Eighthly: The moment we view an event otherwise than as a mere phenomenon, and take into consideration the causes producing it, however unusual it may be, it is impossible to affirm that it is contrary to experience. When we take these into consideration the entire character of the event is at once changed, and the probability of the occurrence must be estimated on wholly different grounds. Under such circumstances, an extremely improbable event, which we might otherwise justly reject as contrary to experience, becomes simply one of which we have had no experience. Thus it is contrary to experience that men can live for one hour under water, but when we take into consideration and thoroughly understand the contrivance of the diving‐bell, the event becomes one of a different order from that of which we supposed that we had experience. Before this apparatus was invented, the assertion that men could live an hour under water would have been rejected as fabulous. The invention has introduced a fresh condition into the case. The event has now become a portion of our experience; but prior to the discovery of the apparatus it was merely an event lying outside our experience, and not to be rejected as being contrary to it. In a similar way, a miracle, as a mere phenomenon, may be said to be contrary to our experience; but the moment that we take into account its true character, viz. that its very conception implies the presence of a force of some kind with which we were previously unacquainted, then such an event is no longer one which we can pronounce contrary to our experience, but merely one which lies beyond or outside it. In the case of miracles, therefore, the position of Hume is inapplicable.