d of
sentiment, or instinct, or feeling, that events contradictory of
normal experience seem ridiculous, and incredible.

Now, if we set aside, for the present, ecclesiastical miracles, and
judicial witchcraft, and fix our attention on such minor and useless
marvels as clairvoyance, 'ghosts,' unexplained noises, unexplained
movements of objects, one doubts whether the general opinion as to
the ratio of marvels and ignorance is correct. The truth is that we
have often very scanty evidence. If we take Athens in her lustre,
we are, undeniably, in an age of enlightenment, of the Aufklarung.
No rationalistic, philosophical, cool-headed contemporary of
Middleton, of Hume, of Voltaire, could speak more contemptuously
about ghosts, and about the immortality of the soul, than some of
the Athenian gentlemen who converse with Socrates in the Dialogues.
Yet we find that Socrates and Plato, men as well educated, as
familiar with the refined enlightenment of Athens as the others,
take to some extent the side of the old wives with their fables, and
believe in earth-bound spirits of the dead. Again, the clear-headed
Socrates, one of the pioneers of logic, credits himself with
'premonitions,' apparently with clairvoyance, and assuredly with
warnings which, in the then existing state of psychology, he could
only regard as 'spiritual'. Hence we must infer that belief, or
disbelief, does not depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason,
but on personal character and genius. The same proportionate
distribution of these is likely to recur in any age.

Once more, Rome in the late Republic, the Rome of Cicero, was
'enlightened,' as was the Greece of Lucian; that is the educated
classes were enlightened. Yet Lucretius, writing only for the
educated classes, feels obliged to combat the belief in ghosts and
the kind of Calvinism which, but for his poem, we should not know to
have been widely prevalent. Lucian, too, mocks frequently at
educated belief in just such minor and useless miracles as we are
considering, but then Lucian lived in an age of cataclysm in
religion. Looking back on history we find that most of historical
time has either been covered with dark ignorance, among savages,
among the populace, or in all classes; or, on the other hand, has
been marked by enlightenment, which has produced, or accompanied,
religious or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious
crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occurren