Hume has an alternative definition of a miracle—­’a miracle is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.’  We reply that what Hume calls a ‘miracle’ may result from the operation of some as yet unascertained law of nature (say self-suggestion), and that our business, at present, is to examine such events, not to account for them.

It may fairly be said that Hume is arguing against men who wished to make so-called ‘miracles’ a test of the truth of Jansenism, for example, and that he could not be expected to answer, by anticipation, ideas not current in his day.  But he remains guilty of denouncing the investigation of apparent facts.  No attitude can be less scientific than his, or more common among many men of science.

According to the humorous wont of things in this world, the whole question of the marvellous had no sooner been settled for ever by David Hume than it was reopened by Emanuel Swedenborg.  Now, Kant was familiar with certain of the works of Hume, whether he had read his ‘Essay on Miracles’ or not.  Far from declining to examine the portentous ‘visions’ of Swedenborg, Kant interested himself deeply in the topic.  As early as 1758 he wrote his first remarks on the seer, containing some reports of stories or legends about Swedenborg’s ‘clairvoyance.’  In the true spirit of psychical research, Kant wrote a letter to Swedenborg, asking for information at first hand.  The seer got the letter, but he never answered it.  Kant, however, prints one or two examples of Swedenborg’s successes.  Madame Harteville, widow of the Dutch envoy in Stockholm, was dunned by a silversmith for a debt of her late husband’s.  She believed that it had been paid, but could not find the receipt.  She therefore asked Swedenborg to use his renowned gifts.  He promised to see what he could do, and, three days later, arrived at the lady’s house while she was giving a tea, or rather a coffee, party.  To the assembled society Swedenborg remarked, ’in a cold-blooded way, that he had seen her man, and spoken to him.’  The late M. Harteville declared to Swedenborg that he had paid the bill, seven months before his decease:  the receipt was in a cupboard upstairs.  Madame Harteville replied that the cupboard had been thoroughly searched to no purpose.  Swedenborg answered that, as he learned from the ghost, there was a secret drawer behind the side-plank within the cupboard.  The drawer contained diplomatic correspondence, and the missing receipt.  The whole company then went upstairs, found the secret drawer, and the receipt among the other papers.  Kant adds Swedenborg’s clairvoyant vision, from Gothenburg, of a great fire at Stockholm (dated September 1756).  Kant pined to see Swedenborg himself, and waited eagerly for his book, ’Arcana Coelestia.’  At last he obtained this work, at the ransom, ruinous to Kant at that time, of 7L.  But he was disappointed with what he read, and in ‘Traeume eines Geistersehers,’ made a somewhat sarcastic attempt at a metaphysical theory of apparitions.