ell much the same story of
the broomsticks they rode and the sabbats at which they danced to the
fiend's piping,' and there leave the matter, as in science we must leave
many of the most elementary and familiar phenomena inexplicable as to
their causes,--is not this, I say, more philosophical than to insist
upon an explanation which accepts the supernatural rather than leave the
extraordinary unaccounted for?"

"As you speak," said I, resting my downcast face upon my hand, "I should
speak to any patient who had confided to me the tale I have told to
you."

"And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy you? Very likely: to
some phenomena there is, as yet, no explanation. Perhaps Newton himself
could not explain quite to his own satisfaction why he was haunted at
midnight by the spectrum of a sun; though I have no doubt that some
later philosopher whose ingenuity has been stimulated by Newton's
account, has, by this time, suggested a rational solution of
that enigma.(8) To return to your own case. I have offered such
interpretations of the mysteries that confound you as appear to me
authorized by physiological science. Should you adduce other facts which
physiological science wants the data to resolve into phenomena always
natural, however rare, still hold fast to that simple saying of Goethe:
'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.' And if all which physiological
science comprehends in its experience wholly fails us, I may then
hazard certain conjectures in which, by acknowledging ignorance, one is
compelled to recognize the Marvellous (for as where knowledge enters,
the Marvellous recedes, so where knowledge falters, the Marvellous
advances); yet still, even in those conjectures, I will distinguish the
Marvellous from the Supernatural. But, for the present, I advise you to
accept the guess that may best quiet the fevered imagination which any
bolder guess would only more excite."

"You are right," said I, rising proudly to the full height of my
stature, my head erect and my heart defying. "And so let this subject
be renewed no more between us. I will brood over it no more myself.
I regain the unclouded realm of my human intelligence; and, in that
intelligence, I mock the sorcerer and disdain the spectre."

(1) Beattie's "Essay on Truth," part i. c. ii. 3. The story of Simon
Browne is to be found in "The Adventurer."

(2) Miller's Physiology of the Senses, p. 394.

(3) Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p