182 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V 



anything like proper investigation of the reality 

 of alleged miracles was thrown to the winds. 



And if this was the condition of mind of such a 

 man as Eginhard, what is it not legitimate to 

 suppose may have been that of Deacon Deusdona, 

 Lunison, Hunus, and Company, thieves and cheats 

 by their own confession, or of the probably 

 hysterical nun, or of the professional beggars, for 

 whose incapacity to walk and straighten them- 

 selves there is no guarantee but their own ? Who 

 is to make sure that the exorcist of the demon 

 Wiggo was not just such another priest as Hunus ; 

 and is it not at least possible, when Eginhard's 

 servants dreamed, night after night, in such a 

 curiously coincident fashion, that a careful inquirer 

 might have found they were very anxious to 

 please their master? 



Quite apart from deliborate and conscious 

 fraud (which is a rarer thing than is often 

 supposed), people, whose mythopceic faculty is 

 once stirred, are capable of saying the thing that 

 is not, and of acting as they should not, to an 

 extent which is hardly imaginable by persons 

 who are not so easily affected by the contagion of 

 blind faith. There is no falsity so gross that 

 honest men and, still more, virtuous women, 

 anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend 

 themselves to it without any clear consciousness 

 of the moral bearings of what they are doing. 



The cases of miraculously-effected cures of 



