"Can you tell me what a hypothesis is?" asked a young gentleman at a dinner party of a friend who passed for being well-informed. "Hush," was the reply. "Not now--ladies present." "Mon caporal," asked a French soldier, "can you tell me what is meant by an equilateral?" "Certainly--mais d'abord--do you know Hebrew?" "No." "Ah, then it would be impossible to explain it to you." "What is it that makes people's heads ache?" inquired an old lady of a youth who had just begun his medical studies. "Oh, it is only the convolution of the anomalies of the ellipsoid," replied the student. "Just see now what it is to git larnin!" commented the dame. "He knows it all in a straight line?" The one is satisfied that a hypothesis is something improper, the other that an equilateral is a matter which he might understand if he were as learned as his corporal, and the third is pleased to find that the mystery has at least a name. And human beings are satisfied in the same way as to the mysteries of Nature. Give them a name and assure them that the learned understand it, and they are satisfied. It is a fundamental principle of human folly to assume that any alleged marvel is a "violation of the laws of Nature," or the work of supernatural influences, until it is proved not to be such. Nature cannot be violated. She is ever virgin. And "how do you account for that?" is always assumed to be a test question. It cannot be denied that in almost every case, the narrator assumes the absolute truth of all which he states, when, as is well known, even in the most commonplace incidents of ordinary life, such truth can very rarely be obtained. Secondly, he assumes that all the persons who were cognizant of the miracle, or were concerned in it, were not only perfectly truthful, but endowed with perfect perfections, and absolutely sound judgments. If there is the least shadow of a possibility that one of them could have erred in the least particular, the whole must fall to the ground as a proof or test--for we must have irrefragible and complete evidence before we adopt a faith on which all our life may depend. But, thirdly, by asking any one to account for a marvel, he assumes that the one thus called on knows everything short of the supernatural or Infinite, which is simply silly.