CHAPTER XVII. 



ON THE CREDIBILITY OF EXTEAOEDINARY STORIES. 



1. IT is now time to recur for fuller investigation to an 

 enquiry which has been already briefly touched upon more 

 than once ; that is, the validity of testimony to establish, 

 as it is frequently expressed, an otherwise improbable story. 

 It will be remembered that in a previous chapter (the 

 twelfth) we devoted some examination to an assertion, by 

 Butler, which seemed to be to some extent countenanced 

 by Mill, that a great improbability before the proof might 

 become but a very small improbability after the proof. In 

 opposition to this it was pointed out that the different 

 estimates which we undoubtedly formed of the credibility 

 of the examples adduced, had nothing to do with the 

 fact of the event being past or future, but arose from a 

 very different cause ; that the conception of the event 

 which we entertain at the moment (which is all that is then 

 and there actually present to us, and as to the correctness 

 of which as a representation of facts we have to make up our 

 minds) comes before us in two very different ways. In one 

 instance it was a mere guess of our own which we knew 

 from statistics would be right in a certain proportion of 

 cases ; in the other instance it was the assertion of a witness, 

 and therefore the appeal was not now primarily to statistics of 

 the event, but to the trustworthiness of the witness. The con- 



