“Certainly.”

“It appears, then, my good fellow, that the position of those who deny and those who assert miracles is exactly the reverse of Hume’s statement.  The man who believes ‘Transubstantiation’ distrusts his senses, and rather believes testimony:  and even so would he who has fully made up his mind, on our sublime principle as to the impossibility of miracles, when any thing which has that appearance crosses his path; he is prepared to deny his senses and to trust to testimony,—­to that general experience of others which comes to him, and can come to him, only in that shape.  It is we, therefore, and not our adversaries, who are liable to be reached by this unlucky illustration.”

Fellowes himself seemed much amused by finding the tables thus turned.  For my part, I had difficulty in repressing a chuckle over this display of sceptical candor and subtilty.

“There is perhaps another paradox which may be as well mentioned,” resumed Harrington.  “It is a little trying to my scepticism, but perhaps will not be to your faith.  I mean this.  We are constrained to believe from our ‘uniform-experience’ criterion that no miracle has ever occurred, or ever will; in short, it is, as we say, impossible.  Now the principle which undoubtedly leads us to the conclusion we may regard as a principle of our nature, if ever there was one; that is, we are so constituted as to infer the perpetual uniformity of certain sequences of phenomena from our observation of that uniformity.”

“Assuredly.”

“And as all mankind obviously act upon that same principle in most cases, and we believe that it is part of the very uniformity in question that human nature is radically the same in all ages and in all countries, I think we ought to conclude that it is not you and I only, but at all events the vast majority of mankind, who have maintained the impossibility of miracles.”

“We ought to be able to conclude so,” said Fellowes, “but it is very far from being the case.  So far from it, that nothing can be plainer than that miraculous legends have been most greedily taken up by the vast majority of mankind, and have made a very common part of almost every form of religion.”

“Men do not then, it appears, in this instance, at all regard the uniform tenor of their experience; so that it is a part of our uniform experience, that mankind disregard and disbelieve the lessons of their uniform experience.  This is almost a miracle of itself; at all events, a curious paradox; but one which we must not stay to examine:  though I confess it leads to one other humiliating conclusion,—­a little corollary, which I think it is not unimportant to mark; and that is, that we can never expect these enlightened views of ours to spread amongst the mass of mankind.”

“Nay, I cannot agree with you.  I hope far other wise, and far better for the human race.”