gathered in, and the farmer looks round him in despair at the rain which continues to fall, special prayer is made solemnly to Almighty God in English churches, that He may turn from the people those evils which they for their sins have most righteously deserved, by sending fine weather. If fine weather comes at length after the long continuance of wet weather, it is a manifest and merciful answer to prayer; if not, the credit of prayer nowise suffers by its seeming ill success on the occasion.

§ Fallacies of Coincidence in Reasoning. It might naturally be thought that people of all countries in all ages would not have offered sacrifices and supplications to their gods had not the events often answered the expectations of those who were at the cost and pains of offering them. Propitiatory hecatombs of slain creatures, human and animal, offered up in countless numbers on countless altars in all parts of the world, are surely proofs of the existence of gods who have inclined their ears to hear the urgent prayers of mankind. Not so; since the many gods that were thus invoked and propitiated with costly rites and ceremonies and amid the reverential awe of their unnumbered worshippers are now universally acknowledged to have had no

existence outside human imagination, and not ever, therefore, to have answered the prayers they were supposed to answer at the time. Their real interest

now is as extinct beliefs, not as extinct beings.

Why, then, were they thought to answer prayers? In the main, perhaps, for a reason which operates as strongly now as then as a cause of fallacy in reasoning—namely, the well-known tendency of the mind, so much insisted on by Bacon, to be impressed vividly by agreeing instances and to remember them, while overlooking and forgetting the opposing instances. Those who see proof of the power and good will of the gods when they look round on the numerous votive tablets that are so many records of their benevolent interpositions in human affairs, do not remember to ask themselves where the votive tablets are of the vastly greater number of persons who received no answers to their prayers. When the wicked man, not turning away from his wickedness, is struck down in the height of his evil prosperity, and survives a sad spectacle of social and moral ruin, many good people see the special judgment of Providence in the event; but they do not think to look for a special judgment in the event when the wicked man flourishes and rejoices in the fruits of his iniquity.

So it was with the astrologers of old, who, noting

the fortunes of persons born when a particular constellation was in the ascendant, believed they could predict the fortunes of those who were born under the same celestial auspices, although one of two persons born at the same instant might become a prince and the other a beggar, and were never a whit shaken in their pretensions and authority by the multitude of their failures. So it is with the fortune-teller of to-day, who imposes upon the credulity of the ignorant by the authority of some remarkable instance or instances in which his prediction was verified by the event. So in a signal manner has it been with the observation and use of dreams, for it has not only been an accepted saying that dreams come true, but the opposite saying that dreams go by contraries has also had some vogue; in both cases the remembrance of the hits has remained vivid, while the misses have passed into oblivion.*

When we call to mind how many dreams are dreamt every night, most of them related to the interests and fortunes of the individual, and what

* It was an ancient parable that there were two gates of sleep, out of one of which went false dreams, and out of the other true ones"Sunt geminæ somni portæ, quarum altera fertur Cornea, quâ veris facilis datur exitus umbris; Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes."

a multitude of events happen in a day, it would be strange if occasional coincidences between a dream and its fulfilment did not take place. In the same way, when we consider how many prayers are uttered in a day, most of them related to the immediate interests and concerns of the individual, and what a multitude of events happen in a day, we have no right to wonder at, or to conclude much from, the occasional coincidence between the prayer and its answer. A person naturally prays for what he wants, and may well happen, in a certain proportion of cases, to get, directly or indirectly, in the natural changes and chances of events; and the fact that he does sometimes get it is not enough, therefore, to warrant the conclusion that he gets it through supernatural interposition, particularly when sympathetic friends, able to help him, know what he prays for. Most persons are ill more than once before they fall ill of the sickness of which they die; and if prayers are made for their recoveries on all these occasions of illness, there must in the nature of things be more favourable than unfavourable answers. He who perceives a divine verdict in the event, whatever it is, is guilty of the presumptuous error into which those persons fell whom Christ severely rebuked for their eager discovery of a divine judgment in the fate of the unfortunate sinners on

whom the tower of Siloam fell. The truly pious believer will not fail to perceive the divine verdict in every case, and will justly rebuke the little faith of those who, not receiving the benefit they asked for in prayer, but receiving instead the evil which they specially asked to be delivered from, fail to see therein the true answer to the prayer and the certain proof of its efficacy. It is a faithless faith which thinks the prayer not answered, because the result is directly contrary to what was asked.

It would be not less curious than instructive to have a complete collection made of all the various omens that have been in repute among different nations and in different ages, in order to ascertain whether the greater number of them were believed to portend good fortune or misfortune. There can be little doubt that the ill omens would be found to preponderate largely over the good omens, if that were done, even as the demons and evil spirits have preponderated over the benevolent fairies and the good spirits; and for this obvious reason, that misfortune and misery are more common in the world than good fortune and blessings, however optimists may pretend differently; and therefore the omens foreboding ill have obtained more credit because of their more frequent fulfilment. Friday retains still a bad pre-eminence as an unlucky day,