I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding those ancient reproaches: 

          “Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
          —­Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur.”

     ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand:  and from
     the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
     easily credited.”  The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading!  Thank God, I am not to be cuffed into belief.  Let them be angry with those who accuse their opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with them.  He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing discovers his reason to be very weak.  For a verbal and scholastic altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;

“Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;”

     ["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
     state the probabilities, but not affirm.)”
     —­Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]

but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the advantage.  To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst sort of homicides:  yet even in this, ’tis said, that men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who have afterwards been found living and well.  In these other extravagant accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation.  The privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses, ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap.  I have my ears battered with a thousand such tales as these:  “Three persons saw him such a day in the east three, the next day in the west:  at such an hour, in such a place, and in such habit”; assuredly I should not believe it myself.  How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men should lie than that one man in twelve hours’ time should fly with the wind from east to west?  How much more natural that our understanding should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney?  Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually agitated with illusions domestic and our own.  Methinks one is pardonable in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St. Augustine’s opinion, that, “’tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe.”