it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so.  And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, faith, and knowledge, that in all the parts of knowledge there is intuition; each immediate idea, each step has its visible and certain connexion:  in belief, not so.  That which makes me believe, is something extraneous to the thing I believe; something not evidently joined on both sides to, and so not manifestly showing the agreement or disagreement of those ideas that are under consideration.

4.  The Grounds of Probability are two:  Conformity with our own Experience, or the Testimony of others.

Probability then, being to supply the defect of our knowledge, and to guide us where that fails, is always conversant about propositions whereof we have no certainty, but only some inducements to receive them for true.  The grounds of it are, in short, these two following:—­

First, The conformity of anything with our own knowledge, observation, and experience.

Secondly, The testimony of others, vouching their observation and experience.  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 book cited. 5.  The consistency of the parts, and circumstances of the relation. 6.  Contrary testimonies.

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 natures 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