048-110.xml

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.

048-108.xml

Title: [2 Sept 1804 Evidence Ch.2.]

Description: 2 Sept 1804

Evidence

Ch.2. Explanations

§.2

To say I am infallible is a speech that a man of a common degree of modesty and rationality will be ashamed to make even to himself. He will not only not say it of all his judgments all his persuasions taken in the lump, but neither will he say it of any one such judgment - the judgment pronounced upon any individual occasion - taken by itself. But to say of any one individual fact - this fact is impossible - is to say /express/ the same thing /the same proposition, only/ in different terms. For if indeed this fact be impossible - absolutely and in its own nature impossible - then in so long as asserting it to be impossible, I who assert it so to be, am infallible: the extent of my infallibility is commensurate to the aggregate extent of the aggregate mass of impossible facts - that is of such facts - all such facts to which the attribute of impossibility is thus /comes thus to be/ ascribed by me.

048-105.xml

Title: [2 Sept 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]

Description: 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.