It now remains for me to show, not that Nostradamus is a grand type of the order of prophets, not that all the Quatrains in all of the twelve books of the “Centuries” are intelligible and of definite purpose, nor that everything he uttered and recorded is to be regarded as a prophecy either fulfilling or fulfilled. (This is not at all what I propose to do.) I intend simply to select, without over much attention to chronology or the sequence of events, such of the quatrains as by philological apparatus existing are capable of being translated into simple and intelligible language out of the occult prophetic, barbaric, and almost always pedantic phraseology (or old Franco-Provençal patois, if you like to call it so) in which it pleased or suited our prophet in his _fureur poëtique_[14] to record for us his “nocturnes et prophétiques supputations” (des astres). In doing this, if one case of unmistakable prevision can be established, the missing spiritual link is set up that connects the present with the future. Christians generally grow almost rancorous against those who reject _their_ Scripture miracles, as Hume did, on the ground that the laws of nature being inviolable miracles become impossible; but a miracle that contravenes a law of nature is far more incredible _per se_ than such a spiritual link as the above. The miracle of bringing a man to life goes, so to speak, dead against nature and its laws customary. But a forecast, as such, is little more miraculous than a telescope that focuses and brings into range what lies out of the range of the ordinary human eye. It is really as feasible a thing to the seer, as for you and me to see that a kitten will become a cat nine months later on. He sees by imagination what you see by reasoning on association in the past. It is discovery by a different faculty, I admit. But if Christian belief accepts a future state and the immortality of the life (commonly called the _soul_) of man, then I say, that the Christian who denies the gift of prophecy to be inherent in mankind[15] is really as dead to spiritual life as if he were a materialistic member of a scientific society of the nineteenth century, or a Parisian enclycopædist of the eighteenth.