To this there can be no objection: a pretty world we should live in if the arrangement did not demand moral courage from those who offer evidence of wonders. For every truth which cowardice has delayed, a thousand falsehoods have been prevented from gaining existence. But there is one mode of treatment which, though not of any ultimate harm as to the matter in hand, is of bad example: the visionaries are reproached for not accommodating their narratives to the swallow of their hearers. In many ways it is intimated to them, in effect, that they ought to have come forward with something less extraordinary, in order that they might have been believed; as if the object of a story were assent and nothing else. This is a principle of danger, when applied, as it is every day, in our courts of law. The examining counsel draws himself up, and-with that fearful moral elevation which it is given to none but brief-holders to attain-thunders out, 'Do you expect the jury to believe Honour to the first judge who shall stop the volley with 'Brother Buzfuz! the witness is to mind his truth, the jury will take care of the credibility. In the courts of law, I say, this is a dangerous principle because good or evil, justice or injustice, will be consummated before the court rises. But out of court, in matters of asserted fact or theory, the harm is transient, the good permanent. The man who demands credible story, and makes onslaught upon all that is beyond his power to receive, as certainly either falsehood or delusion, is far more useful than he knows of, though not exactly in the way he thinks of. He takes himself to be separating the wheat from the tares but God has been kinder to our race than to leave that matter in his hands. He cuts everything to the ground: but the wheat of the moral universe has a durable root, which gives growth after growth, each stronger than the last; while

the tares, though their roots are also pretty tough, have shoots which are weaker and weaker. Hack away then, say we to him, and never stop to look what is before you; your work is judged by quantity, not by quality.

There are some who feel afraid of these gallant slashers, and decline to encourage their laudable propensity by giving anything marvellous in their presence. There is, to many, something unpleasant in the alternative of knave or fool, when invited to select a character for themselves out of the pair. Do those who quail before this option remember how high a compliment they pay to the proposers of it? If they do, and are willing to pay that compliment, there is nothing to be said. But if they be really of opinion that the other parties are little worth minding, and yet feel annoyed, it is because, as very often happens, they do not understand what in law is called the plea to the jurisdiction.

Nine-tenths of

the positive opinions which are given in conversation or writing are given judicially: that is, the proposer speaks to his conclusion as positively as if it were his office to know the truth; and implies that any opposition is a thing for him to judge of. He is annihilated by being reduced, no matter in how courteous a way, from judge to counsel: but this is what must be done; the jurisdiction must be denied. Some persons pull him off the bench with little ceremony; but this is hard upon a poor fellow who really believes in his own right to decide: the great art is to pull the bench from under him without his seeing exactly how he comes to tumble, and without proceeding to sit upon it yourself. There is but one of the species I am discussing who deserves no consideration: it is the one who passes from party to judge in the course of the process. He begins with confession of a mind not made up; he only wants to hear the evidence; he is quite aware of

the importance of dispassionate inquiry;-all addressed to a person who is not anxious to make proselytes, nor even to enter on the subject. In this way a statement of testimony is obtained, at the end-it may be in the middle of which the candid inquirer vaults on to the seat of judgment, and proceeds to pass sentence. Such a judge is an awkward imitator of Joshua the son of Nun; awkward in the omission of a most material point. My son, said Joshua, give glory, and confess, and tell me, and hide not: and after he had thus wormed out the acknowledgment of hidden treasure, he thundered forth, Why hast thou troubled us? But in the interval—and the corresponding procedure is quite forgotten by the judge I speak of—he had sent messengers, and verified the statement.

I write, as will be guessed, for and to those who have been staggered either by what they have seen, or by what they have heard and cannot reject. They are very many in number, if we include those who think more than they like to confess. And no wonder: for by one of those epidemic movements which seem to be made for the advancement both of truth and of falsehood, there has been a sudden and general recognition of the existence of phenomena which historical inquiry shows never to have been entirely unknown. When I say phenomena, I mean certain appearances, which are to be finally knit on either to some truth or to some delusion. All at once, I say, the whole world is made alive to the existence of these phenomena; and two parties are in conflict about their meaning. The opinions of our race seem to have some affinity with the things which learning calls crustacea, and common life crabs, lobsters, &c. The creature is bound in a hard shell, which at certain periods it throws off, and manages to take a good

growth before the new shell is hardened. Our ghost-shell has certainly cracked; but what and how much of growth the notion will get before the new integument is stiff enough for a philosopher, is still to be seen. It adds not a little to the wonder that the epidemic broke out among a people who have the reputation of a dry, practical, unimaginative temperament; broke out, I say, for it came on them like the small-pox, and the land was spotted with mediums before the wise and prudent had had time to lodge the first half dozen in a madhouse. And when the infection had crossed the sea, and London and Paris were running after tables in a new sense, no very deep research made it apparent that every one of the new phenomena - I believe literally every one was as old * as history. This very remarkable point is to some an evidence of delusion or imposture; they argue that the old divinations were one or the other, whence the modern phenomena, being of the same character as phenomena, must be of similar source. But it ought to be obvious that the proper way is to settle the modern phenomena first, and to return from them to the old ones; instead of founding a conclusion about the new upon pure assumption as to the old. It would be a very curious thing if in a country in which knowledge of antiquity does not flourish, persons of no information should have hit upon striking resemblances to old forms of delusion or fraud. There

* One of the Fathers, but I have mislaid the reference, speaks of divination per tabulas et capras, by tables and goats; an odd association. The word crepa would be the legitimate companion substantive of crepo, and would mean a crack or rap. But the word is only found in Festus (teste Forcellini), who says that crepe are goats, quod cruribus crepent. There is enough in this to raise a suspicion that crepa did actually exist in what would have been its primitive sense, and that the Father who is cited was speaking of divination by tables and raps. There is also crepus, for which see any account of the Lupercalia.

are some, of whom I avow myself one, whose minds cannot refuse the belief that the quod semper quod ubique has a foundation of reality, open to suspicion that the real fact may have been distorted or misinterpreted. I look for the discovery of the sea-something, which shall explain what wondering sailors have called the sea-serpent. Mr. Owen and his brethren may be quite right when they announce that this or that description is utterly at variance with all structures hitherto examined: and I hold it most probable that when the sea-something actually comes before them, they will find it harmonising with other animals in its anatomical features. Or if, which may happen, it should turn out to be quite exceptional, what will it be but a water ornithorhyncus, or a marine boomerang? Before the duck-bill, which now has the first of the two names, was actually killed and given to the zoologist, he not the duck-bill, who knew better, but the zoologist is said to have supposed that some tricky wondermonger had stuck the bill of a duck upon the neck of a quadruped. What a grand resource is belief in imposture! There are savages, we are told, who fill their stomachs with clay when food is scarce; which clay they vomit when they get a meal. In like manner the civilised man of non-nescience· a word I take the liberty of using for science, since two negatives make an affirmative distends his theory-bag with belief in imposture until he can find something to satisfy his appetite. Self-knowledge would do better; this valuable commodity would not only keep the wind out of the receptacle, but it need not be displaced to make room when wholesome aliment comes to hand.

Imposture may be called the Zadok of those whom I describe; Coincidence is their Nathan: and this priest and this prophet anoint Solomon Self-conceit king. It is all coinci