158 HUME vii 



conceived, implies no contradiction; and there- 

 fore, according to Hume's own showing, cannot 

 be proved false by any demonstrative argument. 



Nevertheless, in diametrical contradiction to 

 his own principles, Hume says elsewhere: 



" It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life : 

 because that has never been observed in any age or coun- 

 try." (IV. p. 134.) 



That is to say, there is an uniform experience 

 against such an event, and therefore, if it occurs, 

 it is a violation of the laws of nature. Or, to put 

 the argument in its naked absurdity, that which 

 never has happened never can happen, without a 

 violation of the laws of nature. In truth, if a 

 dead man did come to life, the fact would be 

 evidence, not that any law of nature had been 

 violated, but that those laws, even when they ex- 

 press the results of a very long and uniform 

 experience, are necessarily based on incomplete 

 knowledge, and are to be held only as grounds of 

 more or less justifiable expectation. 



I To sum up, the definition of a miracle as a 

 suspension or a contravention of the order of Na- 

 ture is self-contradictory, because all we know 

 of the order of nature is derived from our ob- 

 servation of the course of events of which the 

 so-called miracle is a part.} On the other hand, 

 no conceivable event, however extraordinary, is 

 impossible; and, therefore, if by the term miracles 

 we mean only " extremely wonderful events," there 



