ater part of the _possible_ phenomena
amidst which we live, or of our possessing all possible senses or the
best of those possible, is infinitely small. What a magician a man with
eyes would be among a race of sightless men; or a man with ears among a
deaf population! How studiously would the scientists explain the effects
of sight as produced by subtilty of hearing; and those of hearing as due
to abnormal sensitiveness in some other respect!

But though there be no _a priori_ impossibility in deviations from the
beaten track, yet there is a certain _a priori_ improbability which may
seem to justify those who refuse to go into alleged instances of the
supernormal. There is a story against Thomas Aquinas, that on being
invited by a frisky brother-monk to come and see a cow flying, or some
such marvel, he gravely came and saw not, but expressed himself far more
astounded at the miracle that a religious man should say "the thing
which was not." This is certainly a glorious antithesis to Hume's
position. Whether we take it to illustrate the Saint's extreme lack of
humour, or a subtler depth of humour veiled under stolidity, or his
rigorous veracity, or his guileless confidence in the veracity of
others, we certainly cannot approve it as an example of the attitude we
ought to observe with regard to every newly recounted marvel. Truly
there might be more liberality, more enlightenment, more imagination in
such a ready credulity, than in the wall-eyed, ear-stopping scepticism
of popular science; but the mere inner possibility of a recounted marvel
does not oblige us to search into the matter unless the evidence offered
bear some reasonable proportion to the burden it has to support. That
this is the case as regards crystal-gazing, telepathy, possession, and
kindred manifestation, is what Mr. Lang contends; nor would he have any
quarrel with the anthropologists were they not fully impressed with the
importance of similar or even weaker cumulative evidence for conclusions
which happen to be in harmony with their preconceived hypotheses. Where
such evidence exists it must be faced, and at least its existence must
be explained.

True criticism should either account for the seeming breach of
uniformity, by reducing it to law; or else should show how the assertion
if false ever gained credence; but in no case is it scientific to put
aside, on an _a priori_ assumption, evidence that is offered from all
sides in great abundance. Psyc