The forces which are so strongly working against the acceptance of miracles are just those forces which are antagonistic to the primitive view of the world. If nature is a self-contained spatial system, the complete mechanism of change should be open to study. Even human wills must be connected with human bodies, and shown to act in accordance with psychological and physiological laws. In the place of such vague terms as _mana_, we have chemical and electrical properties, bacterial infection, hypnosis. Magic and miracle are closely connected; and the replacement of magic by { 126} science put miracles on the defensive. Nature became a realm of recurrent processes. The exceptional, alone, could be assigned to the old type of agency. Thus the contrast came out more clearly, as the religious view of the world found itself opposed to an orderly conception of natural process. Divine agency, on the one hand; uniform processes, on the other.
Etymologically, a miracle is something which awakens wonder because of its strangeness. In former days, all events out of the ordinary were naturally classed as miracles, that is, as events to be wondered at. There was, of course, a routine aspect to nature. People expected the sun to rise in the morning and pass unwaveringly over the sky; they looked for the return of the seasons and had festivals to celebrate them; they anticipated normal young from their animals. Thus the routine aspect of things was fairly conspicuous, and they guided themselves by reference to it. But, in those days, things were less settled than they are in our well-organized society. People were more nervous, as it were, more surrounded by rumor, more credulous. Both the psychological and the social situation favored tales of marvelous events. I cannot help feeling that the religious customs, the constant appeal to the gods for favors and portents, were both effects and causes of this sense for the miraculous which we find so widespread in the past. Sometimes monsters were born; sometimes the wind blew from one direction for an extraordinary length of time; sometimes the sun was darkened at midday. Stories were constantly afloat about wonderful cures imputed to gods or magicians. Credulity awoke at the least encouragement. Priests, prophets, magicians, kings, gods, all were regarded as { 127} the authors of cures. Only the common man was unable to do these wonderful things. The idea that the king's touch had wonderful curative power lingered on into the nineteenth century.