["That is, of Admiration.  She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said to have been the daughter of Thamus.”  —­Cicero, De Nat.  Deor., iii. 20.]

admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress, ignorance the end.  But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge itself.  I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,

     [A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
     assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]

a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who presented themselves the one for the other.  I remember (and I hardly remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged.  Let us have some form of decree that says, “The court understands nothing of the matter” more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to appear again after a hundred years.

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.  To accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events, seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another sort-of wit than ours.  It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole all-potent testimony to tell us.  “This is, and that is, and not that other.”  God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason; but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his wits), whether he employ it about other men’s affairs or against himself.

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding those ancient reproaches: 

          “Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
          —­Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur.”

     ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand:  and from
     the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
     easily credited.”  The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading!  Thank God, I am not to be cuffed into belief.  Let them be angry with those who accuse their opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with them.  He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing discovers his reason to be very weak.  For a verbal and scholastic altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;