048-079.xml

Title: [25 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]

Description: 25 Aug 1804

Evidence

Circumstantial

Ch.1.

§.1 Circumstantial

 Insert this in text or note? at length or in abridgment?

Book the 1. Of Circumstantial Evidence

Ch. 1. Practical uses and order of the contents of this Book.

§§.1. Precedence why given to the topic of circumstantial Evidence.

We now enter upon the examination of the different species[?] of evidence.

On the fact of the term circumstantial, when compared with the correspondent term direct from which it is distinguished and to which consequently it is opposed, viz: direct - it[?] may naturally enough occurr, that it is to direct and not to circumstantial evidence, that priority of consideration is due. Circumstantial (it may occurr) /be said/ is not the principal, the most satisfactory species[?] of evidence. it is a sort of[?] irregular [...?] makeshift species, admissible no otherwise than as a corroborative /help-mate/, or at most, only as a substitute, to direct evidence. Say to us therefore in the first place what you have to say on the subject of direct evidence: that done, it is then that circumstantial evidence will find its proper place.

I answer - what is above, is in good measure /a certain sense/ true: yet notwithstanding which I give the priority to circumstantial evidence, and that for a very simple reason and which I expect to find a satisfactory one. Questions relative to circumstantial evidence may be treated. The notion[?] /Every thing/ that belongs to of[?] circumstantial evidence may be fully explained /discussed/ without entering into the previous consideration of any other topic belonging to the field of evidence /the precognition of any thing belonging to any other topic of the field/; and in particular without regard to the consideration of personal trustworthiness or untrustworthiness /regard due to his or that species of evidence/ or the propriety or impropriety of exclusions on that ground. None of these topics can well be [...?] /explained/ without /without/ involving a [...?] of institutions[?] the[?] progression of a [...?] of particular belonging to the formal[?] [...?].

048-102.xml

Title: [29 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]

Description: 29 Aug 1804

Evidence

Circumstantial

Ch.2 Explanations

[...?] as [...?], or abridged?

(An observation is here necessary to prevent ambiguity /indistinctness/ and confusion. The considerations

The question of certainty and necessity on the one hand, and of impossibility on the other, are /there seem to be/ more closely connected, than might at first sight be supposed.) Correspondent to every positive fact - to the existence of any given fact is a negative fact - the non-existence of that same fact. Certainty of the existence of any given positive fact is the same thing /synonymous/with impossibility of the existence of the correspondent negative fact. Certainty of the existence of any given negative fact, is the same thing with impossibility of the existence of the correspondent positive fact. Acts of a negative nature, are frequently found disguised under a positive denomination. Take, for instance starving (a child or prisoner[?]); insolvency; absconding; smuggling in various cases.

So again facts at large. That Titius is dead, may at first sight be taken for a positive fact. Examined more closely it will appear to be more properly a negative fact: dead being only an abridged mode of saying, not /no longer/ alive. So again in the case of absence: absent from such or such a place /is as much as/ not present /absent is as much as to say, not present/ - not in such /that/ or such a place.

048-098.xml

Title: [9 Sept 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]

Description: 9 Sept 1804

Evidence

Circumstantial

Ch. Generalia

§. Modification

[...?]. Evidence by deportment - by demeanour - by behaviour - by conduct by actions - all these denominations indicate nearly the same thing - personal evidence of this sort though it be of a nature peculiar to persons /besides having a person for its source/, and agrees in some respects with evidence by discourse, differs widely and materially from it in other respects. In the way of discourse, evidence can not be given by a person without the concurrence of his will, directed to the very object of inducing a belief of the facts reported by it: in the way of deportment evidence may be given - the existence of the facts in question suggested - without any such concurrence. Indeed it is mostly in the case when /in which/ if it depended upon his will no such suggestion - no such persuasion - would take place, that the evidence in the way of deportment is resorted to. discourse it is current /well known/, is the ordinary, most apposite, and most determinate and unambiguous vehicle for human ideas for personal evidence. Deportment is but an imperfect and makeshift substitute for discourse. Accordingly it is only when evidence in the way of discourse is not to be had or is regarded as fallacious, that /recourse is had/ evidence in /by/ the way of deportment is recurred to. Evidence by deportment is not - nothing but evidence in the way of discourse is - testimony nor that when extra[?] judicially uttered[?]. Questions substituted in some cases of natural defect for language /words/ are not deportment but testimony. Signs also, if employed instead of language, come under the notion of evidence by discourse, and not under that of evidence by deportment.