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.