XVI PREFACE 



to say ; but to beg them to go their own way and 

 leave me to mine. 



I think it may be as well to repeat what I have 

 said, over and over again, elsewhere, that a priori 

 notions, about the possibility, or the impossibility, 

 of the existence of a world of spirits, such as that 

 presupposed by genuine Christianity, have no 

 influence on my mind. The question for me is 

 purely one of evidence : is the evidence adequate 

 to bear out the theory, or is it not ? In my 

 judgment it is not only inadequate, but quite 

 absurdly insufficient. And on that ground, I 

 should feel compelled to reject the theory; even 

 if there were no positive grounds for adopting a 

 totally different conception of the Cosmos. 



For most people, the question of the evidence 

 of the existence of a demonic world, in the long 

 run, resolves itself into that of the trustworthiness 

 of the Gospels; first, as to the objective truth 

 of that which they narrate on this topic ; second, 

 as to the accuracy of the interpretation which 

 their authors put upon these objective facts. For 

 example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it 

 is one question whether, at a certain time and 

 place, a raving madman became sane, and a herd 

 of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias ; and 

 quite another, whether the cause of these occur- 

 rences was the transmigration of certain devils 

 from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one 

 question whether Jesus made a long oration on a 



