228 AGNOSTICISM vn 



After what has been said, I do not think that 

 any sensible man, unless he happen to be angry, 

 will accuse me of " contradicting the Lord and His 

 Apostles" if I reiterate my total disbelief in the 

 whole Gadarene story. But, if that story is dis- 

 credited, all the other stories of demoniac posses- 

 sion fall under suspicion. And if the belief in 

 demons and demoniac possession, which forms the 

 sombre background of the whole picture of primi- 

 tive Christianity, presented to us in the New 

 Testament, is shaken, what is to be said, in any 

 case, of the uncorroborated testimony of the 

 Gospels with respect to " the unseen world " ? 



I am not aware that I have been influenced by 

 any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story 

 than I have been in dealing with other cases of 

 like kind the investigation of which has interested 

 me. I was brought up in the strictest school of 

 evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was old enough 

 to think for myself, I started upon my journey of 

 inquiry with little doubt about the general truth 

 of what I had been taught ; and with that feeling 



Goethe's aphorism : " Alles factische ist schon Theorie." Trust- 

 worthy witnesses are constantly deceived, or deceive themselves, 

 in their interpretation of sensible phenomena. No one can 

 prove that the sensible phenomena, in these cases, could be 

 caused only by the agency of spirits : and there is abundant 

 ground for believing that they may be produced in other ways. 

 Therefore, the utmost that can be reasonably asked for, on the 

 evidence as it stands, is suspension of judgment. And, on the 

 necessity for even that suspension, reasonable men may differ, 

 according to their views of probability. 



