Indeed, the tone of the comments of some
candid friends has been such that I began to suspect that I must be
entering upon a process of retrogressive metamorphosis which might
eventually give me a place among the respectabilities. The prospect,
perhaps, ought to have pleased me; but I confess I felt something of
the uneasiness of the tailor who said that, whenever a customer's
circumference was either much less, or much more, than at the last
measurement, he at once sent in his bill; and I was not consoled until
I recollected that, thirteen years ago, in discussing Hume's essay on
"Miracles," I had quoted, with entire assent, the following passage
from his writings: "Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly
conceived implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by
any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning _a priori_."[47]
Now, it is certain that the existence of demons can be distinctly
conceived. In fact, from the earliest times of which we have any record
to the present day, the great majority of mankind have had extremely
distinct conceptions of them, and their practical life has been more or
less shaped by those conceptions. Further, the notion of the existence
of such beings "implies no contradiction." No doubt, in our experience,
intelligence and volition are always found in connection with a certain
material organisation, and never disconnected with it; while, by the
hypothesis, demons have no such material substratum.
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