ent than those which now visit our
slumbers," said I.

"It is hardly worth while to contend about the difference," he
replied, with a sarcastic expression which I did not much like.
"It is sufficient to say, however, that these projectors have no
reason to complain; for with whatever show of reason men think or
act here, so under exactly the same laws of thought and emotion do
those shadows act there."

"But I, who am now awake and perfectly sensible--"

He laughed outright. "Are you so sure," said he, "that you are awake.
How do you know it?"

"Because I am conscious of it," said I.

"And this too, I suppose, is a philosopher," he muttered to himself.
"Well," he continued aloud, "we must not discuss these matters just now;
you must believe me when I say that the communities to which our
experimenters go to work, on their own hypotheses, are just as capable
of ingenious reasoning and impartial and candid deliberation, as you are
now in your present waking moments. You wish to hear a few of these
experiments?"

I nodded.

"Well, then, first, there was one worthy philosopher, who, having seen
the advantages which infidelity has gained from the discrepancies and
other difficulties occasioned by the varied testimonies which the
evangelical historians have left behind them, resolved, after having
wrought a number of splendid miracles (uniformly affirmed and never
denied by the parties in whose presence they were performed), that
they should all be consigned to one single history., so admirably
constructed that there was not a single discrepancy from beginning
to end."

"And what was the effect?"

"Why, in the first place, you must recollect that, according to that
or any other mode of authenticating a divine communication by miracles,
there were a great many more of those who never saw the miracles than
of those who did; for if miracles had been common, they would have
ceased to be miracles. There were vast numbers, therefore, who, even
in the age in which they were performed, never believed them; but,
what is more, in four generations there was not a soul that did
not treat them as old wives' fables."

"Surely they were very unreasonable," I said.

"Not at all; it was inevitable; for it was asked (and every one assented
to it), whether it was reasonable that a story so marvellous, and so
contrary to experience, should be believed on any single testimony,
however unexceptionable? There were also keen critics