I said
all that I undertook to say concerning Divine law.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] From the _Tr. Th.-P._, ch. v, same title.

[9] The Jews were not, of course, alone in holding this point of view.
Dante consigned the ancient philosophers--including Aristotle--and even
Vergil to Limbo, agreeing thus in doctrine with Maimonides and R.
Joseph, the son of Shem Job.--ED.

CHAPTER VII

OF MIRACLES[10]

As men are accustomed to call Divine the knowledge which transcends
human understanding, so also do they style Divine, or the work of God,
anything of which the cause is not generally known: for the masses think
that the power and providence of God are most clearly displayed by
events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception they have
formed of Nature, especially if such events bring them any profit or
convenience: they think that the clearest possible proof of God's
existence is afforded when Nature, as they suppose, breaks her
accustomed order, and consequently they believe that those who explain
or endeavor to understand phenomena or miracles through their natural
causes are doing away with God and His providence. They suppose,
forsooth, that God is inactive so long as Nature works in her accustomed
order, and _vice versa_, that the power of Nature and natural causes are
idle so long as God is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one
from the other, the power of God and the power of Nature, though the
latter is in a sense determined by God, or (as most people believe now)
created by Him. What they mean by either, and what they understand by
God and Nature they do not know, except that they imagine the power of
God to be like that of some royal potentate, and Nature's power to
consist in force and energy.

The masses then style unusual phenomena "miracles," and partly from
piety, partly for the sake of opposing the students of science, prefer
to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and only to hear of those
things which they know least, and consequently admire most. In fact, the
common people can only adore God, and refer all things to His power by
removing natural causes, and conceiving things happening out of their
due course, and only admires the power of God when the power of Nature
is conceived of as in subjection to it.

This idea seems to have taken its rise among the early Jews who saw the
Gentiles round them worshiping visible gods, such as the sun, the moon,
the earth, water, air,