I PROLOGUE 37 



is altogether worthless. We have simply three, 

 partially discrepant, versions of a story, about the 

 primitive form, the origin, and the authority for 

 which we know absolutely nothing. But the 

 evidence in favour of the Gadarene miracle is as 

 good as that for any other. 



Elsewhere, I have pointed out that it is utterly 

 beside the mark to declaim against these conclu- 

 sions on the ground of their asserted tendency 

 to deprive mankind of the consolations of the 

 Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations 

 of morality ; still less to brand them with the 

 question-begging vituperative appellation of 

 " infidelity." The point is not whether they 

 are wicked ; but, whether, from the point of view 

 of scientific method, they are irrefragably true. 

 If they are, they will be accepted in time, whether 

 they are wicked, or not wicked. Nature, so far as 

 we have been able to attain to any insight into 

 her ways, recks little about consolation and makes 

 for righteousness by very round-about paths. 

 And, at any rate, whatever may be possible for 

 other people, it is becoming less and less possible 

 for the man who puts his faith in scientific 

 methods of ascertaining truth, and is accustomed 

 to have that faith justified by daily experience, to 

 be consciously false to his principle in any matter. 

 But the number of such men, driven into the use 

 of scientific methods of inquiry and taught to 

 trust them, by their education, their daily pro- 



