case from the "Causes Célèbres" (vol. v., p. 438), will sufficiently show. An old lady kept the shop in the row of houses bordering on La Place St. Michel, in Paris. She was generally known to have a quantity of money in the house. She had only one servant, a boy who had been with her a long time. She slept at the back of the shop on the ground floor, and the boy on the fourth story, which could only be approached from outside the house. He used to lock up the shop at night and carry away the key. One morning the door was observed to be open earlier than usual; and as no one was seen moving, some of the neighbors looked in. The door was not broken. They found the old lady dead in her bed, having received several wounds, as it seemed, from a knife, and a knife covered with blood was lying in the middle of the shop-floor. In one hand of the corpse was a thick lock of hair, and in the other hand a cravat. The knife and cravat undoubtedly belonged to the shop-boy, and the lock of hair exactly resembled his. He was charged with the crime and confessed it, and was broken on the wheel. A short time afterwards another boy, in a wineshop near, being taken up for another offence, on his death-bed confessed to the crime. He was well acquainted with the shop-boy accused of the crime, and often dressed his hair. He had, little by little, collected enough of hair from the comb he used to make into a stout lock, and he had put it into the deceased's hand. He had procured one of the other boy's cravats and his knife, and he had taken in wax an impression of the key. There are many instances equally remarkable of successful forgery of evidence, tending to implicate innocent persons. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary cases on record of identifying a dead body after it had been separated limb from limb, submitted to chemical processes, and to the inordinate heat of a furnace, and mingled with the countless bones of anatomical subjects in their common burying-place, was that presented on the trial at Boston, in America, of Professor Webster, for the murder of Dr. Parkman. Professor Webster was shown to have cogent pecuniary motives at the time of the crime (Nov. 23, 1849) to get Dr. Parkman out of the way. The prisoner resided at the Medical College, Boston. He made an appointment to meet the deceased at this place on Friday, the 23rd, at two o'clock, to discuss some monetary matters. The deceased was seen about fifteen minutes before two o'clock, apparently about to enter the Medical College. He was never seen again alive. The prisoner denied that Dr. Parkman ever did, in fact, enter the College. For a whole week nothing was discovered, and the prisoner seems rather to have interfered with and discouraged the search. On the Friday week and the day following, there were found in a furnace connected with the prisoner's laboratory in the College, fused in indiscriminately with the slag, the cinders, and the residuum of the coal, a great number of bones and certain blocks of mineral teeth. A quantity of gold, which had been melted, was also found. Other bones were discovered in a vault under the College. There was also found in a tea-chest, and embedded in a quantity of tan, the entire trunk of a human body, and other bones. The parts found in the different places went to make up the body of a person of Dr. Parkman's age, sixty years, and the form of the reconstructed body had just the peculiarities shown to be possessed by Dr. Parkman. In no single particular were the parts dissimilar to those of the deceased; nor in the tea-chest or the furnace were any duplicate parts found over and above what was necessary to compose one body. The remains were further shown to have been separated by a person possessed of anatomical skill, though not for anatomical purposes. Finally, three witnesses, dentists, testified to the mineral teeth found being those made for Dr. Parkman in 1846. A mould of Dr. Parkman's jaw had been made at the time, and it was produced, and shown to be so peculiar that no accidental conformity of the teeth to the jaw could account for the adaptation. This last piece of evidence was conclusive against the prisoner, and he was convicted. Without this closing proof the evidence would certainly have been unsatisfactory. The character of the prisoner, the possible confusion throughout the College of the remains of anatomical subjects, the undistinguished features, and the illusiveness of the evidence drawn from the likeness of a reconstructed body, were so many evidentiary facts or infirmative suppositions strongly in favor of innocence. It is curious that the block of mineral teeth was only accidentally preserved, having been found so near the bottom of the furnace as to take the current of cold air. It was resting on the grate. age as well as the most civilized states of society, men are found trafficking upon the imbecile credulity of those still more deeply steeped in ignorance than themselves; and it is ever those regions of knowledge through which no royal highway has yet been beaten out by the true pioneers of science that are always most densely infested by these pernicious impostors. Of all physical arts and sciences none are less firmly established than physi We need not linger over the uncertainties attaching to all evidence as to time and to hand-writing. The right appre-ology and therapeutics. And it is here ciation of the passage of time is so much a matter of education, and the sense of the length or shortness of a particular period so much dependent on the stages of an occupation or the number and quality of the emotional epochs it happens to contain, that, where especial attention was not drawn to the matter of time at the moment of an occurrence, all past recollection is absolutely worthless as an evidentiary fact. As to handwriting, repeated experience has shown that infirmative suppositions founded on the possibility and frequency of fraud and delusions can not be too cautiously explored in every case. We have now cursorily surveyed the whole field of evidentiary facts which are most familiarly presented in the species of investigation that has for its object the imputation of responsibility to the criminal law. We may close our examination of the general subject by briefly determining the proper use of circumstantial evidence in its relation to certain other special phenomena which are incessantly being obtruded on public attention, and the proper significance of which it may be well once for all, precisely and finally, to assign. There are two large classes of facts as to which human curiosity, rest lessly incited by an infinitude of fears, hopes, necessities, and aspirations, has ever been outstripping the cautious advances of genuine science. To one of those classes belong all the successive stages of corporal infirmity, such as disease, age, and dissolution, as well as all real or alleged modes of repairing these disasters. The other class embraces all the imperfections and limitations attaching to man's mental and emotional condition, so far as that condition can be abstracted, at least provisionally, from his material constitution. In all ages, and in the most sav that everywhere and at all times quacks, charlatans, and knavish pretenders swarm with the most noxious prodigality. So hungry are men for life and health, that no magic tale of pharmaceutical virtue or flaming catalogue of accomplished cures can so much as generate a passing doubt or the most deferential inquiry. The vaster the promise, the more internecine the war waged with all traditional experience and constituted systems, the more authoritative seems the new power. Old knowledge "creeping on from point to point," has not cured all bodily pangs or much prolonged human life. It may be that a brighter and more beneficent career is open before the new, the untried, the revolutionary. On every report of a strange cure of an alleged disease, the following infirmative suppositions are looked upon as the mere intrusions of a jealous scepticism; first, that there was no real, or at least no such, disease to cure, the symptoms indeed appearing to be present, but not being due to that disease. Secondly, it may be the symptoms were mendaciously reported, and so, as before, there was no such disease to cure. Or, thirdly, the disease may have existed and been cured, but by the mere influence of the imagination, not by the operation of the supposed remedy, or else by the operation of some remedy other than that alleged. Fourthly, the disease may have gone of itself, and by the unknown healing power of nature, or by the cessation of the action of the morbific cause. Fifthly, the disease may not have been ultimately cured at all, but only the symptons temporarily modified and allayed. Or lastly, the disease may not have been cured in any degree, the cessation of the symptoms being falsely reported, whether through delusion or mendacity, and whether on the part of the patient or the medical practitioner. This instance of the application of infirmative suppositions in matters of common life is thus carefully elaborated by Bentham himself. So much for the treatment of circumstantial evidence produced in favor of novel and yet unauthenticated modes of remedying the bodily infirmities of human life. As knowledge and education increase and moral habits of self-control become more largely diffused, those infirmities will become reduced in number and magnitude, and their true remedies ascertained. isfy these indefinite yearnings, which, in the case of the vulgar, seem little better than mental prostration before the might of physical laws, there has in no age or people been lacking a crop of impostors and self-deceiving enthusiasts. Their tales of converse with those on earth no longer, of arbitrary interferences with eternal laws of nature, of ghastly apparitions of the dead or the dying, and of weirdlike gazing into future times and distant scenes, in fact, of all that is at once unfamiliar, inharmonious, and revolting to To the other class of abnormal facts to purer souls, are listened to with greedy which we proceed, there is no such pros- ears and "bated breath." An everlastpective close. These are likely to prove ing problem might well give birth to an coeval with human intellect and its lim- infinitude of attempted solutions; but itations. Man no sooner learns to exer- there is a weighty presumption neverthecise his mental faculties, to observe, to less against any given solution not being compare, to analyze, as well as to feel erroneous. In every tale of the kind the and to construct, than he is chilled and following infirmative suppositions may daunted by the fearful barriers that hem properly be applied. First (assuming the him in on every side. Ever as he is reporter to profess to have witnessed the struggling over the boundary wall, he is abnormal facts himself, an almost unexhurled back again and again into the ampled case), he may be telling what he abyss of ignorance. He is overborne by himself well knows to be false; liars are the weight of the body, by the dull slug- at least more habitual visitants than spirgishness of his fellow men, and by the its. Secondly, the reporter may be tellnear approach of the inevitable tomb. ing what he believes to be true, but his His loftiest thoughts, his worthiest emo- optical vision was impaired by disease or tions, his deeds of lonely virtue and life- temporary disturbance; or thirdly, his long self-sacrifice, seem to be wasted eye was sound, but his brain was disorwithout recognition or effect. He stands dered; or fourthly, his eye and his brain alone, (as Pascal said,) a monument of were sound, but some accidental and megreatness, because he is so miserable, and chanical situation of certain objects caused of misery, because he is so great. What them to present the unusual appearance wonder, then, that man has in all ages in question, and he forebore to verify fretted against the confines of his knowl- its true nature; or, fifthly, the appearedge and his being?-if he has impa- ance was the intentional result of artifice tiently asked of the dead whether a bea- or sport, on the part of persons unknown. con can be descried on the horizon of All and each of these hypotheses have at that bottomless ocean into which they least the advantage of involving only have been launched? Unsatisfied and familiar and common phenomena; they stunted on earth, man shall triumph and sufficiently account for all the appearfulfill an everlasting destiny in some ances to be explained, and they admit world eye hath not seen nor ear heard. generally of instant and complete verifiSuch have been the glowing aspirations cation, if any one cares to apply the test. of all the best and wisest of men; the The other remaining hypothesis, that meanest and most worthless are not with- there was a supernatural agent concerned, out a glimmering reflexion of them. The from the very meaning of the term "suformer find repose in religions and the-pernatural," can never be a matter of ologies; the latter a lulling stupor in spiritualism and all the brood of thaumaturgy and necromancy. Countless grades connect together the two classes of mankind, as also the forms of belief in which they severally find consolation. To sat verification or proof; for we have sufficiently shown throughout this inquiry that all proof presupposes past regularity or repeated succession: that we can only conclude that one fact does or will follow from another, because it has often or al 1 ways been observed to follow from such another on previous occasions. But where a fact is alleged quite alien to this order, untrammelled by any fixed relations whatever that are cognizable by our senses, it is one as to the operation of which in the way of causation we can predicate absolutely nothing. An alleged supernatural agent is such. It will always rightly seem to be more conformable to the order of nature, that delusion or deception or a compound of both are at work, than that a fact without any parallel in general experience, and over-riding by its effects laws established by universal experience, has been observed by a limited number of men. In the name of our very assurance of uniformity we can not be called upon to believe in non-conformity. For it is only from such assurance that we believe anything at all. It is further to be noticed, that whenever such facts are or have been alleged to occur as Bentham observes (1), "none has been ever established by that sort of evidence which, under the best system of procedure, is considered as the best evidence extracted in the best manner; (2) such facts are seldom represented anywhere, never in the face of justice, as having manifested themselves in the presence of divers persons at the same time; and (3) the facts in question thus reported are never of the permanent, but always of the evanescent kind." Not that men's fearfulness and cramped intelligence will permit them to lend an ear to Understanding, when she utters her voice in the streets; nor so long as it is more stimulating and luxurious to bask in the fitful blaze of error, is it likely men will come eagerly and thankfully to the clear sunlight of unadorned and unromantic truth. The subject will be appropriately closed with a few words on the true ineaning of the terms "probability" and "possibility," and their converse "improbability" and impossibility." We saw that owing to our imperfect acquaintance with all the facts of the physical and psychological world, and their relations, we can never accurately estimate the true likelihood or unlikelihood (though these very terms are misleading) of a given fact occurring or having occurred. If we were perfectly acquainted with all those facts, we could predicate with unfailing certainty of a given fact, its past and future occurrence or non-occurrence. The given fact is in itself absolutely certain either to occur or not to occur, to have occurred or not to have occurred. It is only our own limited faculties and partial experience that import any hesitation into our mode of speaking about it. As it is, every man, only according to his own specific experience and information, can have a proportionate amount of assurance about the occurrence of a given fact. A person with still more limited faculties than ours, still less experience, such as a very young child or an idiot, would (as Bentham says), "upon the credit of a bare assertion uttered by any person of his acquaintance, give credit to one fact as readily as to another: to a fact the most devious and extraordinary in degree and specie, as well as the most ordinary fact: to the existence of a ghost or a devil, as well as to that of a man: to the existence of a man sixty feet high, or no more than six inches, as well as to that of a man of six feet: to the existence of a nation of Cyclopes, with one eye each, and that in the middle of the forehead, as well as to the existence of a nation with two eyes in their ordinary place." This consideration can not be insisted upon too strongly, because it at once serves to dispel all the illusory mists that distort the true interpretation of such words as "probable" and "possible." We each of us have a certain standard of experienced and recorded occurrences, either noted by ourselves or other men, to whom, for good reasons, we give credit, by which we weigh and try every fresh fact of which the occurence is alleged as having taken place, or being about to take place hereafter. If the fresh fact alleged finds its place readily among those recorded-if it is found to form one of them, or aptly to harmonize with them-we call it probable; if not, improbable. If the fresh fact does not form one of those recorded, and is of a different kind from any of them, but is not opposed to them, or out of harmony with them, we speak of that fact as being possible, but not probable. If, again, the fresh fact is not only out of all harmony with those previously experienced, but is the direct denial of our generalization | pet hero, among ancient instances and from them, so that the previous generali- personages and down to our days; but zation and the fresh fact can not stand to- we beg to pronounce, on our own individgether, we use a provisional expression ual account, in favor of Arminius Vamto denote this, and call the fact impossible. bery, a Hungarian gentleman of scienThe fact may none the less be a real oc- tific tastes and fame, who commenced, in currence; and in that case it proves that 1863, one of the most wonderful and the generalization was premature, and perilous journeys ever undertaken by a that a sequence we too precipitately sup- traveler, and who has recorded his posed to be universal was, in fact, sub- achievements in one of the simplest and ject to exception. It has been truly most unpretending books ever written. said by Mr. Mill "that the most import- In every point of view, this gentleman's ant of all discoveries in physics have undertaking presents itself in a surprisbeen those whereby what were before ing form. It has been truly, if roughly, imagined to be the universal laws of na- said of African travel: "Money and ture have been proved to be subject to pluck will do it." But "money" would exception." Thus while an alleged fact not have done anything for Arminius may be rightly treated as in the highest Vambery, except assure his prompt disdegree "improbable," no alleged fact covery and inevitable slavery, if not murwhatever can be termed (except provis- der, and "pluck" was the least of the ionally) "impossible." The proof indeed, qualities which he needed; not for a of a fact opposed by an enormous weight start, not for emergencies, nor at interof improbability may be little less arduous vals, but for his steady, constant, incesthan if the fact really were impossible in sant inspiration, and for an indefinite peitself. Yet by no such vulgar and lazy riod, during which the pressure of an exsubterfuge as branding a strange story treme and deadly peril was never lifted with the stigma of incredibility can man off him for one instant. unrobe himself of his kingly responsibilities. For every fact alleged he is called upon to make an immediate reference, whether rapid and instinctive, or cautions and laborious, to the accumulated treasures of the world's experience, and to the life-long diary of his own personal observations. He must be ever prepared for the possibility of these severally needing amplification and reconstruction. He must learn in what cases he can never doubt too long or too anxiously, in what he can never believe too vehemently and courageously. Iufirmity of mind begets undue scepticism no less than credulous belief; and he who would not be duped by imbecile fanaticism and seductive imposture into believing all things. must clench some things with the gripe of a giant, and believe them with the simplicity of a little child. There is no region in the world which is so vague and awful as that immense space on the earth's surface which we call Central Asia. There the mind is most fiercely and hopelessly baffled, when it strives to get at an unbroken, continuous view of the history of mankind. The life of savage nations is strange, but nevertheless it lies on the surface; it has no story of the past, it has ample possibilities for the future. But these Asian people-these fierce, fanatical, secret, reserved, suspicious, terrible people, denominated by a faith full of cruelty and childishness, of cunning and absurdity-these people, whose faculties of self-deception are boundless, whose aspirations are wholly sensual, and whose lives are full of incredible privation, imposed by their own inconceivable credulity-they are an insoluble problem, partly attractive, partly repulsive, but of evergrowing interest, as we learn to understand their overwhelming numbers, and the indomitable power of the faith of Islam. It is at all times strange to think how much of the earth is desert. We take in the idea peacemeal: we talk of this desert and that, and give them names, |