SCIENCE AND DEMONSTRATION 255 



hypotheses, with which the writer colours his presentation of the 

 facts : these are liable to be distorted in the presentation par 

 ticularly in &quot; books which treat of comparative mythology, com 

 parative religion, the origin of social institutions, and such 

 matters, in which documents are scarce and obscure, or written 

 in a language ill-understood, while inferences are often more 

 marked by ingenuity than conclusiveness &quot; l . Finally, to mention 

 one other point out of many, (e) we must be influenced by the 

 nature of the facts narrated, in determining whether the writer or 

 witness may not have been deceived : strange, unusual, unexpected, 

 wonderful (alleged) events, will naturally require to have been 

 submitted to closer and more careful scrutiny than ordinary facts, 

 before they can reasonably claim our assent. Here, the character, 

 education, and beliefs of the witnesses, the age and circumstances 

 in which they lived, the object with which they wrote, the amount 

 of imaginative embellishment with which it was understood in 

 their time that narratives of events might be clothed, their general 

 conception of what constituted &quot; history,&quot; are all considerations 

 of paramount importance. They are called for chiefly, of course, 

 in the domain of religious history, and are concerned mainly 

 with the miraculous. 



That miracles are possible, this is not the place to prove. We have rather 

 merely to point out that it is a flagrant -violation of logical method to dismiss 

 all narratives of the miraculous from human history as untrue and incredible 

 on the ground that &quot; miracles are impossible,&quot; as long as the latter contention 

 remains unproven. To assert a priori, as something self-evident, that &quot; miracles 

 are impossible,&quot; is an excellent example of the fallacy known as undue as 

 sumption of axioms (275, A, c). There has prevailed for the past few centuries 

 a rather superficial rationalism which cannot, or will not, see that its gratuitous 

 rejection of the miraculous involves it in this fallacy. Granting that miracles 

 are possible, the reality of any individual alleged miraculous fact must stand or 

 fall with the evidence adduced for or against it. Modern research in the domain 

 of historical criticism has established many invaluable canons for the better ap 

 preciation and understanding of miracle-narratives in ancient and mediaeval 

 religious literature : canons which enable us to appraise more accurately the 

 historical worth of what is contained in such documents, and to understand 

 better their scope and import. It is all-important, for instance, to realize that 

 exact fidelity to objective fact, exclusive of all apologetic purpose, and rigorous 

 verification of sources, in the writing of history or biography, are comparatively 

 modern requirements, which were not demanded in ancient times, or in the 

 Middle Ages, and need not, therefore, be expected in the writings that have 

 come down to us from those periods. 2 



Next, in regard to the truthfulness of our authorities, we 

 1 RICKABY, op. cit., p. 382. *ibid. t pp. 383-5. 



