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.