fince the activity of the will may be extended to an indefinite number of cafes.

But I cannot fuppofe that a man of found judgment will act in any particular cafe as a madman would, although there is a poffibility that he may. It is therefore only probable that he will not; and that probability I must allow to be fufficient for me to establish a found and folid judgment, adapted to the purposes of my prefent condition.

As to those things, therefore, which I could neither feel, fee, hear, nor examine myself, because the distance of times and places was an obstacle; the probability of these things, I fay, will increase, in proportion to the number of witneffes, of witneffes deferving belief, and in proportion alfo to the circumftantiality and harmony of their evidence, although not precisely fimilar to each other.

CHAP.

F I confider certainty as a whole, and

I make an ideal divifion of it into parts

or degrees, these parts or degrees will be parts or degrees of certainty.

Thefe ideal divifions of certainty I call probabilities; the relation therefore which the parts bear to the whole will give me the degrees of certainty.

I do not say that the probability of a thing increases in proportion to the number of witnesses who atteft it; but I fay that the probability of a thing increases by the number of witneffes, according to a certain proportion, which the mathematician attempts to reduce to calculation. To form a pro

per

per judgment of the witneffes, two general and effential conditions are requiredtheir capacity, and integrity. The first of thefe conditions will depend on their bodily and intellectual faculties.-The degree of probity and difinterestedness will determine the other.

This must on the whole be finally determined by experience (which is the reiteration of facts, and of particular facts, by which we become acquainted with the moral character).

To apply therefore the fame fundamental principles to oral and written tradition, the laft of which is of greater force and credibility than the former, this credibility will encrease by the concurrence of different copies of the fame evidence; these copies I confider as fo many links of the fame chain; and a fucceffion of copies I fhall view in the light of fo many collateral chains, which will encrease in fuch a manner the probability of the written tradition, that it will indefinitely approach to a certainty, and will far furpass that which the teftimony of many

5

ocular

ocular witnesses might give.

God is the author of moral as well as of natural order. I have found two kinds of dispensation in natural order (c): the first, that which determines the ordinary course of nature; the fecond, that which determines those extraordinary events, which I call miracles.

The first has in view the happiness of all fenfitive beings in our globe.

The second has in view the happiness of man alone, because man is the only being on earth who can judge of that dispensation, confider its end, apply it to himself, and direct his actions relatively to that end. That particular difpenfation must therefore be adapted to the faculties of man, and to the various methods by which he may exercise them here below, and form a judgment of things.

It is to man that the author of nature chose to speak: He conformed his language therefore to the nature of that being whom his goodness chofe to inftruct; his plan of

(c) Vide Part i. Chap. v, and vi.

wisdom did not admit that he should change the nature of that being, and give to him on earth the faculties of an angel. But infinite WISDOM, without making an angel of man, had pre-ordained means, by which he might arrive at a reasonable certainty of that which was of the highest importance for him to know. Man is endowed with various intellectual faculties; the fum of these faculties constitutes what we call reason.

If it were the will of God not to force man into belief-if he chofe only to speak to his reason, this was acting with man as with an intelligent being. He muft therefore have fpoken to him a language adapted to his reafon; and it must be his will that he should apply his reason to the explanation of that language, as to the sublimest inquiry which could occupy his intellectual faculties.

The nature of that language being fuch as could not be addreffed to every individual (d), it was neceffary for the fupreme

(d) Vide the beginning of Chap. i. of this Part.

legislator