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no single case that has come under the observation of natural- 
ists they fail, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion that the 
proposition is universally true, and we should predicate with 
confidence if a new race of animals were discovered in some 
hitherto unknown region, that if they are ruminants they are 
also cloven-footed. The underlying ground of belief in this 
case is our innate conviction of the prevalence of uniformity 
in Nature in things of the same kind. This uniformity we call 
a Law. 
One test of the probability of a fact is its consistency with 
other facts previously known or admitted to be true — such as 
the constitution of human nature, the ordinary course of. events, 
or some well-established truth. But it must be borne in mind, 
as Laplace has said, although perhaps in a different sense, that 
“ Probability has reference partly to our ignorance, partly to 
our knowledge.” We must be tolerably sure we do know the 
other facts — and that they are not really inconsistent with the 
fact in dispute. Otherwise we shall be following the example 
of the King of Siam, who rejected as incredible the statement 
of the Dutch ambassador, that water could become a solid 
mass. This was simply because he had never seen or heard of 
it before; and it was contrary to his limited experience, or 
what he thought a law of nature. Hume felt the difficulty of 
this instance in the way of his argument against miracles, and 
attempts to get over it by saying that though the fact was not 
contrary to the king’s experience, it was not conformable to it. 
But this is not a fair way of putting it. Frost was contrary 
to the king’s experience as much as walking on the water 
without support is contrary to ours. And it cannot be 
denied that when by universal experience certain laws of nature 
are know n to exist, it requires the strongest possible evidence to 
make us believe in any deviation from them. Hume’s famous 
argument against miracles is, that no testimony is sufficient to 
establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind 
that its falsehood w T ould be more miraculous than the fact, and 
that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a 
miracle, because it is always more likely that the testimony 
should be false than that the miracle should be true. 
The late John Stuart Mill has dealt with this argument 
in his Logic, and, I think, conclusively. He says that Hume’s 
celebrated doctrine, that nothing is credible which is contrary 
to experience, or at variance with the laws ot nature, is merely 
the very plain and harmless proposition that whatever is con- 
trary to a complete induction is incredible. And he goes on to 
show that any alleged fact is only contradictory to a law of 
causation when it is said to happen without an adequate coun- 
