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cailnot pass beyond the regions of the probable ; and however* 

 high their probability, they must be carefully distinguished from 

 ascertained facts. 



There is no employment more easy and delightful than, when 

 facts are wanting, to supply their place by the aid of the imagina- 

 tion. The labour of doing so does not require us to move out of 

 our easy-chairs. When facts are wanting to sustain theories, all 

 may be made easy by boldly inventing them. Hence the attrac- 

 tiveness to many minds of the mythical and serai-mythical periods 

 of history, and of fable and fiction generally. Their interpreta- 

 tion gives a boundless scope to the imagination. Mr. Cox, in 

 his work on the Aryan mythology, has carried this principle to 

 a point beyond which it is impossible to advance. I have 

 little doubt that, with the aid of the machinery employed by 

 him, — viz., the effects of the solar orb, the scenery of our globe, 

 light and darkness, the alternations of cloud in every form, 

 &c. — that it is possible to resolve every fiction, — nay, every 

 event in life, — into a solar myth, provided one is gifted with a 

 fair share of imaginative power. Similar is the mode in which 

 whole schools of mystics have in all ages handled the Bible, and 

 made it say everything or nothing at their pleasure. Are such 

 plays of the imagination entitled to rank as rational con- 

 victions? When two facts are separated from each other, 

 the connecting links of which have passed away, there are 

 many conceivable theories by which they may be united ; and a 

 powerful imagination, unrestrained by reason, can see analogies 

 in everything. Minds of this order require to have it constantly 

 reiterated to them, that to prove a theory possible is not to 

 prove it probable; and to prove a theory probable does not 

 convert it into a fact. 



The tendency of many gifted minds in the present day to 

 erect a magnificent historical theory on a very few uncertain 

 facts is very remarkable. Formerly it was too much the habit 

 of theologians to compose histories out of a few uncertain tradi- 

 tions. Grave philosophers and historians seem ready to adopt 

 the practice which theologians are now disposed to abandon. 

 To a certain order of mind the act of groping in the darkness of 

 the past has the same charm which climbing to the most dan- 

 gerous heights of the Alps has to others. Probably, one day 

 the history of the human race for the last fifty millions of years 

 will be reconstructed by the aid of a few archseological remains ; 

 and the gradual steps by which man has emerged from an 

 inarticulate animal into an articulate one will be clearly pointed 

 out. I heartily commend every effort to extract out of the 

 memorials of the past every particle of truth which they will 

 yield by any legitimate exercise of reason ; but facts which 



