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Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936

"Orthodoxy"

"
You are still arguing in a circle--in that old mad circle with which this
book began.
The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of
common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final
physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless
piece of pedantry which talks about the need for "scientific conditions"
in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking
whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous
to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living
souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other.
The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence
of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the
existence of love. If you choose to say, "I will believe that Miss
Brown called her fiance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term,
if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,"
then I shall reply, "Very well, if those are your conditions,
you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.


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