tion are perpetually varied, become stronger or weaker, more contracted or more enlarged. It is not, therefore, a general law possessing one common rule or standard, by which is imparted in all cases the same degree of certainty and conviction.

Historical learning is consequently the reverse of philosophical. Philosophy consists in tracing generals, history in pursuing particulars. The testimony on which it is founded varies with the circumstances, in each particular instance to which it is applied1. Historical reasoning does not conclude by reducing particulars under general propositions by syllogism or superinduction. It has a more tedious and laborious process. It descends to the investigation of every particular historical fact through all the windings of testimony, either by tracing it up to its proper time, place, and the persons of its primitive witnesses; or by bringing it down from thence. It consists in a minute examination of particular witnesses, in a candid estimate of collateral proofs, and in

Historia proprie individuorum est, quæ circumscribuntur loco et tempore.-Bacon. De Augm. Scient. lib. ii. cap. 1.

a conclusion formed upon a full induction and fair valuation of the whole2.

The knowledge which we derive through the channel of history is consequently more various and extensive, more interesting and important, than perhaps the whole stock of our other information. The investigation of historical facts, which must be conducted by a particular and separate process, constitutes a very large proportion of the most useful labours and valuable collections of learned men. History involves in its composition many different and distinct objects, and has many different ends in view. In the execution, it receives from the pen of the historian many graces and embellishments, and from the interest which man always takes in the concerns of man, it be

2

Probability wanting that intuitive evidence which infallibly determines the understanding, and produces certain knowledge, the mind, if it would proceed rationally, ought to examine all the grounds of probability, and see how they make more or less for or against any proposition, before it assents to or dissents from it, and, upon a due balancing the whole, reject or receive it, with a more or less firm assent, proportionably to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability on one side or the other.-Locke, Hum. Und. book iv. chap. 15, sect. 5.

comes a species of writing the most instructive to the mind, and the most pleasing to the imagination. Divested, however, of these adventitious considerations, and logically viewed, it is the investigation of facts through the channel of testimony. It is the general rule by which this investigation is conducted, in bringing them down from the time of their actual existence ;-First, to inquire whether the senses of the primitive witnesses were duly informed of the facts related, and they themselves competent to judge of them. Secondly, to examine whether these witnesses were honest and faithful relaters of these facts to others. Thirdly, as testimony, from the nature and necessity of things, is often committed to written record, to trace the purity and authenticity of that record through all the persons, times, and places, through which it has descended, and lastly, to strengthen and corroborate the whole conclusion, by the examination and adduction of collateral testimonies3.-In this work of various learning, extensive

In the testimony of others is to be considered, 1. The number, 2. The integrity, 3. The skill of the witnesses. 4. The design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a

inquiry, and attentive investigation, reason will, I fear, derive little help from mood and figure*. There is here accordingly very slight occupation for syllogism.

SECT. IV.

Of Historical Truth.

ISTORICAL truth derived from the

principle of testimony, so different in its nature from all others, and by a method of reasoning which is peculiar to itself, differs

book cited. 5. The consistency of the parts and circumstances of the relation. 6. Contrary testimonies.-Locke Hum. Und. book iv. chap. 15, sect. 4.

But, however it be in knowledge, I think I may truly say, it is of far less, or no use at all in probabilities. For the assent there being to be determined by the preponderancy, after a due weighing of all the proofs, with all circumstances on both sides, nothing is so unfit to assist the mind in that, as syllogism; which running away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues that, till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration; and, forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there, entangled, perhaps, and as it were manacled, in the chain of syllogisms, without allowing it the liberty, much less affording it the helps, requisite to show on which side, all things considered, is the greater probability.-Ibid. book iv. chap. 17, sect. 5.

also from those which have been the subject of our previous discussion, in its operation and effect upon the understanding.

However certain and convincing it may be, when possessed of its greatest strength, it is indirect and secondary, amounting only to the highest summit of probability. As the testimony on which it depends, is in all cases particularly circumstanced and to be separately investigated, though all historical truth be of the same species, it will vary with these circumstances, with the fidelity and success of the investigation, or with the clearness or obscurity of the media through which it comes,-almost from the verge of absolute certainty, through all the degrees of probability, down to the faintest shade of uncertainty and doubt. The assent with which the mind embraces it, in all the degrees and shades which it assumes, is called belief, which is stronger or weaker in its impression, in proportion to itself.

As it is only an enlargement of facts, and those other truths which have been previously considered, lengthened out and conveyed to us by testimony, it may be ranked under the