GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF. 443 



contradiction to some of these very general laws, will more than improb- 

 ability be asserted by any cautious person ; and improbability not of the 

 highest degree, unless the time and place in which the fact is said to have 

 occurred, render it almost certain that the anomaly, if real, could not liave 

 been overlooked by other observers. Suspension of judgment is in all 

 other cases the resource of the judicious inquirer; provided the testimony 

 in favor of the anomaly presents, when well sifted, no suspicious circum- 

 stances. 



But the testimony is scarcely ever found to stand that test, in cases in 

 which the anomaly is not real. In the instances on record in which a great 

 number of witnesses, of good reputation and scientific acquirements, have 

 testified to the truth of something which has turned out untrue, there have 

 almost always been circumstances which, to a keen observer who had taken 

 due pains to sift the matter, would have rendered the testimony untrust- 

 worthy. There have generally been means of accounting for the impres- 

 sion on the senses or minds of the alleged percipients, by fallacious appear- 

 ances ; or some epidemic delusion, propagated by the contagious influence 

 of popular feeling, has been concerned in the case ; or some strong interest 

 has been implicated — religious zeal, party feeling, vanity, or at least the 

 passion for the marvelous, 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 Avould 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 travelers aftirmed 

 to him the existence of ice. But an ignorant person is as obstinate in his 

 contemptuous incredulity as he is unreasonably credulous. Any thing un- 

 like 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 misapprehension of the princi- 

 ples 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 confound the doctrine of the Grounds of Disbelief. The mistake con- 

 sists in overlooking the distinction between (what may be called) improba- 

 bility 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 improbability of a mere guess being right, and the improbabil- 

 ity 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, induction. In the cast of a perfectly fair die, the 

 chances are five to one against throwing ace, that is, ace will be thrown 

 on an average only once in six throws. But this is no reason against be- 

 lieving that ace was thrown on a given occasion, if any credible witness 



