s more improbable than miracle, physiology than spiritualism;
their notions of improbability are worthless. Is it to the man who
possesses scientific culture? If so, we have to deal with that which
seems improbable to a scientific mind, and it would be more accurate to
say that the fact is contrary to the results of science--that there is
disagreement between the direct observations of men of science and the
indirect testimony of the documents.

How is this conflict to be decided? The question has no great practical
interest; nearly all the documents which relate miraculous facts are
already open to suspicion on other grounds, and would be discarded by a
sound criticism. But the question of miracles has raised such passions
that it may be well to indicate how it affects the historian.[176]

The general tendency to believe in the marvellous has filled with
miraculous facts the documents of nearly every people. Historically the
existence of the devil is much better proved than that of Pisistratus:
there has not been preserved a single word of a contemporary of
Pisistratus saying that he has seen him; thousands of "ocular witnesses"
declare they have seen the devil; few historical facts have been
established by so great a number of independent testimonies. However, we
do not hesitate to reject the devil and to accept Pisistratus. For the
existence of the devil would be irreconcilable with the laws of all the
established sciences.

For the historian the solution of the problem is obvious.[177] The
observations whose results are contained in historical documents are
never of equal value with those of contemporary scientists; we have
already shown why. The indirect method of history is always inferior to
the direct methods of the sciences of observation. If its results do not
harmonise with theirs, it is history which must give way; historical
science, with its imperfect means of information, cannot claim to check,
contradict, or correct the results of other sciences, but must rather
use their results to correct its own. The progress of the direct
sciences sometimes modifies the results of historical interpretation; a
fact established by direct observation aids in the comprehension and
criticism of documents. Cases of stigmata and nervous anaesthesia which
have been scientifically observed have led to the admission as true of
historical narratives of analogous facts, as in the case of the stigmata
of certain saints and the