For example, in a
thousand cases, a certain combination of merely circumstantial evidence
in favour of a certain judicial decision, is familiarly allowed
to vanquish all apparent discrepancy on particular and subordinate
points;--the want of concurrence in the evidence of the witnesses on
such points shall not cause a shadow of a doubt as to the conclusion.
For we feel that it is far more improbable that the conclusion should be
untrue, than that the difficulty we cannot solve is truly incapable of
a solution; and when the evidence reaches this point the objection no
longer troubles us.
It is the same with historic investigations. There are ten thousand
facts in history which no one doubts, though the narrators of them may
materially vary in their version, and though some of the circumstances
alleged may be in appearance inexplicable, but the last thing a
man would think of doing, in such cases, would be to neglect the
preponderant evidence on account of the residuum of insoluble
objections. He does not, in short, allow his ignorance to control his
knowledge, nor the evidence which he has not got to destroy what he has;
and the less so, that experience has taught him that in many cases such
apparent difficulties have been cleared up, in the course of time,
and by the progress of knowledge, and proved to be contradictions in
appearance only.
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