y on Miracles_, p. 179, 12mo; p. 185, 8vo, 1767; p. 117, 8vo,
1817.

N.B.--In order to give every possible facility of reference, three
editions of Hume's Essays have been generally employed: a 12mo,
London, 1756, and two 8vo editions.

[6] "Suppose a fact to be transmitted through twenty persons; the
first communicating it to the second, the second to the third, &c.,
and let the probability of each testimony be expressed by nine-tenths,
(that is, suppose that of ten reports made by each witness, nine only
are true,) then, at every time the story passes from one witness to
another, the evidence is reduced to nine-tenths of what it was before.
Thus, after it has passed through the whole twenty, the evidence will
be found to be less than one-eighth."--LA PLACE, _Essai Philosophique
sur les Probabilites_.

That is, the chances for the fact thus attested being true, will be,
according to this distinguished calculator, less than one in eight.
Very few of the common newspaper-stories, however, relating to foreign
countries, could be traced, if the matter were carefully investigated,
up to an actual eye-witness, even through twenty intermediate
witnesses; and many of the steps of our ladder, would, I fear, prove
but rotten; few of the reporters would deserve to have _one in ten_
fixed as the proportion of their false accounts.

[7] "I did not mention the difficulty of detecting a falsehood in any
private or even public history, at the time and place where it is said
to happen; much more where the scene is removed to ever so small a
distance.... But the matter never comes to any issue, if trusted to the
common method of altercation and debate and flying rumours."--_Hume's
Essay on Miracles_, p. 195, 12mo; pp. 200, 201, 8vo, 1767; p. 127, 8vo,
1817.

[8] See the third Postscript appended to this edition.

[9] "We entertain a suspicion concerning any matter of fact, when the
witnesses _contradict_ each other; when they are of a _suspicious_
character; when they have an _interest_ in what they affirm."--_Hume's
Essay on Miracles_, p. 172, 12mo; p. 176, 8vo, 1767; p. 113, 8vo.
1817.

[10] "That testimony itself derives all its force from experience,
seems very certain.... The first author, we believe, who stated fairly
the connexion between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of
experience, was HUME, in his Essay on Miracles, a work ... abounding
in maxims of great use in the conduct of life."--_Edin. Review_, Sept.