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    be an exception to the ordinary course of things . " It is surprising that Mr . Bentham should not perceive that this doctrine is capable of being carried much further than the incredibility of supernatural facts ; every thing which is new , every thing which gives us a view of the laws of nature different from what has hitherto prevailed , would , according to this , be undeserving of a moment ' s attention . The particular testimony , it might be said , on which we attempted to establish such a fact , must of necessity be utterly insignificant when weighed in the balance against the preponderating mass of counter-testimony in favour of the received laws of nature .

    In the next chapter we find an elaborate examination of the doctrine of Price and Campbell in opposition to Hume ' s Essay on Miracles , that improbability as such is not a sufficient reason for refusing our credit to testimony , unless it have a tendency to render it more probable that the witnesses either were deceived or had some motive for imposing upon others . This doctrine , we are told , is " a mere appeal to prejudice against ' examination ; it would persuade us to reject the counsels of experience , to

    believe in facts which experience contradicts , solely because they are affirmed by testimony , and thus to renounce the faculty which elevates us above the brutes . " * One cannot help asking which of these doctrines best deserves to be styled an appeal to prejudice against inquiry , —that which calls upon us to receive and duly examine evidence of all kinds , or that which requires us to reject at once a certain class of facts , however well attested , merely because they are inconsistent with an assumed dogma on the alleged uniformity of the course of nature ? The change in the form of

    expression here is worthy of observation : before , it was " a mass of countertestimony , " now , it is ' * experience , " whose counsels we reject . Let it never be forgotten that nine-tenths of this boasted experience is the experience of others , with which we can become acquainted only by means of their testimony . To what then does the doctrine amount to which our assent is here demanded ? " That to believe facts which testimony contradicts merely because another testimony affirms them , is to renounce the faculty which elevates man above the brutes" !

    After giving an enumeration of the circumstances which may weaken our confidence in human testimony , with a view to shew that the philosophers above-mentioned have ascribed to it a degree of credibility which does not belong to it , our author proceeds , — " That certainty which fails us here we find in the phenomena of nature . These are invariably in the same order , they never deceive us , natura semper sibi consona . "f Here it is proper to observe , that this maxim , so often repeated , if it be true at all , must be true of phenomena of all kinds . Now human witnesses attesting what they

    profess to have seen or heard , are among the phenomena of nature . If , then , we find it to be a fair conclusion from well-ascertained principles of human nature , the result of our own experience fortified by all we have heard of the experience of others , that a number of independent witnesses affirming what they had every opportunity of distinctly observing , in the absence of every imaginable motive to deceive , are worthy of credit , we are bound to remember our maxim , and consider that human nature is semper sibi consona , that those causes which affect the validity of human testimony are just as fixed and invariable as that of gravitation itself .

    Mr . Bentham objects , in the following manner , to Dr . Campbell ' s wellknown illustration of his doctrine . A ferry-boat has crossed a river two thou- >

    * P . 215 . t P . 2 J 6 .

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    3 £# Evidence for ImprobMe and Supernatural Facts .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1827, page 398, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1797/page/6/