21 Jan y 1814

Jug. True

Ch.3. Natural Evidence

7

This incidental deficiency in the article of belief, could it on the part of the sort of persons in question have had for its cause any natural or extraordinary aversion to the proof of extraordinary things—any natural or preternatural propensity to disbelief or doubt? In all places at all times propensity to the belief of extraordinary and improbable things has been strong not in the inverse but in the direct ratio of the prevalence of ignorance and error. Very ignorant and copiously stocked with errors especially in comparison with modern times were the minds of the people who in those places were living in those times if this every page of those same histories contributes to assure use. To a large and indefinite extent, according to those same histories, among those very people, facts which according to those same histories were extraordinary—extraordinary in the same ways and at the same time false, failed not to obtain credence. (a)

Among the very same set of people—in the very same circles, in relation to the very same species of facts, unbelief and belief are in and by those same histories stated as prevalent: unbelief? and on the part of what persons? in relation to what sort of facts? in relation to those very facts which in these same histories are declared to be true, belief again? and in relation to what individual facts? in relation to those individual facts which in and by those same histories were at the same time stated as false.