een, or any predication
that it will happen again in the same manner, is very true. These
PROBABILITIES rise so near to CERTAINTY, that they govern our thoughts
as absolutely, and influence all our actions as fully, as the most
evident demonstration; and in what concerns us we make little or
no difference between them and certain knowledge. Our belief, thus
grounded, rises to ASSURANCE.

7. II. Unquestionable Testimony, and our own Experience that a thing is
for the most part so, produce Confidence.

The NEXT DEGREE OF PROBABILITY is, when I find by my own experience, and
the agreement of all others that mention it, a thing to be for the most
part so, and that the particular instance of it is attested by many and
undoubted witnesses: v.g. history giving us such an account of men in
all ages, and my own experience, as far as I had an opportunity to
observe, confirming it, that most men prefer their private advantage to
the public: if all historians that write of Tiberius, say that Tiberius
did so, it is extremely probable. And in this case, our assent has a
sufficient foundation to raise itself to a degree which we may call
CONFIDENCE.

8. III. Fair Testimony, and the Nature of the Thing indifferent, produce
unavoidable Assent.

In things that happen indifferently, as that a bird should fly this or
that way; that it should thunder on a man's right or left hand, &c.,
when any particular matter of fact is vouched by the concurrent
testimony of unsuspected witnesses, there our assent is also
UNAVOIDABLE. Thus: that there is such a city in Italy as Rome: that
about one thousand seven hundred years ago, there lived in it a man,
called Julius Caesar; that he was a general, and that he won a battle
against another, called Pompey. This, though in the nature of the thing
there be nothing for nor against it, yet being related by historians of
credit, and contradicted by no one writer, a man cannot avoid believing
it, and can as little doubt of it as he does of the being and actions of
his own acquaintance, whereof he himself is a witness.

9. Experience and Testimonies clashing, infinitely vary the Degrees of
Probability.

Thus far the matter goes easy enough. Probability upon such grounds
carries so much evidence with it, that it naturally determines the
judgment, and leaves us as little liberty to believe or disbelieve, as a
demonstration does, whether we will know, or be ignorant. The difficulty
is, when testimoni