68 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be no great result 

 for miracles to be accepted by the ignorant and superstitious, 

 " because it is easy to satisfy those who do not inquire." 

 But he does consider it " a great result " that they have 

 been accepted by the educated. In what sense educated ? 

 Like those statesmen, jurists, and church dignitaries whose 

 education was unable to save them from the frightful errors 

 glanced at above? Not even in this sense; for the great 

 mass of Mr. Mozley's educated people had no legal training, 

 and must have been absolutely defenceless against delusions 

 which could set even that training at naught. Like nine- 

 tenths of our clergy at the present day, they were versed in 

 the literature of Greece, Borne, and Judea ; but as regards 

 a knowledge of Nature, which is here the one thing needful, 

 they were " noble savages," and nothing more. In the 

 case of miracles, then, it behooves us to understand the 

 weight of the negative, before we assign a value to the 

 positive ; to comprehend the protest of Nature before we 

 attempt to measure, with it, the assertions of men. We 

 have only to open our eyes to see what honest, and even 

 intellectual, men and women are capable of in the way of 

 evidence in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, 

 and in latitude fifty-two degrees north. The experience 

 thus gained ought, I imagine, to influence our opinion 

 regarding the testimony of people inhabiting a sunnier 

 clime, with a richer imagination, and without a particle of 

 that restraint which the discoveries of physical science have 

 imposed upon mankind. 



witchcraft was unquestionable ; ' for first, the Scriptures had affirmed so 

 much ; and secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against 

 such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime.' 

 Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician as well as a great writer, 

 was called as a witness, and swore ' that he was clearly of opinion that 

 the persons were bewitched.' " Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. i. 

 p. 120. 



