often done before, than that the
invariable course of nature should have undergone a variation? With
evidence on the one side that has never yet deceived, with no evidence
on the other save what has often proved deceptive, how can we hesitate
which to accept? Even though the unanimity of testimony be such as might
otherwise be deemed complete proof, it is here met by absolutely
complete proof in the shape of a law of nature. The greater probability
overwhelms the lesser. The stronger proof annihilates the weaker,
leaving none of it behind, so that whoever still persists in believing
that a law of nature has been violated, must be content to do so without
one particle of proof. No quantity of testimony can furnish the smallest
proof of a miracle unless the falsehood of the testimony would be a
greater departure from antecedent uniformity--in other words, would be a
greater miracle--than the miracle which it attests. Unfortunately it is
but too notorious that there is not, and never has been, such a thing as
uniform truthfulness of testimony to depart from.

Such, unless most unintentionally injured by compression, is Hume's
famous argument against miracles, of which the author was sufficiently
proud to boast openly that in it he had discovered what 'will be useful,
as long as the world endures,' as 'an everlasting check to all kinds of
superstitious delusion,' but which, as I nevertheless venture to repeat,
is compounded in about equal moieties of transparent sophism and
baseless assumption. For is it not the veriest juggle of words to insist
on the necessary inferiority of copies to an original, without adverting
to the indispensable proviso that the original with which the copies
are compared should be the original from which the copies have been
taken? May not a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' quite
possibly be equal in force and vividness of expression to the original
painting by Benjamin West bearing the same name? Might it not be wise to
trust rather to an Airy, or a De la Rue, or a Lockyer's account of what
he had observed during a solar eclipse than to your own immediate
observations on the same occasion? Besides, this first branch of Hume's
argument, if sound, would tell quite as much for, as against, miracles,
rendering it equally incumbent on actual witnesses to believe, as on all
but actual witnesses to disbelieve. If you are always to prefer your own
original experience to mere descriptions given b