up his mind, on our sublime principle as to the
impossibility of miracles, when any thing which has that appearance
crosses his path; he is prepared to deny his senses and to trust
to testimony,--to that general experience of others which comes to
him, and can come to him, only in that shape. It is we, therefore,
and not our adversaries, who are liable to be reached by this
unlucky illustration."

Fellowes himself seemed much amused by finding the tables thus
turned. For my part, I had difficulty in repressing a chuckle over
this display of sceptical candor and subtilty.

"There is perhaps another paradox which may be as well mentioned,"
resumed Harrington. "It is a little trying to my scepticism, but
perhaps will not be to your faith. I mean this. We are constrained
to believe from our 'uniform-experience' criterion that no miracle
has ever occurred, or ever will; in short, it is, as we say,
impossible. Now the principle which undoubtedly leads us to the
conclusion we may regard as a principle of our nature, if ever there
was one; that is, we are so constituted as to infer the perpetual
uniformity of certain sequences of phenomena from our observation
of that uniformity."

"Assuredly."

"And as all mankind obviously act upon that same principle in most
cases, and we believe that it is part of the very uniformity in
question that human nature is radically the same in all ages and in
all countries, I think we ought to conclude that it is not you and
I only, but at all events the vast majority of mankind, who have
maintained the impossibility of miracles."

"We ought to be able to conclude so," said Fellowes, "but it is very
far from being the case. So far from it, that nothing can be plainer
than that miraculous legends have been most greedily taken up by the
vast majority of mankind, and have made a very common part of almost
every form of religion."

"Men do not then, it appears, in this instance, at all regard the
uniform tenor of their experience; so that it is a part of our uniform
experience, that mankind disregard and disbelieve the lessons of their
uniform experience. This is almost a miracle of itself; at all events,
a curious paradox; but one which we must not stay to examine: though
I confess it leads to one other humiliating conclusion,--a little
corollary, which I think it is not unimportant to mark; and that is,
that we can never expect these enlightened views of ours to spread
amongst the mass of