i8z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



front rank of qualifications, the confounding 1 of general intelligence 

 with special intelligence, the inference that the senses are infallible, 

 and the utter non-recognition of the limitations of the brain and its 

 liability to disturbance in the presence of circumstances that excite the 

 emotions. 



Reid, after citing the custom of courts in assuming that the eves 

 and ears are to be trusted, inquires: 



"Can any stronger proof be given that it is the universal judgment of man- 

 kind that the evidence of sense is a kind of evidence which we may securely 

 rest upon in the most momentous concerns of mankind that it is a kind of evi- 

 dence against which we ought not to admit any reasoning, and therefore that 

 to reason either for or against it is an insult to common-sense? " 



More recently still, indeed most recently of all, the anonymous 

 author of " Supernatural Religion," in speaking of the testimony of 

 Faul relating to the resurrection, says that it is not of such a character 

 as would be received in a court of justice, thereby implying that the 

 evidence of courts is evidence of the highest kind, whereas from the 

 scientific point of view it is oftentimes the worst kind of evidence al- 

 though practically it may be the best that is possible in the administra- 

 tion of law : the form of swearing, though it may make the dishonest 

 transiently honest, and force truth from unwilling lips, can never com- 

 pensate for the limitations of the human brain, or correct the errors 

 that enter through the senses, or make an expert out of a non-expert. 



Laplace enunciates the formula that the more improbable a state- 

 ment in which witnesses agree, the greater the probability of its truth 

 a statement which, in view of our present knowledge of the brain, 

 seems almost satirical ; but Abercombie, although a physician, gives 

 full assent to the proposition in these words, which could not have been 

 written by any one who had even a general conception of the philoso- 

 phy of trance : 



" Thus we may have two men whom we know to be so addicted to lying 

 that we would not attach the smallest credit to their single testimony on any 

 subject. If we find these concurring in a statement respecting an event which 

 was highly prohable, or very likely to have occurred at the time which they men- 

 tion, we may still have a suspicion that they are lying, and that they may have 

 happened to concur in the same lie, even although there should he no suspicion 

 of connivance. But, if the statement was in the highest degree improbable, 

 such as that of a man rising from the dead, we may feel it to be impossible that 

 they could accidentally have agreed in such a statement ; and, if we are satisfied 

 that there could be no connivance, we may receive a conviction from its very 

 improbability that it may be true." 



Again, Abercrombie remarks : 



" Whatever probability there is that the eyes of one man may be deceived in 

 any one instance, the probability is as nothing that both his sight and touch 

 should be deceived at once ; or that the senses of ten men should be deceived 

 in the same manner, at the same time ; ... if we find numerous witnesses 



