the island discoverer of the process of "carrying." Certain ancient Prophets had discovered a means—not of communicating with the Unseen (for every man, and woman, and child, and beast does that, until his faculties have been trampled out by the process called nowadays "Education"), but— of making communication with the Unseen safe, by applying a mechanical test to ascertain exactly what is being communicated; to distinguish, that is to say, the Inspiration of Truth from the suggestions of the diseased brain. The difference between old Scriptural and merely poetic inspiration consists precisely in the fact that the inspired men of Palestine possessed such a test. The difference between Prophecy and pseudo-prophecy in old times, consisted in applying the test with utter fidelity, in allowing it to act with mechanical accuracy. Babbage, Gratry, and Boole revived that test. They published their books. Then, finding themselves confronted with dishonest folly, they left the world to come to its senses at its leisure.
CHAPTER VI
BABBAGE ON MIRACLE
"If the children of men are silent, iron and stone shall cry out Hosannah."
Charles Babbage is chiefly known to the world as the inventor of a machine intended to spare the labour of calculating numerical series. In the course of its construction, he had to make a thorough study of the Laws of natural sequence, so far as these are embodied in processes of successive additions. But the man who would think of undertaking such a task at all was sure to see the importance of saturating himself with a
