"But do you believe in goblins?"

"No," I replied; "no more than in table-turning ghosts, and less than
in apparitions. I am not bound to find either sceptics or
spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they insist on an
alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least
equally credible with Satan, Shakespeare, or the parrot-cry of
imposture. It is the very extravagance of illogical temper to call on
me to furnish an explanation _because_ I say 'we know far too little
of the thing itself to guess at its causes;' but of the current
guesses, imposture seems inconsistent with the evidence, and
'spiritual agency' with the character of the phenomena."

"That," replied Colonel A----, "sounds common sense, and sounds even
more commonplace. And yet, no one seems really to draw a strong, clear
line between non-belief and disbelief. And you are the first and only
man I ever met who hesitates to affirm the impossibility of that which
seems to him wildly improbable, contrary at once to received opinion
and to his own experience, and contrary, moreover, to all known
natural laws, and all inferences hitherto drawn from them. Your men of
science dogmatise like divines, not only on things they have not seen,
but on things they refuse to see; and your divines are half of them
afraid of Satan, and the other half of science."

"The men of science have," I replied, "like every other class, their
especial bias, their peculiar professional temptation. The
anti-religious bigotry of Positivists is quite as bitter and
irrational as the theological bigotry of religious fanatics. At
present the two powers countervail and balance each other. But, as