HUME. 201 



In like manner, every one is ready to admit the 

 solidity of the distinction which he takes between 

 the impressions of memory and those of imagination. 

 But this won't satisfy him ; he will have all belief to con- 

 sist merely in this difference, and that we only believe or 

 disbelieve any thing or any event according as our 

 minds have a more or less vivid idea of it from 

 memory, or from sensation, than from imagination. In 

 like manner, while no objection could be taken to his 

 holding that a miracle is, prima facie, to be regarded 

 incredible, because it is much more likely, and much 

 more according to the laws of nature, that human tes- 

 timony should deceive us, even that men's senses should 

 delude them, than that those laws should be sud- 

 denly and violently suspended, yet he will not be 

 satisfied unless we go a great step farther, and admit 

 not merely the improbability but the impossibility of 

 miracles, as if the weight of testimony never could 

 be so accumulated as to make it more unlikely, more a 

 miracle, that it should be false, than that the alleged 

 deviation from the laws of nature should have taken 

 place.* Indeed, had he lived to see the late discoveries in 

 Fossil Ostelogy, he would have been placed in a complete 

 dilemma ; for these plainly show, that at one remote 

 period in the history of the globe there was such an in- 

 terposition of creative power as could alone form man 

 and other animals not previously existing ; and thus he 

 must either have distrusted the evidence of thousands 



* In the first part of the ' Essay ' this qualification is introduced, 

 but the second part roundly asserts the absolute impossibility, on 

 the ground of the laws of nature being broken. 



