Truly there might be more liberality, more enlightenment, more imagination in such a ready credulity, than in the wall-eyed, ear-stopping scepticism of popular science; but the mere inner possibility of a recounted marvel does not oblige us to search into the matter unless the evidence offered bear some reasonable proportion to the burden it has to support.

Dr. Blacklock spoke of scepticism in morals and religion, with apparent uneasiness, as if he wished for more certainty.

Concerning the children sometimes the offspring of these unions, scepticism as to the identity of the father is decidedly permissible.

He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of Nature to the study of man himself.

Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious.

He only exchanged, for unaffected interest and implied confidence, the tone of ironical doubt by which he had rendered it out of the question for his courtiers to charge him with a belief in that which public opinion might pronounce impossible, while making it apparent to me that he regarded the bigotry of scepticism with scarcely veiled contempt.

All that spies and a secret police and priests could do to ferret out associations which had in view a greater liberty, was done; all that soldiers could do to suppress popular insurrection was effected,and all in the name of religion, since he looked upon free inquiry as logically leading to scepticism, and scepticism to infidelity, and infidelity to revolution.

Yet I went on, as men will do, like persevering charlatans and impostors, who tire people into credulity by the mere force of reiteration; so I hoped to win myself over at last to a comfortable scepticism about the ghost.

He was able to apply himself to business again, and to study, although now with much less than his former ardor; the scepticism for which both his education and his experience of life had paved the way, had taken lasting hold upon his mind.

With such controversial topics infants have nothing to do, and to teach such matters would rather be sowing seeds for future scepticism than laying a solid basis for pure and undefiled religion.