Johnson was a thorough sceptic as to the authenticity of the book.

As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted now that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once.

A phenomenon like this is easy to understand and will repeat itself the oftener, the more people there are like me; that is, hyper-analytical sceptics inclined to hysteria, with a great nothingness in their souls, and a strong neurosis in their veins.

But even there you might meet, and in a town congregation you would be sure to meet, clever sceptics, who know well how to argue, who will detect your fallacies and point them out to those who are not yet troubled with doubts, and thus undermine all their confidence in your teaching.

But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure.

Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable devil's dance of blasphemy.

'Shortly after I became the happy possessor of a "crystal" I managed to convert several very decided "sceptics," and I will here give a short account of my experiences with two or three of them.

He first conceives an attachment for an amiable girl, who is captivated with his conversation; but, being too poor to marry, soon comes to spend more of his time in the family of an elderly sceptic of his acquaintance, who had recently married a young wife, and placed unbounded confidence in her virtue, and the honour of his friend.

" "One eminent terrestrial sceptic," I rejoined, "has said the same thing, and masters of the science of probabilities have supported his assertion.

To the genuine and poetical sceptic the whole world is incredible, with its bulbous mountains and its fantastic trees.

Finally there will come a gifted sceptic, a second Heine, to spit and trample on the idol, as in his time did Aristophanes; he will not, however, trample on it in the name of old ideals, but in the name of freedom of thought, in the name of freedom of doubt; and what will happen then I do not know.

There remains only one ideal in presence of which the most hardened sceptic raises his hat,the People.

A phenomenon like this is easy to understand and will repeat itself the oftener, the more people there are like me; that is, hyper-analytical sceptics inclined to hysteria, with a great nothingness in their souls, and a strong neurosis in their veins.

While in Elberfeld he printed a tract on this subject; and in a conversation which he and Martha Yeardley had with a doctor from Charleroi, the doctor told them it was the very thing which was wanted, being exactly adapted to the condition of the numerous sceptics in that part, of whom he had once been one.

But that is the modern method: the method of the reverent sceptic.

" "One eminent terrestrial sceptic," I rejoined, "has said the same thing, and masters of the science of probabilities have supported his assertion.

To an unprejudiced sceptic, however, needle-guns, rifle-cannons, requisitions on the country, devastations of crops, bombarding of cities, and the rest of the accompaniments of his progress are, if possible, even worse in their effects upon the unhappy people subjected to his missionary efforts than the New England rum which accompanied the real missionaries in their descent upon the now depopulated islands of the Pacific.

Thus it was with that wholesome and systematic sceptic, Charles II.

The able and bigoted sceptics, who prosecuted this day in the interests of science, insisted, with equal inconsistency and equal skill, on the innumerable recorded and attested instances of some diabolical power possessed by certain supposed members of a detested and malignant sect.

In several, which are preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic.

Probably no one is so near the gulf of mysticism as the absolute sceptic.