ccessively passed through, the less strength and evidence does
it receive from them. This I thought necessary to be taken notice of:
because I find amongst some men the quite contrary commonly practised,
who look on opinions to gain force by growing older; and what a thousand
years since would not, to a rational man contemporary with the first
voucher, have appeared at all probable, is now urged as certain beyond
all question, only because several have since, from him, said it one
after another. Upon this ground propositions, evidently false or
doubtful enough in their first beginning, come, by an inverted rule of
probability, to pass for authentic truths; and those which found or
deserved little credit from the mouths of their first authors, are
thought to grow venerable by age, are urged as undeniable.

11. Yet History is of great Use.

I would not be thought here to lessen the credit and use of HISTORY: it
is all the light we have in many cases, and we receive from it a great
part of the useful truths we have, with a convincing evidence. I think
nothing more valuable than the records of antiquity: I wish we had more
of them, and more uncorrupted. But this truth itself forces me to say,
That no probability can rise higher than its first original. What has no
other evidence than the single testimony of one only witness must stand
or fall by his only testimony, whether good, bad, or indifferent; and
though cited afterwards by hundreds of others, one after another, is so
far from receiving any strength thereby, that it is only the weaker.
Passion, interest, inadvertency, mistake of his meaning, and a thousand
odd reasons, or capricios, men's minds are acted by, (impossible to
be discovered,) may make one man quote another man's words or meaning
wrong. He that has but ever so little examined the citations of writers,
cannot doubt how little credit the quotations deserve, where the
originals are wanting; and consequently how much less quotations of
quotations can be relied on. This is certain, that what in one age was
affirmed upon slight grounds, can never after come to be more valid in
future ages by being often repeated. But the further still it is from
the original, the less valid it is, and has always less force in the
mouth or writing of him that last made use of it than in his from whom
he received it.

12. Secondly, In things which Sense cannot discover, Analogy is the
great Rule of Probability.

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