amend the dilemma.

I. A. RICHARDS,

Principles of Literary Criticism, chap. xxv.

If Naturalism is true, every finite thing or event must be (in principle) explicable in terms of the Total System. I say ‘explicable in principle’ because of course we are not going to demand that naturalists, at any given moment, should have found the detailed explanation of every phenomenon. Obviously many things will only be explained when the sciences have made further progress. But if Naturalism is to be accepted we have a right to demand that every single thing should be such that we see, in general, how it could be explained in terms of the Total System. If any one thing exists which is of such a kind that we see in advance the impossibility of ever giving it that kind of explanation, then Naturalism would be in ruins. If necessities of thought force us to allow to any one thing any degree of independence from the Total System—if any one thing makes good a claim to be on its own, to be something more than an expression of the character of Nature as a whole—then we have abandoned Naturalism. For by Naturalism we mean the doctrine that only Nature—the whole interlocked system—exists. And if that were true, every thing and event would, if we knew enough, be explicable without remainder (no heel-taps) as a necessary product of the system. The whole system being what it is, it ought to be a contradiction in terms if you were not reading this book at the moment; and, conversely, the only cause why you are reading it ought to be that the whole system, at such and such a place and hour, was bound to take that course.

One threat against strict Naturalism has recently been launched on which I myself will base no argument, but which it will be well to notice. The older scientists believed that the smallest particles of matter moved according to strict laws: in other words, that the movements of each particle were ‘interlocked’ with the total system of Nature. Some modern scientists seem to think—if I understand them—that this is not so.

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