Miracles a Question of Evidence 259 



"Strictly speakiug," Huxley wrote, "I am unaware of any- 

 thing that has a right to the title of an ' impossibility ' except 

 a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, 

 but none natural. A 'round square,' a 'present past,' 'two 

 parallel lines that intersect,' are impossibilities, because the 

 ideas denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, 

 are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, square, 

 past, parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into 

 wine, or procreation without male intervention, or raising the 

 dead, are plainly not impossibilities in this sense." 



The whole matter turns on the question of sufficient 

 evidence. 



"Hume's arguments resolve themselves into a simple state- 

 ment of the dictates of common sense which may be expressed 

 in this canon : the more a statement of fact conflicts with 

 previous experience, the more complete must be the evidence 

 which is to justify us in believing it." 



Again, expressing the same idea in different words, 

 he wrote : 



" Nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must 

 be ; all that the widest experience (even if it extended over all 

 past time and through all space) that events had happened in 

 a certain way could justify, would be a proportionately strong 

 expectation that events will go on so happening, and the 

 demand for a proportional strength of evidence in favour of 

 any assertion that they had happened otherwise. It is this 

 weighty consideration, the truth of which everyone who is 

 capable of logical thought must surely admit, which knocks 

 the bottom out of all a priori objections either to ordinary 

 ' miracles ' or to the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter 

 implies the miraculous intervention of a higher power. No 

 one is entitled to say, a priori, that prayer for some change in 

 the ordinary course of nature cannot possibly avail." 



It was a question of evidence, and not only did the 

 evidence not convince Huxley, but the thaumaturgic 



