notion in which they had been brought up, and of their ease,
safety, and reputation; and that by these beginnings a change was
produced in the world, the effects of which remain to this day: a case,
both in its circumstances and consequences, very unlike anything we find
in Tacitus's relation.

II. The story taken from the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, which is the
second example alleged by Mr. Hume, is this: "In the church of Saragossa
in Spain, the canons showed me a man whose business it was to light the
lamps; telling me, that he had been several years at the gate with one
leg only. I saw him with two." (Liv. iv. A.D. 1654.)

It is stated by Mr. Hume, that the cardinal who relates this story did
not believe it; and it nowhere appears that he either examined the limb,
or asked the patient, or indeed any one, a single question about the
matter. An artificial leg, wrought with art, would be sufficient, in a
place where no such contrivance had ever before been heard of, to give
origin and currency to the report. The ecclesiastics of the place would,
it is probable, favour the story, inasmuch as it advanced the honour of
their image and church. And if they patronized it, no other person at
Saragossa, in the middle of the last century, would care to dispute it.
The story likewise coincided not less with the wishes and preconceptions
of the people than with the interests of their ecclesiastical rulers: so
that there was prejudice backed by authority, and both operating upon
extreme ignorance, to account for the success of the imposture. If, as I
have suggested, the contrivance of an artificial limb was then new, it
would not occur to the cardinal himself to suspect it; especially under
the carelessness of mind with which he heard the tale, and the little
inclination he felt to scrutinize or expose its fallacy.

III. The miracles related to have been wrought at the tomb of the abbe
Paris admit in general of this solution. The patients who frequented the
tomb were so affected by their devotion, their expectation, the place,
the solemnity, and, above all, by the sympathy of the surrounding
multitude, that many of them were thrown into violent convulsions, which
convulsions, in certain instances, produced a removal of disorder,
depending upon obstruction. We shall, at this day, have the less
difficulty in admitting the above account, because it is the very same
thing as hath lately been experienced in the operations of animal