turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the
fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to
horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer
that it is _magic_. It is not a "law," for we do not understand its
general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it
happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always
happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that
we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet
on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a
poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of
account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility,
but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception. All the terms
used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and
so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis
which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as
describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm,"
"spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and
its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a _magic_ tree. Water runs
downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is
bewitched.

I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have
some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is
simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words
my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from
another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying
eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who
is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a
sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he
is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen