conspiracy of facts: the fact that the men who encounter elves
or angels are not mystics and the morbid dreamers, but
fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious;
the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic
incidents but are not spiritualists, that fact that science itself
admits such things more and more every day...
But the strongest of all is the dilemma above mentioned, that
these things are never denied except on the basis either of
anti-democracy or of materialist dogmatism - I may say
materialist mysticism. The sceptic always takes one of two
positions; either an ordinary man need not be believed, or an
extra-ordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may
discuss 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."
G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy. pages 159-160.
1908 England.