When I say that these things are impossible I am speaking with due regard to the claims of transcendental phenomena, and it is from the transcendental standpoint that I judge them.

Genuine transcendental phenomena may extend the accepted limits of probability, but when alleged transcendental phenomena do violence to all probability, that is the unfailing test of hallucination or untruth on the part of those who depose to them.

These things could not have occurred as they are narrated, and Dr Bataille is exploiting the ignorance of that class of readers to whom his mode of publication appealed.

As products of imagination his marvels are crude and illiterate; in other words, they belong to precisely that type which is characteristic of romances published in penny numbers, and when he pledges his rectitude regarding them he does not enlist our confidence but indicates the slight value which he sets on his stake.
At the same time, two reasons debar me from laying further stress upon this line of argument.

In the first place we must remember that his unlettered readers have been taught by their religious instructors to believe in the unlimited power of the devil, and they have probably found in the outrageous nature of the narratives a real incentive to accept them.