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.