*H. i.] THE QUESTION RESTATED. 379 



or the physical intervention of the Devil in human affairs, is 

 now laughed at; yet two centuries have hardly elapsed since 

 it was held by learned and sensible men, as an essential part 

 of Christianity. It was supported by an immense amount 

 of testimony, which no one has ever refuted in detail. No 

 one, for example, has ever disproved witchcraft, as Young 

 disproved the corpuscular theory of light. But the belief 

 has died out because scientific cultivation has rendered the 

 mental soil unfit for it. The contemporaries of Bodin were 

 so thoroughly predisposed by their general theory of things 

 to believe in the continual intervention of the Devil, that it 

 needed but the slightest evidence to make them credit any 

 particular act of intervention. But to the educated man of 

 to-day such intervention seems too improbable to be admitted 

 on any amount of testimony. The hypothesis of diabolic in 

 terference is simply ruled out ; arid will remain ruled out. So 

 with what is called &quot; spiritualism,&quot; or the belief in the physical 

 intervention of the souls of the dead in human affairs. Men 

 of science decline to waste their time in arguing against it, 

 because they know that the only way in which to destroy it 

 is to educate people in science. &quot; Spiritualism &quot; is simply 

 one of the weeds which spring up in minds uncultivated by 

 science. There is little use in merely pulling up one form 

 of the superstition by the roots, for another form, equally 

 noxious, is sure to take root : the only way of ensuring the 

 destruction of the pests is to sow the seeds of scientific truth. 

 When, therefore, we are gravely told what persons of un 

 doubted veracity have seen, we are affected about as much as 

 if a friend should come in and assure us, upon his honour as 

 a gentleman, that heat is not a mode of motion. The case is 

 the same with the belief in miracles, or the physical inter 

 vention of the Deity in human affairs. To the theologian 

 such intervention is a priori so probable that he needs but 

 slight historic testimony to make him believe in it. To the 

 scientific thinker it is a priori so improbable that no amount 



