The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved to fortune.  Passing the day before yesterday through a village two leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take it up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people.  A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present, but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he expected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of the same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public, preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought.  From words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the day of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that—­nothing could hardly be so gross in the sports of little children.  Yet had fortune never so little favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at last arrived?  These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judge will not also make them smart for his.  We see clearly into this, which is discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whether as to rejection or as to reception.

Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute:  we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.  The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking:  “it seems to me.”  They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me as infallible.  I love these words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions:  “peradventure; in some sort; some; ’tis said, I think,” and the like:  and had I been set to train up children I had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not resolving:  “What does this mean?  I understand it not; it may be:  is it true?” so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten.  Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it.

Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;