one single step beyond the blank assertion. And it is astonishing that this assertion should still be considered cogent, when its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of writers as well sceptical as Christian (Mill's _Logic_, ii., 157--160). For, as the greatest of our living logicians has remarked, the supposed recondite and dangerous formula of Hume--that it is more probable that testimony should be mistaken than that miracles should be true--reduces itself to the very harmless proposition that anything is incredible which is contrary to a complete induction. It is in fact a _flagrant petitio principii_, used to support a wholly unphilosophical assertion."(1) It is much more astonishing that so able a man as Dr. Farrar could so misunderstand Hume's argument and so misinterpret and mis-state Mr. Mill's remarks upon it. So far from shattering to pieces the logical consistency of Hume's reasoning, Mr. Mill substantially confirms it, and pertinently remarks that "it speaks ill for the state of philosophical speculation on such subjects" that so simple and evident a doctrine should have been accounted a dangerous heresy. It is, in fact, the statement of a truth which should have been universally recognized, and would have been so, but for its unwelcome and destructive bearing upon popular theology. Mr. Mill states the evident principle, that--"If an alleged fact be in contradiction, not to any number of approximate generalizations, but to a completed generalization grounded on a rigorous induction, it is said to be impossible, and is to be disbelieved totally." Mr. Mill continues.: "This last principle, simple and evident as it {80}