their deficiencies, I am also not without the hope that they may be in some degree serviceable to others. At any rate this Essay will be considerately received by those who rightly estimate the importance of the subject, and the difficulties of such an attempt. I cannot conclude without expressing my great obligation to several valued friends for much useful information, and for many judicious suggestions in the progress of this work; nor without adding that I shall be thankful for the friendly notice of any errors or misconceptions into which I may have fallen, and for the communication of any information which may throw light upon this attractive subject. W. W. Edgbaston, near Birmingham, February, 1838. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page. THE RATIONALE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. CHAPTER I. EVIDENCE IN GENERAL, SECTION 1. THE NATURE OF EVIDENCE. IT will greatly conduce to the formation of clear and correct notions on the subject of Circumstantial Evidence, to take a brief introductory view of the nature of evidence in general, of some of its various kinds, and of the nature of the assurance which each of them is calculated to produce. The great object of all intellectual research is the discovery of TRUTH, which may be defined to B be the conformity of words, ideas, and relations with the nature and reality of events and things. The JUDGMENT is that faculty of the mind which is principally concerned in the investigation and acquisition of truth; and its exercise is the intellectual act by which one thing is perceived and affirmed of another, or the reverse. Every conclusion of the judgment, whatever may be its subject, is the result of EVIDENCE,—a word which (derived from words in the dead languages signifying to see, to know,) by a natural transition is applied to denote the means by which any alleged matter of fact, the truth of which is submitted to investigation, is established or disproved. The term PROOF is often confounded with that of evidence, and applied to denote the medium of proof, whereas in strictness it marks merely the effect of evidence. When the result of evidence is undoubting assent to the certainty of the event or proposition which is the subjectmatter of inquiry, such event or proposition is said to be proved; and, according to the nature of the evidence on which such conclusion is grounded, it is either known or believed to be true*. Our judgments then are the consequence * Whately's Logic, b. iv. ch. iii. s. Î. |