Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it;
and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.
It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the
unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself
generally forgets to use it.

He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories
a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short,
that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it.
It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are
inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless
to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith.
If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a
most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge.
Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk;
still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards,
it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk.
Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red
mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore
that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would
be absurd to answer "Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time."
They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), "How the blazes
could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?"
So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, "Suppose that the
question is whether believers can see visions--even then, if you
are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers."
You are still arguing in a circle--in that old mad circle with which this
book began.

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of