"And yet," continued Harrington, after a pause, "two or three other strange consequences seem to follow from that seemingly undeniable principle on which we base the conclusion that there neither has been nor can be any such thing as a miracle: in other words, a departure from the established series of sequences which, as tested by our own experience and by that of other men, we are convinced is stable. Will you see with me whether there is any fair mode of escaping from them? I should be very glad if I could do so." "What are they?" "Why, first, I am afraid it must be said, that we must entirely justify a man in the condition of the Eastern prince mentioned by Hume, who could not be induced to believe that there was such a thing as ice. I am afraid that he was quite in the right; and yet we know that in fact he was wrong." "You are not, then, satisfied with Hume's own solution?" "So far from it, that I cannot see, upon the principles on which we refuse to believe miracles, that it is even intelligible. We agree, do we not, that, from the experience we have (and, so far as we can ascertain, from every body else's) of the uniform course of events, of the established order of sequences, we are to reject any assertion of a violation of those sequences; as, for example, of a man's coming into the world in any preternatural manner, or, when he has once gone out of it, coming into it again; and that we are entitled to do this without any examination of the witnesses to any such fact, merely on the strength of the principles aforesaid?" "I admit that we have agreed to this." "Now was not the assertion that in a certain quarter of the world water became solid as stone, could be cut into pieces, and be put into one's pockets, contrary, in a similar manner, to all the phenomena which the said prince had witnessed, and also to the uniform experience of all about him from his earliest years?" "It certainly was." "He was right, then, in rejecting the fact; that is, he was right in rejecting the possibility of such an occurrence," said Harrington. "But did we not ourselves say, with Hume, that, as we see that there is not an absolute uniformity in the phenomena of nature, but that they are varied within certain limits in different climates and countries, so it does not become us to say that a phenomenon, though somewhat variable, is a violation of the usual order of sequences?"