VII ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES 157 



order of nature, is intelligible, can be distinctly 

 conceived, implies no contradiction; and there- 

 fore, according to Hume's own showing, cannot 

 be proved false by any demonstrative argument. 



Nevertheless, in diametrical contradiction to 

 his own principles, Hume says elsewhere : 



"It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life: 

 because that has never been observed in any age or country." 

 (IV. p. 134.) 



That is to say, there is an uniform experience 

 against such an event, and therefore, if it occurs, 

 it is a violation of the laws of nature. Or, to put 

 the argument in its naked absurdity, that which 

 never has happened never can happen, without a 

 violation of the laws of nature. In truth, if a 

 dead man did come to life, the fact would be 

 evidence, not that any law of nature had been 

 violated, but that those laws, even when they ex- 

 press the results of a very long and uniform 

 experience, are necessarily based on incomplete 

 knowledge, and are to be held only as grounds of 

 more or less justifiable expectation. 



To sum up, the definition of a miracle as a 

 suspension or a contravention of the order of 

 Nature is self-contradictory, because all we know 

 of the order of nature is derived from our ob- 

 servation of the course of events of which the 

 so-called miracle is a part. On the other hand, 

 no conceivable event, however extraordinary, is 

 impossible ; and therefore, if by the term miracles 



