the landlord.
Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy
agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with
evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost.
If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human
testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can
only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about
the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story
is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle
of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism--
the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right
to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we
Christians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists
who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.
But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking
impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times,
I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument
against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say,
"Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest
certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious";
if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only
ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a
peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous."
If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is--that they see ghosts.
Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it;
and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.
It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the
unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself
generally forgets to use it.

He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories
a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short,
that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it.
It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are
inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless
to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith.
If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a
most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge.
Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk;
still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards,
it would b