204 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi 



But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is 

 produced but two sets of discrepant stones, 

 originating nobody knows how or when, among 

 persons who could believe as firmly in devils which 

 enter pigs, I confess, that my feeling is one of 

 astonishment that any one should expect a reason- 

 able man to take such testimony seriously. 



I am anxious to bring about a clear under- 

 standing of the difference between "impossi- 

 bilities " and " improbabilities," because mistakes 

 on this point lay us open to the attacks of 

 ecclesiastical apologists of the type of the late 

 Cardinal Newman ; acute sophists, who think it 

 fitting to employ their intellects, as burglars 

 employ dark lanterns ; for the discovery of other 

 people's weak places, while they carefully keep the 

 light away from their own position. 



When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of 

 " miracles " is, in my judgment, unassailable. We 

 are not justified in the a priori assertion that the 

 order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us, 

 cannot change. In arguing about the miraculous, 

 the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves 

 the whole point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an 

 assumption which takes us beyond the range of 

 our faculties. Obviously, no amount of past 

 experience can warrant us in anything more than 

 a correspondingly strong expectation for the 

 present and future. We find, practically, that 



