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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 semi-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 archaeological 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 
