196 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES VI 



" Miracles," I had quoted, with entire assent, the 

 following passage from his writings : " Whatever is 

 intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies 

 no contradiction, and can never be proved false by 

 any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning 

 a priori" 1 



Now, it is certain that the existence of demons 

 can be distinctly conceived. In fact, from the 

 earliest times of which we have any record to the 

 present day, the great majority of mankind have 

 had extremely distinct conceptions of them, and 

 their practical life has been more or less shaped 

 by those conceptions. Further, the notion of the 

 existence of such beings " implies no contradiction/' 

 No doubt, in our experience, intelligence and 

 volition are always found in connection with a 

 certain material organisation, and never discon- 

 nected with it ; while, by the hypothesis, demons 

 have no such material substratum. But then, as 

 everybody knows, the exact relation between 

 mental and physical phenomena, even in ourselves, 

 is the subject of endless dispute. We may all 

 have our opinions as to whether mental pheno- 

 mena have a substratum distinct from that which 

 is assumed to underlie material phenomena, or not ; 

 though if any one thinks he has demonstrative 

 evidence of either the existence or the non-exist- 

 ence of a " soul/' all I can say is, his notion of 



1 Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, p. 5 ; 1748 

 The passage is cited and discussed in my Hume, pp. 132, 133. 



