GROUNDS OP DISBELIEF. 167 



flicts, or appears to conflict, with a real law of causation. But 

 a more common case, perhaps, is that of its conflicting with 

 uniformities of mere coexistence, not proved to be dependent 

 on causation : in other words, with the properties of Kinds. 

 It is with these uniformities principally, that the marvellous 

 stories related by travellers are apt to be at variance : as of men 

 with tails, or with wings, and (until confirmed by experience) 

 of flying fish; or of ice, in the celebrated anecdote of the 

 Dutch travellers and the King of Siam. Facts of this de- 

 scription, facts previously unheard of but which could not 

 from any known law of causation be pronounced impossible, 

 are what Hume characterizes as not contrary to experience, 

 but merely unconformable to it ; and Bentham, in his treatise 

 on Evidence, denominates them facts disconformable in specie, 

 as distinguished from such as are disconformable in toto or in 

 degree. 



In a case of this description, the fact asserted is the exist- 

 ence of a new Kind ; which in itself is not in the slightest 

 degree incredible, and only to be rejected if the improbability 

 that any variety of object existing at the particular place and 

 time should not have been discovered sooner, be greater than 

 that of error or mendacity in the witnesses. Accordingly, such 

 assertions, when made by credible persons, and of unexplored 

 places, are not disbelieved, but at most regarded as requiring 

 confirmation from subsequent observers ; unless the alleged 

 properties of the supposed new Kind are at variance with 

 known properties of some larger kind which includes it ; or 

 in other words, unless, in the new Kind which is asserted to 

 exist, some properties are said to have been found disjoined 

 from others which have always been known to accompany 

 them : as in the case of Pliny's men, or any other kind of 

 animal of a structure different from that which has always 

 been found to coexist with animal life. On the mode of 

 dealing with any such case, little needs be added to what has 

 been said on the same topic in the twenty-second chapter.* 

 When the uniformities of coexistence which the alleged fact 



* Supra, pp. 119, 120. 



