GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF. 379 



laws of number and oxtcnsidji, to which we may add the law of causa- 

 tion itself, are probably the only ones, an exception to which is abso- 

 lutely and for ever incredible. Accordingly, it is to assertions supposed 

 to be contradictory to these laws, or to some others coming near to 

 them in generality, that tlie word impossibility (at least absolute impos- 

 sibility) seems to l>e generally confined. Violations of other laws, of 

 special laws of causation for instance, are said, by persons studious of 

 accuracy in expression, to be impossible in the circumstances of the 

 case ; or impossible unless some cause had existed which did not exist 

 in the particular case. Of no assertion, not in contratKction to some 

 of these very general laws, will more than improbability be asserted 

 by aTiy cautious person ; and improbability not of the very highest 

 degree, unless the time and place in which the fact is said to have 

 occurred, render it almost certain that the anomaly, if real, could not 

 have been overlooked by other observers. Suspension of judgment is 

 in all other cases the resource of the judicious inquirer ; provided the 

 testimony in favor of the anomaly presents, when well sifted, no sus- 

 picious circumstances. 



But the testimony is scarcely ever found to stand that test, in cases 

 in which the anomaly is not real. In the instances upon record in 

 which a great number of witnesses, of good reputation and scientific 

 acquirements, have testified to the truth of something which has turned 

 out untrue, there have almost always been circumstances which, to a 

 keen observer who had taken due pains to sift the matter, would have 

 rendered the testimony untrustworthy. There have generally been 

 means of accounting for the impression upon the senses or minds of 

 the alleged percipients by fallacious appearances ; or some epidemic 

 delusion, propagated by the contagious influence of popular feeling, 

 has been concerned in the case ; or some strong interest has^ been 

 implicated — religious zeal, party feeling, vanity, or at least the passion 

 for the marvelous, in persons strongly susceptible of it. When none 

 of these or similar circumstances exist to account for the apparent 

 strength of the testimony : and where the assertion is not in contra- 

 diction either to those universal laws which know no counteraction or 

 anomaly, or to the generalizations next in comprehensiveness to them, 

 but would only amount, if admitted, to the existence of an unknown 

 cause or an anomalous Kind, in ciroimstances not so thoroughly 

 explored but that it is credible that things hitherto unknown may still 

 come to light; a cautious person will neither admit nor reject the; testi- 

 mony, but will wait for confirmation at other times and from otlier 

 unconnected sources. Such ought to have been the conduct of the 

 Kin"' of Siam when the Dutch travt^llers affirmed to him the existence 

 of ice. But an ignorant person is as obstinate in his contcnnptnous 

 incredulity as he is unreasonably credulous. Anything unlike liis own 

 narrow experience he disbelieves, if it flatter}? no propensity ;, any 

 nursery tale is swallowed implicitly by him if it does. 



§ 4. Before concluding this incjuiry, we must advert to a very serious 

 misapprehension of the principh^s of the subject, which has been com- 

 mitted by some of the writers against Hume's Essay on Miracles, in 

 their anxiety to destroy what appeared to them a formidable weapon 

 of assault against the Christian religion ; and to which, with etifirely 

 different views on the religious question, Laplaee, in his Essay on 



