are not, on that account, the less certain that he cannot travel a thousand miles in a day.

Having thus endeavoured to shew that there exists no decisive mark or criterion by which relatively impossible facts may be distinguished, he proceeds to state it as the prevailing doctrine, that no fact acknowledged to be contrary to the course of nature ought to be admitted in a court of justice on the credit of human testimony; that is, of a testimony which is in opposition to "a preponderating mass of counter-testimony." This is the doctrine which the author appears to patronize;-and since, notwithstanding the above-mentioned limitation to judicial proceedings, the principle on which it is grounded is manifestly applicable to the reliance which we place on testimony affirming the reality of miracles, it becomes necessary to examine it particularly.

An event contrary to the course of nature is otherwise described as a "violation of the laws of nature." What then is the proper meaning of this phrase? According to Mr. Bentham, when mankind observe, in a number of detached appearances, a constant and regular order of succession, they consider them all as dependent on a single cause, to which they give the name of a law. We are therefore to consider the law of gravitation as the cause of the motions of the planets; the law of association as the cause of various affections and changes of mind. Surely this is the language neither of philosophy nor of truth. A law is not an agent; it is only the mode in which some agent operates;-it implies intelligence to perceive the adaptation of means to ends, and to pursue a regular and uniform system of conduct. This is the only rational sense which can be given to the term law as applied to the efficient cause of the phenomena of nature; and if we are careful to bear it in mind, it will enable us satisfactorily to unravel many of the apparently plausible objections of unbelievers against the evidence of

miracles.

A miracle, we are told, is a "violation of the laws of nature." We have here a notable proof of the tyranny of sounds. We no sooner hear of the violation of a law, but we think of something wrong, illegal, improper. We not only personify Nature, but we invest her with authority to enact laws which even her Almighty Author is under an obligation to obey. Doubtless, nothing wrong can exist in the administration of an infinitely wise and good Being; but when we consider that the law here spoken of is nothing more than the uniform order according to which, for wise and excellent purposes, he has seen fit to regulate the course of his providence, we are readily brought to believe it possible that circumstances may arise in which the plan of the Divine government may require an occasional deviation from that regular course which at other times is observed to prevail. We can easily perceive adequate reasons why the course of nature should be governed by general laws. If it were otherwise, it is obvious that the world would not have been adapted for the residence and education of rational beings. Experience would have been no guide either in theory or in practice; from what has been, we should have been unable to conjecture what will be; and there would have been no place for general rules or principles of conduct. But this, which is the only rational account that can be given of the uniformity of the course of nature, will not bear us out in maintaining that it is a uniformity subject to no exceptions. This is a point invariably taken for

* P. 172.

granted by sceptical writers as a sort of axiom; since, as far as I have observed, they have never attempted to support it by the shadow of argument or evidence. No one can shew that such exceptions are impossible, no one can bring any good argument to prove that they are even improbable. Nay, the reverse will be found nearer the truth. To those who take a just and philosophical view of the constitution of the universe, and who behold in all the phenomena which it presents to their notice only the immediate exertions of Divine agency, I am persuaded that the minute precision with which these events are commonly brought about according to a fixed and regular system, a precision which far transcends our powers of observation, and is only rendered more remarkable by the researches of modern science,— will be a much more wonderful subject of contemplation than the occurrence of a few occasional exceptions. To the reflecting mind, the uniformity which is found to prevail would à priori be more incredible and mysterious than the frequent occurrence of deviations. The wonder should be, not that there are miracles, but that there are so few. It is not for his own sake that the Deity observes a regular order in the government of the universe, but for the sake of his creatures. System and method are of no consequence to Him to whom every the minutest change is immediately and individually present. But to us, whose limited powers would be distracted and confounded by attempting separately to view the particulars, they are indispensable. Here then we see the final cause, the true explanation of the general laws of nature, and we ought to view them not only with astonishment, as a proof of infinite knowledge and power, but with admiration and gratitude, as a mark of equally unbounded wisdom and goodness.

Mr. Bentham seems to take it for granted that the effect of a more extensive acquaintance with nature will always be to diminish the disposition to give credit to attested facts which appear extraordinary. "A fact which in Boeotia would not have been reckoned too improbable to be established by human testimony, would have been considered impossible by men of learning in Rome or Athens. What these latter might have believed to be probable, would be classed among impossibilities by the philosophers of London and Paris. It has always been from men of the highest degree of intelligence that extraordinary and improbable facts have experienced the most steady opposition." This, however, is by no means universally true. The celebrated anecdote of the King of Siam, mentioned by Locke, is an instance to the contrary; and, indeed, it would be unreasonable to presume, that in proportion as we become more familiar with the wonders of the creation, our readiness to admit the possibility of phenomena which to the vulgar appear marvellous or incredible, should be increased. Relate to an ignorant man some of the prodigies of modern experimental science, and you will probably find him harder of belief than one who has already acquired a certain degree of familiarity with these subjects. We are not, therefore, to take it for granted, that a readiness to believe is a proof of ignorance, or that men become more sceptical as they advance in information. This, however, is a doctrine which unbelievers are naturally ready to espouse. They regard with no little complacency the prevalence of a maxim which represents the rejection of what others believe, to be an infallible mark of a superior understanding; on the strength of which they are accustomed to despise those easy, credulous fools who think it possible that

* P. 185.

God may have spoken to his creatures. But surely no maxim is less countenanced by experience, or even by the practice of unbelievers themselves, in every thing not connected with religion. Mr. Bentham, in another place,* speaks in terms of contempt of a physician who rejected as incredible the first report of the freezing of quicksilver. The contempt was merited, but it is not easy to see how it is to be reconciled with the author's principles.

A fact which is relatively impossible, is to be rejected because it is opposed to the ordinary course of nature. This course of nature is established and ascertained by the general experience of mankind; but with reference to each individual it is not even founded upon any direct testimony; it is nothing more than general notoriety-a vague report not investigated with any degree of scrupulous suspicion, and derived from an indefinite number of individuals, into whose separate claims to credibility we have neither the means nor the inclination to examine. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that this is a species of evidence to which a captious sceptic would find it peculiarly easy to propose objections, and yet it is upon evidence such as this that we proceed without hesitation or difficulty in nearly all the most important transactions of life. It is because such facts as appear to be contrary to the usual course of nature are opposed by this indefinite, but, in his estimation, overwhelming mass of counter-testimony, that our author conceives himself entitled to reject them. "Take for example a case of witchcraft. An old woman has travelled through the air on a broomstick. This is affirmed; I refuse to believe it, because it would be in contradiction to the laws of nature. One of these laws is, that no body can be put in motion without a moving force sufficient to overcome the attraction of gravity," &c. But the believer in the reality of this event might, perhaps, reply, that no contradiction to this law was alleged or supposed to exist in the case. It was not pretended that the motion was produced without an adequate force sufficiently powerful to overcome the attraction of gravity, but by the intervention of some supernatural agent.

I also reject the fact in question, but not exactly for the reason stated by Mr. Bentham. I see no contradiction, and consequently no absolute impossibility, in the supposition of a person being conveyed through the air on a broomstick. If, therefore, the same kind and degree of evidence were brought forward to prove it which we can adduce in support of the Scripture miracles, I should not hesitate to believe it. My reason for not believing it is simply that no evidence of this sort, or any thing approaching to it, has ever been produced. Shew me a final cause for such a departure from the ordinary course of Providence equally important with that which is assigned for the miracles of the gospel, and then bring me ten or a dozen witnesses as unexceptionable as the apostles and evangelists, and upon such testimony I will pledge myself to receive this or any other fact which does not involve a positive contradiction.

66

Mr. Bentham tells us, that a partizan of magic might say much to weaken our confidence in the argument against his assertions drawn from their inconsistency with the ordinary course of nature. But," he adds, "there is one fatal point on which all his argument would fail, namely, the comparative weakness of the direct proof or special testimony by which he proposes to establish their reality. He would be strong when arguing on our ignorance of the resources of nature, but he would be utterly weak in attempting to prove some particular fact which appears, or which he himself considers, to

be an exception to the ordinary course of things." It is surprising that Mr. Bentham should not perceive that this doctrine is capable of being carried much further than the incredibility of supernatural facts; every thing which is new, every thing which gives us a view of the laws of nature different from what has hitherto prevailed, would, according to this, be undeserving of a moment's attention. The particular testimony, it might be said, on which we attempted to establish such a fact, must of necessity be utterly insignificant when weighed in the balance against the preponderating mass of counter-testimony in favour of the received laws of nature.

In the next chapter we find an elaborate examination of the doctrine of Price and Campbell in opposition to Hume's Essay on Miracles, that improbability as such is not a sufficient reason for refusing our credit to testimony, unless it have a tendency to render it more probable that the witnesses either were deceived or had some motive for imposing upon others. This doctrine, we are told, is "a mere appeal to prejudice against examination; it would persuade us to reject the counsels of experience, to believe in facts which experience contradicts, solely because they are affirmed by testimony, and thus to renounce the faculty which elevates us above the brutes." * One cannot help asking which of these doctrines best deserves to be styled an appeal to prejudice against inquiry,—that which calls upon us to receive and duly examine evidence of all kinds, or that which requires us to reject at once a certain class of facts, however well attested, merely because they are inconsistent with an assumed dogma on the alleged uniformity of the course of nature? The change in the form of expression here is worthy of observation: before, it was 66 a mass of countertestimony," now, it is "experience," whose counsels we reject. Let it never be forgotten that nine-tenths of this boasted experience is the experience of others, with which we can become acquainted only by means of their testimony. To what then does the doctrine amount to which our assent is here demanded? "That to believe facts which testimony contradicts merely because another testimony affirms them, is to renounce the faculty which elevates man above the brutes"!

After giving an enumeration of the circumstances which may weaken our confidence in human testimony, with a view to shew that the philosophers above-mentioned have ascribed to it a degree of credibility which does not belong to it, our author proceeds," That certainty which fails us here we find in the phenomena of nature. These are invariably in the same order, they never deceive us, natura semper sibi consona."+ Here it is proper to observe, that this maxim, so often repeated, if it be true at all, must be true of phenomena of all kinds. Now human witnesses attesting what they profess to have seen or heard, are among the phenomena of nature. If, then, we find it to be a fair conclusion from well-ascertained principles of human nature, the result of our own experience fortified by all we have heard of the experience of others, that a number of independent witnesses affirming what they had every opportunity of distinctly observing, in the absence of every imaginable motive to deceive, are worthy of credit, we are bound to remember our maxim, and consider that human nature is semper sibi consona, that those causes which affect the validity of human testimony are just as fixed and invariable as that of gravitation itself.

Mr. Bentham objects, in the following manner, to Dr. Campbell's wellknown illustration of his doctrine. A ferry-boat has crossed a river two thou

sand times without accident. A person unknown to me affirms that he has just seen this boat overset. Here, says Dr. C., is a fact improbable in the ratio of two thousand to one, which, nevertheless, is readily believed on the testimony of a single witness. Our author, however, denies the improbability. "No one," says he, "who has seen a heavily laden boat would allow it to be improbable that it should be overset, though it had made the same passage, not two, but ten thousand times in safety."* The objection appears to me to be groundless. What is supposed to be attested by the witness is not the general proposition that an overloaded boat is liable to be overset, but the fact that on this particular occasion this particular boat was so overloaded, and did meet with such a misfortune. That this is in itself improbable, independently of testimony affirming it, will be evident to any one who considers how he would receive the bare hypothetical statement without any testimony at all. Our sense of the previous improbability of an attested fact may arise from a great variety of considerations. In the present instance it arises simply from the number of times that the vessel has made the passage without accident. It may be occasioned by a knowledge of those qualities or circumstances which may be expected to prevent the incident affirmed to have happened. Suppose a life-boat was known to have been carefully constructed on the most approved principles, and it was reported that it had been lost on the first trial. Here is an event in a high degree improbable; but yet if it were affirmed by a number of respectable witnesses who had every opportunity of observing the fact, and no apparent motive for deceiving, I do not see how we could reasonably refuse our assent. "If," says Mr. B., " instead of an overloaded boat, the story had been told of a cork boat with nothing in it, there would then, indeed, be an improbability in the fact of its submersion; an improbability, such that we should not believe the report of a thousand witnesses, though they should all declare that it took place before their eyes." The ordinary course of things being supposed, here is an example, not of an improbable, but of an impossible event; a most important distinction, which, however, is very generally overlooked both by our author and by many other writers upon this subject. But if this limitation is not understood, the event in question is not an example of absolute impossibility; it involves no contradiction, and, where supernatural power is alleged to have been concerned, it is therefore a fit subject of human testimony. If a person, pretending to a commission from heaven in attestation of his authority, had commanded the vessel to sink, and it had sunk accordingly, here would have been a miracle; but an appearance which the senses are just as competent accurately to observe as any the most ordinary occurrence.

After having repeatedly affirmed, in the preceding part of this dissertation, that there is an essential and insurmountable deficiency in the particular testimony brought forward to prove any fact which professes to be contrary to the ordinary course of nature, our author proceeds, somewhat inconsistently, to prescribe a course of investigation to which such testimony ought, in his opinion, to be subjected. If it should be found to stand the ordeal here prepared for it, notwithstanding what had before been affirmed, we seem to be left to conclude, that nothing would remain for the most determined sceptic but to surrender his own belief. "It seems to me that the most incredulous person on the subject of supernatural facts might safely