5. In this, all the arguments pro and con ought to be examined, before we come to a judgment.
Probability wanting
that intuitive evidence which infallibly determines the understanding and produces certain knowledge, the mind, if
it will 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. For example:--
If I myself see a man walk on the ice, it is past probability; it is knowledge. But if another tells me he saw a man
in England, in the midst of a sharp winter, walk upon water hardened with cold, this has so great conformity with
what is usually observed to happen that I am disposed by the nature of the thing itself to assent to it; unless some
manifest suspicion attend the relation of that matter of fact. But if the same thing be told to one born between the
tropics, who never saw nor heard of any such thing before, there the whole probability relies on testimony: and as
the relators are more in number, and of more credit, and have no interest to speak contrary to the truth, so that
matter of fact is like to find more or less belief. Though to a man whose experience has always been quite
contrary, and who has never heard of anything like it, the most untainted credit of a witness will scarce be able to
find belief.
The king of Siam. As it happened to a Dutch ambassador, who entertaining the king of Siam with the
particularities of Holland, which he was inquisitive after, amongst other things told him that the water in his
country would sometimes, in cold weather, be so hard that men walked upon it, and that it would bear an elephant,
if he were there. To which the king replied, Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, because
I look upon you as a sober fair man, but now I am sure you lie.
