WHAT IS SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE? 101 



as we conveniently could, and came to our present con- 

 clusion, without being able to remember how we arrived 

 at it ; but in scientific research, when we examine a ques- 

 tion, we should do so both fairly and fully. We are not 

 able to reason perfectly, and are therefore only morally 

 bound to reason as well as we can, and take the con- 

 sequences ; punishment helps us to do better. In matters 

 beyond our senses we are obliged to trust to inference and 

 analogy, and in those beyond our personal experience we 

 trust to human testimony, and this has often as much 

 practical force, and even more upon average intellects, 

 than a mathematical demonstration would have ; but that 

 by no means proves it to be equally certain. Men also 

 are often obliged, in daily life, to act upon authority and 

 very incomplete proof, and run the risk of mistake. As 

 authority is itself based upon reasonable belief, and reason- 

 able belief is based upon sufficient evidence, it is only 

 when authority affirms more than the evidence warrants 

 that belief based upon it is dangerous. 



The age of an opinion is not a sufficient proof of its 

 truth; men long believed that the earth was a plane. 

 Also, neither instinct, conviction, consciousness, nor con- 

 ceivability, in themselves, however strong, are proof ; we 

 may, for example, be convinced, be conscious, conceive 

 and affirm that the earth is a plane, as men once univer- 

 sally did, and some do now ; or that the human will is 4 a 

 supernatural power ' and ' independent of natural law ; ' ! 

 but in each case it would only be an affirmation, and 

 affirmation of important statements without proof is often 

 dangerous. In matters of science it often happens that 

 explanations which are inconceivable to an ignorant man, 

 or even to most men, are the only true ones. The first 

 law of motion, now considered an axiom, was inconceivable 



1 B, W. Dale, Mutual Relations of Science and Religious Faith, p. &. 



