date

2 Sept 1804 Evidence Ch.2.
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.
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    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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    As to the question why the legislator does wrong by busying himself on this ground it is, in its conception at least, extremely simple. Data[?] important to warrant on his part a determination to any such effect, cannot, in the nature of the case, be present to his mind. The collection of them can never be complete and adequate, without the addition of such others as can not be present to any mind but that of the Judge, and such others, to whom the same opportunities may have happened to present themselves.

    (The strength of the connection between the principal fact or facts on the one hand and the evidentary fact or facts on the other hand are susceptible (as will appear more and more clearly as we advance) of an infinite number of degrees:) in other words the probative force of the evidentary fact or facts is susceptible of an infinite variety of degrees: and although it should for argument sake be supposed to have been settled, what degree of probative force is sufficient to warrant decision in favour of the one or the other party in each species of cause, yet in no given individual cause of any species would it be possible so to describe the mass of circumstantial evidence exhibited in that cause, and deemed of the requisite force, as to frame by abstraction, out of that individual mass of circumstantial evidence so deemed sufficient, any general rule capable of indicating the sufficiency or insufficiency of the mass of circumstantial evidence afforded by any other individual cause.
  • Title: [28 Sept. 1814 Logic 1]
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    No two objects /entities of any kind/ can present themselves simultaneously to the mind; no, nor can so much as the same object present itself at different times, without presenting the idea of relation. For relation is a fictitious entity, which is produced, and has place, as often as the mind, having perception of any one object, obtains, at the same, or at any immediately succeeding instant, perception of any other object, or even of that same object, if the perception be accompanied with the perception of its being the same - diversity is in the one case the name of the relation, Identity in the other case. But, as identity is but the negation of diversity, thence if, on no occasion, diversity had ever been, neither, on any occasion, would any such idea as that of identity have come into existence.

    Whatsoever two entities real or fictitious come to receive names, and thus to receive their nominal existence, relation would be the third; for between the two, they being by the supposition different, and both of them actual objects of perception, the relation of difference or diversity would also become an object of perception, and in the character of a fictitious entity, a production of the acts of abstraction and denomination, acquire its nominal existence.

    Next after matter and form the fictitious entity relation, or the class of fictitious entities call relations might therefore have been brought to view. But not only between matter and form but also between the one and the other respectively, and the fictitious entities designated by the words quantity, space, and quality, so close seemed the connexion as not to be, without sensible inconvenience, broken by the interposition of any other.

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