eyond the bounds that
afford you security; and to believe that in this request, as in
detaining you perforce heretofore, I am acting simply for your own
welfare, and not," he added, smiling, "with a view to secure the first
opportunity of putting your relation to our race to the tests of the
dissecting table and the laboratory."

"But my story explained everything that seemed inexplicable; why was
it not believed? It was assumed that I could not belong to Mars; yet I
was a living creature in the flesh, and must therefore have come from
some other planet, as I could hardly be supposed to be an inhabitant
of space."

"We don't reason on impossibilities," replied my friend. "We have a
maxim that it is more probable that any number of witnesses should
lie, that the senses of any number of persons should be deluded, than
that a miracle should be true; and by a miracle we mean an
interruption or violation of the known laws of nature."

"One eminent terrestrial sceptic," I rejoined, "has said the same
thing, and masters of the science of probabilities have supported his
assertion. But a miracle should be a violation not merely of the known
but of all the laws of nature, and until you know all those laws, how
can you tell what is a miracle? The lifting of iron by a magnet--I
suppose you have iron and loadstones here as we have on Earth--was, to
the first man who witnessed it, just as complete a violation of the
law of gravity as now appears my voyage through space, accomplished by
a force bearing some relation to that which acts through the magnet."

"Our philosophers," he answered, "are probably satisfied that they
know nearly all that is to be known of natural laws and forces; and to
delusion or illusion human sense is undeniably liable."

"If," I said, "you cannot trust your senses, you may as well
disbelieve in your own existence and in everything around you, for you
know nothing save through those senses which are liable to illusion.
But we know practically that there are limits to illusion. At any
rate, your maxim leads directly and practically to the inference that,
since I do not belong to Mars and cannot have come from any other
world, I am not here, and in fact do not exist. Surely it was somewhat
illogical to shoot an illusion and intend to dissect a spectre! Is not
a fact the complete and unanswerable refutation of its impossibility?"

"A good many facts to which I could testify," he replied, "are in this
wor