fficient evidence, and the
flaws in that evidence overlooked?

Experience will teach us that such instances often occur: witness the
well-known anecdote of the Royal Society; to whom King Charles II.
proposed as a question, whence it is that a vessel of water receives
no addition of weight from a live fish being put into it, though it
does, if the fish be dead. Various solutions, of great ingenuity, were
proposed, discussed, objected to, and defended; nor was it till they
had been long bewildered in the inquiry, that it occurred to them _to
try the experiment_; by which they at once ascertained that the
phenomenon which they were striving to account for,--which was the
acknowledged basis and substratum, as it were, of their debates,--had
no existence but in the invention of the witty monarch.[3]

Another instance of the same kind is so very remarkable that I cannot
forbear mentioning it. It was objected to the system of Copernicus
when first brought forward, that if the earth turned on its axis, as
he represented, a stone dropped from the summit of a tower would not
fall at the foot of it, but at a great distance to the west; _in the
same manner as a stone dropped from the mast-head of a ship in full
sail, does not fall at the foot of the mast, but towards the stern_.
To this it was answered, that a stone being a _part_ of the earth
obeys the same laws, and moves with it; whereas, it is no part of the
ship; of which, consequently, its motion is independent. This solution
was admitted by some, but opposed by others; and the controversy went
on with spirit; nor was it till _one hundred years_ after the death of
Copernicus, that the experiment being tried, it was ascertained that
the stone thus dropped from the head of the mast _does_ fall at the
foot of it![4]

Let it be observed that I am not now impugning any one particular
narrative; but merely showing generally, that what is _unquestioned_
is not necessarily unquestionable; since men will often, at the very
moment when they are accurately sifting the evidence of some disputed
point, admit hastily, and on the most insufficient grounds, what they
have been accustomed to see taken for granted.

The celebrated Hume[5] has pointed out, also, the readiness with which
men believe, on very slight evidence, any story that pleases their
imagination by its admirable and marvellous character. Such hasty
credulity, however, as he well remarks, is utterly unworthy of a
philoso