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is to communicate the real thoughts of his mind. The credit 

 of teftimony is therefore founded on our original experience of our 

 own veracity, though our eftimates of it are afterwards correded 

 by an enlarged view of the general conduft of mankind. 



The probabilities of chance are included within this general 

 defcription of probability. Dodor Reid has very properly ob- 

 ferved, " that we attribute fome events to chance, becaufe we 

 » know only the remote caufe which muft produce fome one 

 «' event of a number, but know not the more immediate caufe 

 « which determines a particular event of that number in prc- 

 " ference to the others." This he has illuftrated by obferving, 

 « that in throwing a juft die upon a table we fay it is an equal 

 » chance which of the fix fides fhall be turned up, becaufe 

 " neither the perfon who throws, nor the by-ftanders, know the 

 " precife meafure of force and diredion neceffary to turn up 

 " any one fide rather than another." Effay 7. ch. 3. The 

 eftimate of chance appears therefore to be founded in a confi- 

 deration of the connexion of caufe and effed. When we are 

 unable to diftinguifh thofe circumftances of the caufe which will 

 determine the event in a particular manner, we proceed as if 

 all the events which might poflibly arife from the fame general 

 caufe, ading in various circumftances, were equally probable, 

 and make our computation merely from the number. The ex- 

 ample mentioned by Dodor Reid belongs to that clafs of pro- 

 bable propofitions which relates to the operation of phyfical 

 caufes. If the fubjed of computation were the contingency of 

 human condud it would belong to the clafs of moral caufes. 



Before : 



