mpossible if supported by sufficient
evidence, only the evidence must be strong in proportion to the
strangeness of the circumstances. But I cannot see that the uniformity
of nature is any objection to the occurrence of miracles, for as a rule
a miracle is regarded not as an event without a cause, but as due to a
new cause, namely the intervention of a superhuman person. Many of the
best known miracles are such that one may imagine this person to effect
them by understanding and controlling some unknown natural force, just
as we control electricity. Only evidence is required to show that he can
do so. But on the other hand the weakness of every religion which
depends on miracles is that their truth is contested and not
unreasonably. If they are true, why are they not certain? Of all the
phenomena described as miracles, ghosts, fortune telling, magic,
clairvoyance, prophesying, and so on, none command unchallenged
acceptance. In every age miracles, portents and apparitions have been
recorded, yet none of them with a certainty that carries universal
conviction and in many ages contemporary scepticism was possible. Even
in Vedic times there were people who did not believe in the existence of
Indra[714].

It is clear that some miracles require more evidence than others and
many old stories are so fantastic that they may justly be put aside
because those who reported them did not see, as we can, what
difficulties they involve and hence felt no need for caution in belief.
Among ancient Indians or Hebrews tales of seven headed snakes or of
stopping the sun did not arouse the critical spirit, for the phenomena
did not seem much more extraordinary than centipedes or eclipses. Only
those who understand that such stories upset all we know of anatomy and
astronomy can realize their improbability and the weight of evidence
necessary to make them credible. The most important distinction in
miracles (I use the word as a popular description of extraordinary
events which is readily understood though hard to define) is whether
they are in any way subjective, that is to say that they depend in the
last resort on an impression produced in certain, but not all, human
minds or whether they are objective, that is to say that all witnesses
would have seen them like any other event. A man rising into the air
would be an objective miracle if it were admitted that this levitation
was as real as the flight of a bird, and very strong evidence would