date

2 Sept 1804 Evidence Circumstantial
2 Sept 1804

Evidence

Circumstantial

Ch.2. Explanation

§.2

There is yet another circumstance by which impossibility - as well the idea as the word seems to present itself to the mind with a recommendation beyond any that can be produced by its [...?] certainty. For satisfying the mind of the impossibility of this or that fact, a single circumstance may be sufficient. Certainty can seldom be pronounced but in a review[?] of a multiplicity of facts.

What a man /the mind/ aims at in its /his/ researches after truth is to throw into classes[?] the facts /in the [...?]/ that he regards /looks upon/ as true and certain - certainly true - on the other hand the facts which he looks upon as impossible. If any circumstance can be found of a nature to constitute a criterion or essential character of any such class - a mark whereby if found upon an individual object that object is thereby proved to belong to the class in question - a discovery of this sort will be very commodious in practice. To satisfy himself in each instance that the individual in question belongs to the class in question a man has but to see this mark, and all further examination, with the labour attendant on it, is at an end. Thus it is that by observing the impression upon a guinea, a man saves himself the trouble of measuring and weighing it and assaiying[?] it. Thus it is that the human mind acts /constantly upon the look out for occasions on which, and/ under a constant anxiety for ground, and even pretences[?] on which it may look upon itself as warranted in pronouncing the comfortable words certainty and impossibility: more especially impossibility, in so far as the marks capable of showing a fact to belong to this class, turn[?] /promise/ in this case to be particularly simple and easily attainable.
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  • Title: [2 Sept 1804 Evidence Ch.2.]
    Description: 2 Sept 1804

    Evidence

    Ch.2. Explanations

    §.2

    That certainty probability and impossibility, and improbability are properly speaking attributes not of things - not of facts - but only of the mind that thinks of them, is an observation which there has already been occasion to bring to view. The observation /consideration perception/ however is not a pleasant one: and thence it is that the mind labours /labours on every occasion/ by all the contrivances in its power, to keep it out of sight. To warrant the conclusions which /it[?]/ the mind makes upon all sorts of occasions - to warrant the lines[?] of practice it [...?] into upon those occasions - all that it really has on each occasion is its own persuasion in relation to the truth of the supposed facts which are in question on these several occasions. But of the fallibility of that sort of internal sense, of the fallibility of it how strong [...?] its perceptions /reports/ - of the [...?] of such perception to prove false and unconformable to the subsequently evidenced state of things - every man's experience affords him but too decisive and frequent exemplifications. Convinced in this way of the fallibility of that criterion[?] of truth the only one which is within himself, he looks out for, and by the help of these powers of self-deceit with which he is furnished in such abundance by the nature of language succeeds in fabricating, a sort of fictitious criterion, which he /a fictitious property, which that[?] it may be seen to be a different one, he lodges in a different/ place in the nature of the thing, - in the nature of the facts themselves. There are some classes of facts certain in their nature; others in different degrees probable: of the former, certainty is an unquestionable attribute; if the latter, probability, in all its various degrees.
  • 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.
  • Title: [2 Sept 1804 Evidence Ch. Explanations]
    Description: 2 Sept 1804

    Evidence

    Ch. Explanations

    To show at the same time that all that there is of reality in the case, where certainty and impossibility are attributed to the facts themselves, is the persuasion /the persuasion in question in such cases/ which exists in our own minds - and at the same time to show that this persuasion is sufficient for every practical purpose, I shall proceed to give a short and general view of the alledged impossibility in the character of a species of circumstantial evidence, operating in disproof of the existence of some corresponding principal fact alledged to be evidenced, the existence of which is on the other [.../] no matter from what source. By the view thus given of the subject (of impossibility) two propositions will I flatter myself all along appear. One is, that impossibility is merely relative - relative to the person by whom it is employed: in as much as the same[?] fact which to him /one/ is called impossible because to him it appears so /because he is persuaded of its being so/, might naturally to another man appear probable, or even to himself, at another time. The other is - that in so far as any fact thus really appears to him to be impossible, he is fully warranted, as well in point of prudence as of probity, in acting as if it really were impossible in its own nature: as if he had so full a comprehension of its nature that is of the nature of all things, as to be able to pronounce the[?] fact impossible, without the possibility of being deceived.