256 ^ Thomas Hcnr)- Huxley 



has cried "Wolf! " so readily, so honestly, and on so 

 many occasions that the cr}^ has ceased to carry 

 conviction with it. Every religion has its series of 

 miraculous events ; everj'- savage tribe and every un- 

 educated race has its miracle-workers implicitly ac- 

 cepted. In mediaeval and modern Europe up to our 

 own times, miracles have been so constantly recorded 

 on testimon}' of such undoubted integrity that we must 

 either believe that miracles can be performed by num- 

 berless persons with no other claim to special regard, 

 or that it is singularly easy to get false but honest evid- 

 ence regarding them. Huxley supported the latter 

 alternative strongly, and held the view that to believe 

 in any particular miracles would require evidence very 

 much more direct and very much stronger than would 

 be necessary in the case of inherently probable events. 

 The second a priori objection to the credibility of 

 miracles has been urged more strongly, but was not 

 accepted by Huxle5^ It is that miracles are inherently 

 incredible inasmuch as they are ' ' violations of the or- 

 der of nature." Hume, attacking miracles, had made 

 this objection the chief ground of his argument. 

 Huxley paid a logical respect, at least as great, to the 

 contiuuit}^ of nature. 



"When the experience of generation after generation is re- 

 corded, and a single book tells us more than Methuselah 

 could have learned, had he spent every waking hour of his 

 thousand years in learning ; when apparent disorders are found 

 to be only the recurrent pulses of a slow-working order, and 

 the wonder of a year becomes the commonplace of a centurj- ; 

 when repeated and minute examination never reveals a break 

 in the chain of causes and effects ; and the whole edifice of 

 practical life is built upon our faith in its continuity ; the 

 belief that that chain has never been broken and will never 

 be broken, becomes one of the strougest and most justifiable 



