Now the whole of the rationalistic doubt about the Palestinian legends, from its rise in the early eighteenth century out of the last movements of the Renascence, was founded on the fixity of facts.

Miracles were monstrosities because they were against natural law, which was necessarily immutable law.
The prodigies of the Old Testament or the mighty works of the New were extravagances because they were exceptions; and they were exceptions because there was a rule, and that an immutable rule.
In short, there was no rose-tree growing out of the carpet of a trim and tidy bedroom; because rose-trees do not grow out of carpets in trim and tidy bedrooms.

So far it seemed reasonable enough.
But it left out one possibility; that a man can dream about a room as well as a rose; and that a man can doubt about a rule as well as an exception.
As soon as the men of science began to doubt the rules of the game, the game was up.

They could no longer rule out all the old marvels as impossible, in face of the new marvels which they had to admit as possible.

They were themselves dealing now with a number of unknown quantities; what is the power of mind over matter; when is matter an illusion of mind; what is identity, what is individuality, is there a limit to logic in the last extremes of mathematics?
They knew by a hundred hints that their non-miraculous world was no longer watertight; that floods were coming in from somewhere in which they were already out of their depth, and down among very fantastical deep-sea fishes.