But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.

Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out.  It is often a great bore.  But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.  The latter is what we commonly call culture and enlightenment today.  But man is always influenced by thought of some kind, his own or somebody else’s; that of somebody he trusts or that of somebody he never heard of, thought at first, second or third hand; thought from exploded legends or unverified rumours; but always something with the shadow of a system of values and a reason for preference.  A man does test everything by something.  The question here is whether he has ever tested the test.

I will take one example out of a thousand that might be taken.  What is the attitude of an ordinary man on being told of an extraordinary event: a miracle? I mean the sort of thing that is loosely called supernatural, but should more properly be called preternatural.  For the word supernatural applies only to what is higher than man; and a good many modern miracles look as if they came from what is considerably lower.  Anyhow, what do modern men say when apparently confronted with something that cannot, in the cant phrase, be naturally explained? Well, most modern men immediately talk nonsense.  When such a thing is currently mentioned, in novels or newspapers or magazine stories, the first comment is always something like, “But my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century!” It is worth having a little training in philosophy if only to avoid looking so ghastly a fool as that.  It has on the whole rather less sense or meaning than saying, “

But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.” If miracles cannot happen, they cannot happen in the twentieth century or in the twelfth.  If they can happen, nobody can prove that there is a time when they cannot happen.  The best that can be said for the sceptic is that he cannot say what he means, and therefore, whatever else he means, he cannot mean what he says.  But if he only means that miracles can be believed in the twelfth century, but cannot be believed in the twentieth, then he is wrong again, both in theory and in fact.  He is wrong in theory, because an intelligent recognition of possibilities does not depend on a date but on a philosophy. 
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