“Yes.”

“Why, then, is not this plainly to make a belief of such events depend upon testimony, and do we not give up altogether our sufficient principle of rejection of all such testimony?  You are yielding, without doubt, the principle of our opponents, who affirm that there is no event so improbable that a certain combination of testimony would not be sufficient to warrant your reception of it; because, as they say, that testimony might be given under such circumstances,—­so variously certified, and so above suspicion,—­that it would be more improbable that the statement to which it applied (however strange) should be false, than that the testimony should not be true; in other words, that the falsehood of the testimony would be the greater miracle of the two.  And they say this, because (as they assert) the uniform experience on which we found our objection to any miraculous narrative is no less applicable to the world of mind than to the world of matter; that there is not indeed an absolute uniformity of experience in the former, as neither is there in the latter; but neither in one nor in the other is there any absolute bouleversement of the principles and constitution of nature; which, they say, would be implied, if under all conceivable circumstances testimony might prove false.  And yet now you seem to admit the very thing for which they contend; and in contending for it, you give up your case.  Doing so, you certainly get rid of the paradoxical conclusions which my wretched scepticism sometimes suggests to me, as throwing a doubt on the integrity of our principle.  I say your admission gets rid of it; but then it is with the ruin of the principle itself.”

“What was that paradox?”

“It is this; that, if we adhere to our principle, we must deny that any amount of testimony is sufficient to warrant the belief of a miracle.”

“That is what we do maintain.”

“I thought so; but you seem to me to have hastily given it up.  Let us then again maintain that our prince, in denying what was a miracle to him, was not only consistent in saying that it could not be, when first asserted to him, but also when last asserted; and died an orthodox infidel in the possibility of ice, or an orthodox believer in the eternal fluidity of water, whichever you prefer to consider it.”

“Well, and what then?”

“Why, then, let us act upon our principle with equal consistency in other cases; for you say that there is no amount or complexity of evidence which would induce you to believe in a miracle.”

“I do.”