GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF. 189 



are what Hume characterizes as not contrary to expe- 

 rience, 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 existence 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 asser- 

 tions, when made by credible persons, and of unex- 

 plored 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 pro- 

 perties 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 would violate, 

 are such as to raise a strong presumption of their 

 being the result of causation, the fact which conflicts 

 with them is to be disbelieved, at least provisionally, 

 and subject to further investigation. When the pre- 

 sumption amounts to a virtual certainty, as in the 



* Supra, p. 131136. 



