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23 Aug 1804
Evidence
Circumstantial
Ch Application
Ch. Of the case and application to be made of circumstantial evidence.
1. The strength or closeness of the connection between one fact and another between one fact in the character of a /the/ principal fact, and another in the character of the correspondent evidentiary fact will be found susceptible of all manner of degrees.
2. These degrees are the same things with the degrees of probability with regard to the happening of the principal fact, the probability resulting from the assumed existence of the evidentiary fact: and these degrees of probability moreover (the /all/ probability being relative, and the assertion of it no more than an assertion of the intensity of persuasion on the part of some person with reference to the existence of the principal fact in question) are no otherwise to be measured or indicated /or measured[?]/ in the way in which the degrees of persuasion are to be indicated and measured as explained in a preceding book.
3. The closeness of the connection is not in any one instance capable of being liquidated, in such manner as to be expressed by determinate number.
4. Consequently the degree of closeness can not in any one of any two cases be stated as having any determinate ratio to the degree of closeness in the other.
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Title: [23 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]Description: 23 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial Ch Application 12. In the operations /case/ of physical nature the uniformity of operation is much more compleat and consequently the degree of closeness of connection as between fact and fact is capable of being much greater than in the other case. It is here, and here alone, that examples of conclusive evidence may be to be found. 13. Amongst[?] most species of animals, and the human in particular, pregnancy may be regarded as conclusive evidence of sexual conjunction. 2 And again, in the case of the human species, the birth of a child, possessing the sensible properties of a mulatto, may be regarded as conclusive evidence of the proposition that one or other of the parents was of negro race, the other of the race of whites. 14. These examples at the same time that they prove the safety with which the evidentiary fact in question may be established in /convicted with/ the character of conclusive evidence of the principal fact in question, evince also the inability of it. Is there any danger that a Judge, after it has been established that Sempronia[?] has been delivered of a child, should have any doubts of her being no longer in a virgin state?
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Title: [16 Sept 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]Description: 16 Sept 1804 Evidence Circumstantial Ch. [...?] [...?] [...?] ยง 1. Generalis[?] Ch. Probative force of the several species /above modifications/ of circumstantial evidence - causes of its failure. Take on the one part any given principal fact; on the other, any given evidentiary fact, being such with reference to the above principal fact: and let the existence of the evidentiary fact be supposed to be certain - admitted as such on all hands. To whomsoever it appears that such is the strength /probative force/ of the connection between the two in this case no /no/ [...?] of things can take a place in which the principal fact shall not have happened, to him the probative force of the evidentiary fact must /can not but/ appear conclusive. To whomsoever it appears that in the same case this or that fact may have existed /had existence/, the existence of which being supposed the principal fact may not have happened, to him the probative force of the evidentiary fact must appear short of conclusive The deficiency in point of conclusiveness will appear greater and greater, the greater the probability of such collateral and hypothetical infirmative fact: and suppose a number of these hypothetical facts, the probability of each being the same the above deficiency will be greater and greater, in proportion as the number of such infirmative facts is greater: - all these separate /several/ infirmative facts will form an aggregate /a sort of complex/ infirmative fact the infirmative force of which will be as the number of the elementary or compound infirmative facts. In like manner by the ordinary mathematical methods, if the probability of each such elementary infirmative fact were given, although in the case of each it were different in the case of each, the aggregate infirmative force of the aggregate infirmation fact might be obtained.
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Title: [23 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial]Description: 23 Aug 1804 Evidence Circumstantial Ch Application 10. But no species of behaviour can on any describable species of occasion, be so far considered /deemed/ as conclusive as to warrant the laying down a general rule obliging the Judge, as often as that sort of occasion presents itself, to consider that species /sort/ of behaviour as conclusive evidence of the sort of principal fact in question - in a word of a principal fact of any sort. 11. The reason is that in the assumption of a necessary and unreflecting[?] connection between any sort of external behaviour and any state of mind in respect of the fact of intentionality consciousness /the fact/, and /or/ the nature of the operating /determining/ motive force a certain unvaried and inexorable[?] line[?] of conduct on the occasion in question is assumed as being universal among mankind. But to prove the [...?] of this supposition, the single case of insanity (a case as every one knows but too frequently verified) is sufficient. And in insanity the degree of derangement is susceptible of an infinity of degrees /variable upon a scale of infinite length and number/ between perfect sanity and perfect wildness[?]. 11. The supposition of such conclusiveness supposes perfect consistency to be constant and universal in every human mind. But there never does, nor in human probability ever will exist that human existence /being/, of whose conduct any such perfect consistency can with truth be predicated.
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