The sceptic always takes one of the two positions; either an ordinary man need not be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed.

For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles.

That is not an argument at all, good or bad.

A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--if anything, it proves its existence.
Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur (my evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide with one of the worst mental evils of the age.

The greatest disaster of the nineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word "spiritual" as the same as the word "good." They thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue.