S ECT. 11.] Testimony. 403 



10. The Chance problems which are concerned with tes 

 timony are not altogether confined to such instances as those 

 hitherto referred to. Though we must, as it appears to me, 

 reject all attempts to estimate the credibility of any par 

 ticular witness, or to refer him to any assigned class in 

 respect of his trustworthiness, and consequently abandon as 

 unsuitable any of the numerous problems which start from 

 such data as a witness who is wrong once in ten times/ 

 yet it does not follow that testimony may not to a slight 

 extent be treated by our science in a somewhat different 

 manner. We may be quite unable to estimate, except in 

 the roughest possible way, the veracity of any particular 

 witness, and yet it may be possible to form some kind of 

 opinion upon the veracity of certain classes of witnesses ; 

 to say, for instance, that Europeans are superior in this way 

 to Orientals. So we might attempt to explain why, and to 

 what extent, an opinion in which the judgments of ten per 

 sons, say jurors, concur, is superior to one in which five only 

 concur. Something may also be done towards laying down 

 the principles in accordance with which we are to decide 

 whether, and why, extraordinary stories deserve less credence 

 than ordinary ones, even if we cannot arrive at any precise 

 and definite decision upon the point. This last question is 

 further discussed in the course of the next chapter. 



11. The change of view in accordance with which it 

 follows that questions of the kind just mentioned need not 

 be entirely rejected from scientific consideration, presents it- 



perhaps usually happens, that we on the average, but truth in each 



are not absolutely forced to come individual instance, so that we had 



to a decision ; at least so far as the rather not form an opinion at all 



acquitting of an accused person may than form one of which we can only 



be considered as avoiding a decision. say in its justification that it will 



It may be of much greater import- tend to lead us right in the long 



ance to us to attain not merely truth run. 



262 



