170 INDUCTION. 



interest has been implicated religious zeal, party feeling, 

 vanity, or at least the passion for the marvellous, in persons 

 strongly susceptible of it. When none of these or similar 

 circumstances exist to account for the apparent strength of 

 the testimony ; and where the assertion is not in contradiction 

 either to those universal laws which know no counteraction or 

 anomaly, or to the generalizations next in comprehensiveness 

 to them, but would only amount, if admitted, to the existence 

 of an unknown cause or an anomalous Kind, in circumstances 

 not so thoroughly explored but that it is credible that things 

 hitherto unknown may still come to light ; a cautious person 

 will neither admit nor reject the testimony, but will wait for 

 confirmation at other times and from other unconnected 

 sources. Such ought to have been the conduct of the King of 

 Siam when the Dutch travellers affirmed to him the existence 

 of ice. But an ignorant person is as obstinate in his con- 

 temptuous incredulity as he is unreasonably credulous. Any- 

 thing unlike his own narrow experience he disbelieves, if it 

 flatters no propensity ; any nursery tale is swallowed implicitly 

 by him if it does. 



4. I shall now advert to a very serious misapprehen- 

 sion of the principles of the subject, which has been committed 

 by some of the writers against Hume's Essay on Miracles, and 

 by Bishop Butler before them, in their anxiety to destroy what 

 appeared to them a formidable weapon of assault against the 

 Christian religion ; and the effect of which is entirely to con- 

 found the doctrine of the Grounds of Disbelief. The mistake 

 consists in overlooking the distinction between (what may be 

 called) improbability before the fact, and improbability after it ; 

 or (since, as Mr. Venn remarks, the distinction of past and 

 future is not the material circumstance) between the improba- 

 bility of a mere guess being right, and the improbability of an 

 alleged fact being true. 



Many events are altogether improbable to us, before they 

 have happened, or before we are informed of their happening, 

 which are not in the least incredible when we are informed of 

 them, because not contrary to any, even approximate, indue- 



