238 THOUGHTS ON BELIEF AND EVIDENCE. 



single sensation or contemporaneous group, or even the various sen- 

 sations combined in any single scene, and a series of occurrences and 

 changes with various actors and perhaps various causes of excitement ; 

 and we know that when called upon to express the whole in words, 

 we might well, in the latter case, vary our account on different occa- 

 sions in the minor particulars, though entirely free from fraudulent 

 intentions. Inaccurate habits of observation, and the want of suffi- 

 cient command of language to express well what is in their minds, 

 greatly increase the danger, in ordinary cases, of conveying false im- 

 pressions. Such then are the sources of the uncertainty of testimony. 

 Men do not always desire to communicate their real sensations, inte- 

 rest and passion often exciting them to wilful deception, without moral 

 feeling offering any efficient check ; and where there is no fraud, con- 

 fusion of ideas, indifference on the subject, want of good observing 

 power, want of clearness of language, and the colouring influence of 

 prejudice, passion and desire, distort the narrative so as to render it 

 essentially deceptive. Against all these causes of error we have to 

 be upon our guard ; and if, as often happens, testimony reaches us 

 only through a chain of witnesses, each step in the transmission in- 

 creases the danger of some mistake, so that the value of such evidence 

 is perpetually deteriorating. But we must recollect that recorded 

 testimony, though it may require evidence as to the reliability of the 

 record, is subject to no such deterioration as has been referred to, and 

 on the other hand, it very often happens that the same scenes and 

 series of events are witnessed by several different individuals whose 

 separate recollections we can obtain, and as the chances are almost 

 inconceivably great against mere inventors agreeing in the same nar- 

 rative or any principal part of it, the concurrence of independent 

 witnesses, i.e., of such as cannot be supposed to have agreed together 

 respecting what they should say, produces an amount of confidence 

 nearly equalling what belongs to our own sensations and approaching 

 very near to certainty. In fact the consistent narrative of a disin- 

 terested, and still more of a sacrificing witness, supported as to main 

 facts by other independent witnesses, produces a confidence in which 

 we are conscious of no deficiency, and which is fully equal to what is 

 needed for any practical purpose, whilst any record of alleged facts 

 containing no inconsistency in itself, or with what is well ascertained 

 by other means, and no strange improbability or incompatibility with 

 the ordinary course of nature, is reasonably received as true, unless 



