musk and
dyes richer than Tyrian purple."

Unless we make the unscientific and preposterous assumption that our
present knowledge of nature and of natural forces is absolute and
complete, it is unscientific and illogical to declare at once that any
supposed events could not have happened merely because they seem to
have contradicted so-called natural laws.

"Strictly speaking," Huxley wrote, "I am unaware of anything that
has a right to the title of an 'impossibility' except a
contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but
none natural. A 'round square,' a 'present past,' 'two parallel
lines that intersect,' are impossibilities, because the ideas
denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, are
contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, square, past,
parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, or
procreation without male intervention, or raising the dead, are
plainly not impossibilities in this sense."

The whole matter turns on the question of sufficient evidence.

"Hume's arguments resolve themselves into a simple statement of
the dictates of common sense which may be expressed in this
canon: the more a statement of fact conflicts with previous
experience, the more complete must be the evidence which is to
justify us in believing it."

Again, expressing the same idea in different words, he wrote:

"Nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must be; all
that the widest experience (even if it extended over all past
time and through all space) that events had happened in a certain
way could justify, would be a proportionately strong expectation
that events will go on so happening, and the demand for a
proportional strength of evidence in favour of any assertion that
they had happened otherwise. It is this weighty consideration,
the truth of which everyone who is capable of logical thought
must surely admit, which knocks the bottom out of all _a priori_
objections either to ordinary 'miracles' or to the efficacy of
prayer, in so far as the latter implies the miraculous
intervention of a higher power. No one is entitled to say, _a
priori_, that prayer for some change in the ordinary course of
nature cannot possibly avail."

It was a question of evidence, and not only did the evidence not
convince Huxley, but