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.