But further: even if we assume that any natural forces have been suspended in the performance of a miracle, we are not called on to assume their general suspension, but only in favour of the particular case in question. This observation is rendered necessary because it has been frequently urged against the possibility of miracles that their performance must have thrown the whole mechanism of the universe into confusion, and involved an extensive reconstruction of the processes of nature. This would unquestionably be the case if the working of a miracle involved the difficulty in question. But I have shown that it need not involve even the suspension of any natural law whatever, and if such suspension took place in any particular case, the force might have been acting with full energy everywhere else. The counteraction or modification of one force by the agency of another is an event which we witness every day. The force of gravity is in the fullest operation whenever we lift a weight from the ground—it is not suspended for a single moment. The ability to modify the results of the action of one force by the agency of another, or to combine many forces so as to produce a definite result, constitutes the essence of all mechanical contrivance. The self‐determining power of the human will is that which calls all these particular modifications of existing forces into activity. By means of it, the entire aspect of external nature has been changed from the appearance which it would have presented, if no other agency had existed besides the forces of nature which belong to matter. Man has been a power manifested in the midst of them. I am quite aware that he can create no new force, and that he can only control or modify the action of those which exist, but is never capable of suspending them. Yet this power has produced marvellous results on the external world, so that it presents a wholly different aspect from that which it would have done if the forces of nature had simply continued acting uncontrolled by the influence of mind. Even in material nature itself, we meet with repeated instances of such modifications of the results of one force by the action of another, as for example when the force of gravitation is counteracted by that of magnetism, or of capillary attraction. The action of no force is suspended, it is only modified.