But can these shallow stories be cited as _prophecies_? The links in the chain of causation are evident, and the veriest sceptic cannot doubt their sequence, where there was so strong a probability. It is merely by reflecting on the past and judging the future by analogy. Natural events of human actions have laws to govern them, and there is seldom foresight without the reflection _on_ these laws. Lord Mansfield, when asked how the French revolution would end, replied, “It is an event without a precedent, and therefore without a prophecy.” ASTR. Then you do not believe, where you cannot develop the _causes_ of events. Like all _rational_ philosophers, you must have demonstrative proof. In which class of sceptics shall I enrol you, Evelyn?—As a proselyte of Aristotle, who will deny not only the existence of spirits, but affirm heaven and hell to be a fable, and that the world is self-existent: or with the Epicureans, who believed the impious doctrine of blind chance,—that the sun and stars were vapours, and the soul perishable; or with the modern lights of reason,—Sir Isaac Newton, who confessed the Paradise Lost to be a fine poem, though it proved nothing; or the Abbé Lauguerne, who, for the self-same reason, despised the brilliancy of Racine and Corneille; or with the Sadducees themselves, who denied both prophecy and spirit? EV. Perhaps the Sadducees might have referred visions to the _right_ cause, for phantoms differ little from Locke’s “substance which thinks.” But the mere metaphysician blinks the question (as Lord Bacon does that of experimental chemistry,—“Vix unum experimentum adduci potest quod ad hominum statum levandum et juvandum spectat”); thus wofully depreciating the progress of chemical science, as if the discoveries of Wollaston, of Davy, of Dalton, and of Faraday were fruitless. Remember, modern philosophers are not like Xenophon, who (says Socrates) called all _fools_ who differed from his opinion. Even Baxter confesses the frequency of imposture in ghost stories, yet leans to the belief of all which he _cannot account for_. Now if philosophy had not doubted, science would be stationary. We might still believe, with Heraclitus, that the sun was only a foot in breadth; or, with Copernicus, that it revolved in its orbit, while the earth was at rest. Remember, Astrophel, the way to the temple of Science is through the portals of doubt: it is a mark of weakness, “jurare in verba magistri.” Even the prince philosopher of Denmark doubted the prophetic truth of his father’s ghost on its mere appearance—(“The spirit I have seen may be a devil,”)—until the scene of the play, and the stricken conscience of the king, and _then only_, he believed that “it was an honest ghost.”