upon her your own.’  If unknown powers of nature may thus reverse our experience and the experience of all those whose experience, under the given conditions, we have opportunities of testing, we ought to abstain from saying that some unknown powers may not also have wrought miracles.  Let us then affirm consistently the sufficiency of our criterion; and the prince aforesaid must do the same; and it warranted him, I say, in believing that there neither was nor could be such a thing as ice.”

“But this seems ridiculous,” said Fellowes; “for according to this, different and opposite experiences may, in different places give different or opposite measures of the laws of nature; which nevertheless are supposed to be invariably the same, or invariably the limits certified by that experience.”

“I cannot help it; upon that same experience we must believe it true that there are no miracles, and our unbelieving prince, that there could be no such thing as ice; for to him it was a miracle.  If we do not reason thus, may we not be compelled to admit that our uniform experience, with its limited variations, is no rule at all, and that there are cases for which it makes no provision? and may not the advocate for miracles say that miracles are amongst them?  No, let us adhere to our principle, and adhering to it, I wish to know whether the prince in question was not quite right in saying that there neither was nor could be such a thing as ice; for the assertion that there was, was contrary to all his experience and to that of every soul about him.”

“I must say, that, if we look only to the principle of this uniform experience, he was right.”

“But he rejected the truth.”

“He certainly did.”

“And he was right in rejecting the truth?”

“Certainly, upon your principle.”

“Upon my principle!  Do not say upon my principle, unless you mean to deny that you too embrace it; if you give up that principle, you lay yourself open at once to the retort that your position is insecure; that you have taken your experience as a sufficient criterion of the possibilities of events, when it is in fact merely a measure of such as have fallen under your own observation.”

“Perhaps,” said Fellowes, “I should say that the prince in question was justified at first in rejecting the fact, but that when he found other men, whose veracity he could not suspect, coming from the same regions of the world, and affirming the same phenomenon, it was his business to correct his experience, and to admit that the fact was so.”

“I am surprised to hear you say so; you are again ruining our principle.  Do you admit that the assertion that there was a place on earth at which water in large quantities became solid, was apparently as great a violation of all the experience of this man, as what is ordinarily called a miracle is of ours?”

“I cannot deny that it was so.”

“But yet you think, that, though justified in disbelieving it at first, he would not be so when others, whose veracity and motives he had no reason to suspect, told him the same tale?”