_Experience:_ "and if," says he, "we would explode any forgery in
history, we cannot make use of a more convincing argument, than to
prove that the actions ascribed to any person, are directly contrary
to the course of nature....

"... The Veracity of Quintus Curtius is as suspicious when he
describes the supernatural courage of Alexander, by which he was
hurried on singly to attack multitudes, as when he describes his
supernatural force and activity, by which he was able to resist them.
So readily and universally do we acknowledge a _uniformity in human
motives and actions, as well as in the operations of body_."—_Eighth
Essay_, p. 131, 12mo; p. 85, 8vo, 1817.

Accordingly, in the tenth essay, his use of the term "miracle," after
having called it "a transgression of a law of nature," plainly shows
that he meant to include _human_ nature: "no testimony," says he, "is
sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a
nature that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which
it endeavours to establish." The term "prodigy" also (which he all
along employs as synonymous with "miracle") is applied to testimony, in
the same manner, immediately after; "In the foregoing reasoning we have
supposed ... that the falsehood of that testimony would be a kind of
_prodigy_." Now had he meant to confine the meaning of "miracle," and
"prodigy," to a violation of the laws of _matter_, the epithet
"_miraculous_," applied even thus hypothetically, to _false testimony_,
would be as unmeaning as the epithets "green" or "square;" the only
possible sense in which we can apply to it, even in imagination, the
term "miraculous," is that of "highly improbable,"—"contrary to those
laws of nature which respect human conduct:" and in this sense he
accordingly uses the word in the very next sentence: "When any one