, to hear on all sides that, while we were yet in bed, the
sun was seen to rise in the west instead of the east, and though we
found the statement repeated in the 'Times' and 'Daily News,' and
presently afterwards saw it posted up at the Exchange as having been
flashed by electric wire from New York and Kurrachee, we are not for a
moment to doubt that these reiterated and mutually corroborative
statements are utterly false. For, numerous and consistent as they may
be, they are but copies of the experience of other people, while,
although we may have to oppose to them only our own single experience,
still that single experience is original, and therefore of more worth.
The value, moreover, of any experience is, irrespective of originality,
determined by the difference in number between the results of opposite
kinds which it has discovered. The smaller number is deducted from the
larger, and the balance represents the probability that the results
which have most frequently occurred hitherto will continue to occur
henceforward. The larger the deduction thus to be made, the smaller the
probability, and _vice versa_; and when the deduction is _nil_, or when
there has hitherto been complete uniformity, the probability becomes
virtual certainty. When two original experiences are opposed to each
other, their respective values, ascertained in the same manner, are
compared, and trust is reposed in one or the other accordingly. Now,
according to these principles, difficult as it might be in the case
supposed for any one to conceive what motive all the rest of the world
could have for lying, it would be still more difficult to believe them
to be speaking truth. For why do we ever believe anything that anyone
says? Why but because we have learnt by experience that, when people
have no apparent motive for lying, they commonly do speak the truth? But
the same experience which has taught us this has taught us likewise that
people do now and then lie without apparent motive. At best, therefore,
there is never more than a probability that people are speaking the
truth, while in this instance, the supposition that they might be
speaking the truth would imply that there may be a truth against which
there is proof amounting to certainty. For what they affirm is that
something has happened the very reverse of what has invariably happened
before in the same circumstances. Is it not infinitely more likely that
people should be lying as they have