424 Credibility of Extraordinary Stories. [CHAP. xvn. 



sive range. How therefore can miraculous stories be simi 

 larly taken account of, when the disputants, on one side at 

 least, are not prepared to admit their actual occurrence any 

 where or at any time ? How can any arrangement of bags 

 and balls, or other mechanical or numerical illustrations of 

 unlikely events, be admitted as fairly illustrative of miracu 

 lous occurrences, or indeed of many of those which come 

 under the designation of very extraordinary or highly 

 improbable ? Those who contest the occurrence of a par 

 ticular miracle, as reported by this or that narrator, do not 

 admit that miracles are to be confidently expected sooner or 

 later. It is not a question as to whether what must happen 

 sometimes has happened some particular time, and therefore 

 no illustration of the kind can be regarded as apposite. 



How unsuitable these merely rare events, however ex 

 cessive their rarity may be, are as examples of miraculous 

 events, will be evident from a single consideration. No one, 

 I presume, who admitted the occasional occurrence of an ex 

 ceedingly unusual combination, would be in much doubt if 

 he considered that he had actually seen it himself 1 . On the 

 other hand, few men of any really scientific turn would 

 readily accept a miracle even if it appeared to happen under 

 their very eyes. They might be staggered at the time, but 



1 Laplace, for instance (Essai, ed. contains 77 figures, and is therefore 



1825, p. 149), says that if we saw utterly inappreciable by the imagi- 



100 dies (known of course to be fair nation. It must be admitted, though, 



ones) all give the same face, we that there is something hypothetical 



should be bewildered at the time, about such an example, for we could 



and need confirmation from others, not really know that the dies were 



but that, after due examination, no fair with a confidence even distantly 



one would feel obliged to postulate approaching such prodigious odds, 



hallucination in the matter. But In other words, it is difficult here to 



the chance of this occurrence is keep apart those different aspects of 



represented by a fraction whose the question discussed in Chap. xiv. 



numerator is 1, and denominator 28 33. 



