226 AGNOSTICISM 



VII 



story without, as he said, "giving it a new hat 

 and stick." Most of us differ from Sir Walter 

 only in not knowing about this tendency of the 

 mythopoeic faculty to break out unnoticed. But 

 it is also perfectly true that the mythopoeic faculty 

 is not equally active in all minds, nor in all 

 regions and under all conditions of the same mind. 

 David Hume was certainly not so liable to 

 temptation as the Venerable Bede, or even as 

 some recent historians who could be mentioned ; 

 and the most imaginative of debtors, if he owes 

 five pounds, never makes an obligation to pay a 

 hundred out of it. The rule of common sense is 

 primd facie to trust a witness in all matters, in 

 which neither his self-interest, his passions, his 

 prejudices, nor that love of the marvellous, which 

 is inherent to a greater or less degree in all man- 

 kind, are strongly concerned ; and, when they are 

 involved, to require corroborative evidence in exact 

 proportion to the contravention of probability by 

 the thing testified. 



Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I 

 am unreasonably sceptical, if I say that the 

 existence of demons who can be transferred from 

 a man to a pig, does thus contravene probability. 

 Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no 

 a priori objection to offer. There are physical 

 things, such as tcenice and trichince, which can be 

 transferred from men to pigs, and vice versd, and 

 which do undoubtedly produce most diabolical 



