Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Evidence

Though no evidence affects the fancy so strongly as that of sense, yet there is other evidence which gives as full satisfaction and as clear a conviction to our reason.

The same adhesion to vice, and aversion from goodness, will be a reason for rejecting any proof whatsoever.

The solid reason of one man with imprejudicate apprehensions begets as firm a belief as the authority or aggregated testimony of many hundreds.

Abatements may take away infallible concludency in these evidences of fact, yet they may be probable and inductive of credibility, though not of science.

Now for the most part it so falleth out, touching things which generally are received, that although in themselves they be most certain, yet, because men presume them granted of all, we are hardliest able to bring proof of their certainty.

Every cause admitteth not such infallible evidence of proof as leaveth no possibility of doubt or scruple behind it.

Being indifferent, we should receive and embrace opinions according as evidence gives the attestation of truth.

Beyond the evidence it carries with it, I advise him not to follow any man’s interpretation.

Reason can never permit the mind to reject a greater evidence to embrace what is less evident, nor allow it to entertain probability in opposition to knowledge and certainty.

Nothing that is self-evident can be the proper subject of examination.

No man, in matters of this life, requires an assurance either of the good which he designs, or of the evil which he avoids, from arguments demonstratively certain.

With ordinary minds it is the suitableness, not the evidence, of a truth that makes it to be yielded to; and it is seldom that anything practically convinces a man that does not please him first.

There was no such defect in man’s understanding but that it would close with the evidence.

If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them.

Aristotle has long since observed how unreasonable it is to expect the same kind of proof for everything which we have for some things.

Mathematical things are only capable of clear demonstration; conclusions in natural philosophy are proved by induction of experiments, things moral by moral arguments, and matters of fact by credible testimony.

When anything is proved by as good arguments as a thing of that kind is capable of, we ought not, in reason, to doubt of its existence.

Let not the proof of any position depend on the positions which follow, but always on those which go before.

The proper office of candour is to prepare the mind not for the rejection of all evidence, but for the right reception of evidence;—not to be a substitute for reasons, but to enable us fairly to weigh the reasons on both sides.

I call that physical certainty which doth depend upon the evidence of sense, which is the first and highest kind of evidence of which human nature is capable.

By indubitable certainty I mean that which doth not admit of any reasonable cause of doubting, which is the only certainty of which most things are capable.

When we meet with all the indications and evidences of such a thing as the thing is capable of, supposing it to be true, it must needs be very irrational to make any doubt.

I appeal to the common judgment of mankind whether the human nature be not so framed as to acquiesce in such a moral certainty as the nature of things is capable of; and if it were otherwise, whether that reason which belongs to us would not prove a burden and a torment to us, rather than a privilege, by keeping us in a continual suspense, and thereby rendering our conditions perpetually restless and unquiet.

Because that which is necessary to beget certainty in the mind, namely impartial consideration, is in a man’s power, therefore the belief or disbelief of those things is a proper subject for rewards and punishments.