--(IV. p. 33.)
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES.
If our beliefs of expectation are based on our beliefs of memory, and
anticipation is only inverted recollection, it necessarily follows that
every belief of expectation implies the belief that the future will have
a certain resemblance to the past. From the first hour of experience,
onwards, this belief is constantly being verified, until old age is
inclined to suspect that experience has nothing new to offer. And when
the experience of generation after generation is recorded, and a single
book tells us more than Methuselah could have learned, had he spent
every waking hour of his thousand years in learning; when apparent
disorders are found to be only the recurrent pulses of a slow working
order, and the wonder of a year becomes the commonplace of a century;
when repeated and minute examination never reveals a break in the chain
of causes and effects; and the whole edifice of practical life is built
upon our faith in its continuity; the belief that that chain has never
been broken and will never be broken, becomes one of the strongest and
most justifiable of human convictions. And it must be admitted to be a
reasonable request, if we ask those who would have us put faith in the
actual occurrence of interruptions of that order, to produce evidence
in favour of their view, not only equal, but superior, in weight to that
which leads us to adopt ours.
This is the essential argument of Hume's famous disquisition upon
miracles; and it may safely be declared to be irrefragable.
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