THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



overpower even ocular demonstration. There is 

 far more justice in this claim than appears at first 

 sight. The power of drawing correct inferences 

 from what we see, and even of knowing what we 

 do really see, and what we only imagine, is 

 vastly augmented by the rigorous training of the 

 faculties which long habits of observing certain 

 classes of phenomena induce ; and every man of 

 science must have met with numberless cases in 

 which statements egregiously false have been 

 made to him in the most perfect good faith; his 

 informant implicitly believing that he was simply 

 telling what he had seen with his own eyes. A 

 person the other day assured me, that he had 

 frequently seen humming-birds sucking flowers in 

 England : I did not set him down as a liar, be- 

 cause he was a person of indubitable honour ; his 

 acquaintance with natural history, however, was 

 small, and he had fallen into the very natural 

 error of mistaking a moth for a bird. 



It is quite proper that, when evidence is pre- 

 sented of certain occurrences, the admission of 

 which would overturn what we have come to 

 consider as fixed laws, or against which there ex- 

 ists a high degree of antecedent improbability,— 

 thnt evidence should be received with great sus- 

 picion. It should be carefully sifted; possible 

 causes of error should be suggested ; the powers of 

 the observer to judge of the facts should be ex- 

 amined; the actual bounding line between sensu- 

 ous perception and mental inference should be 

 critically investigated; and confirmatory, yet in- 

 dependent, testimony should be sought. Yet, when 

 we have done all this, we should ever remember 

 that truth is stranger than fiction ; that our power 

 to judge of fixed laws is itself very imperfect; 

 and that indubitable phenomena are ever and 

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