400 Testimony. [CHAP. xvi. 



circumstances, a much larger proportion, say nine-tenths, 

 are found to lie. There is no appeal to a class in this way at 

 all, there is no immediate reference to statistics of any kind 

 whatever ; at least none which we are conscious of using at 

 the time, or to which we should think of resorting for justifi 

 cation afterwards. The decision seems to depend upon the 

 quickness of the observer s senses and of his apprehension 

 generally. 



Statistics about the veracity of witnesses seem in fact to 

 be permanently as inappropriate as all other statistics occa 

 sionally may be. We may know accurately the percentage 

 of recoveries after amputation of the leg; but what surgeon 

 would think of forming his judgment solely by such tables 

 when he had a case before him ? We need not deny, of 

 course, that the opinion he might form about the patient s 

 prospects of recovery might ultimately rest upon the propor 

 tions of deaths and recoveries he might have previously wit 

 nessed. But if this were the case, these data are lying, as 

 one may say, obscurely in the background. He does not 

 appeal to them directly and immediately in forming his 

 judgment. There has been a far more important interme 

 diate process of apprehension and estimation of what is 

 essential to the case and what is not. Sharp senses, memory, 

 judgment, and practical sagacity have had to be called into 

 play, and there is not therefore the same direct conscious 

 and sole appeal to statistics that there was before. The 

 surgeon may have in his mind two or three instances in 

 which the operation performed was equally severe, but in 

 which the patient s constitution was different; the latter 

 element therefore has to be properly allowed for. There may 

 be other instances in which the constitution was similar, but 

 the operation more severe ; and so on. Hence, although the 

 ultimate appeal may be to the statistics, it is not so directly ; 



