Quite possibly the effort on both sides of the veil, in consequence of so many premature deaths, may bring about a closer communion between the two sides than has ever been known hitherto. A great lift-up of earthly thought would be the result, a perhaps final emergence from the chrysalis stage of materialism; and we shall then be near the time when, as the inspired Milton makes his Raphael say: "Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend Ethereal, as we, or may, at choice, Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell." DO MIRACLES HAPPEN? 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.)