1891 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 189 



possible. Some of the old mythologies recognised this^ 

 clearly enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there 

 lay the unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one day or 

 other, would crumple up them and the world they ruled 

 to give place to a new order of things. 



I sincerely hope that I shall not be accused of 

 Pyrrhonism, or of any desire to weaken the foundations 

 of rational certainty. I have merely desired to point 

 out that rational certainty is one thing, and talk about 

 "impossibilities," or "violation of natural laws," another. 

 Eational certainty rests upon two groimds ; the one that 

 the evidence in favour of a given statement is as good as 

 it can be ; the other, that such evidence is plainly in- 

 sufficient. In the former case, the statement is to be 

 taken as true, in the latter as untrue ; until something 

 arises to modify the verdict, which, however properly 

 reached, may always be more or less wrong, the best 

 information being never complete, and the best reasoning 

 being liable to fallacy. 



To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in 

 intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to 

 object to live one's life, with due thought for the morrow, 

 because no man can be sure he will be alive an hour 

 hence. Such are the conditions imposed upon us by 

 nature, and we have to make the best of them. And I 

 think that the greatest mistake those of us who are 

 interested in the 2)rogress of free thought can make is to 

 overlook these limitations, and to deck ourselves with the 

 dogmatic feathers which are the traditional adornment of 

 our opponents. Let us be content with rational certainty, 

 leaving irrational certainties to those who like to muddle 

 their minds with them. 



As for the difficulty of believing miracles in them- 

 selves, he gives in this paper several examples of a 

 favoui'ite saying of his, that Science offers us much 



