Suppose that a man tells you that he saw a person strike another and kill him; that is testimonial evidence of the fact of murder.  But it is possible to have circumstantial evidence of the fact of murder; that is to say, you may find a man dying with a wound upon his head having exactly the form and character of the wound which is made by an axe, and, with due care in taking surrounding circumstances into account, you may conclude with the utmost certainty that the man has been murdered; that his death is the consequence of a blow inflicted by another man with that implement.  We are very much in the habit of considering circumstantial evidence as of less value than testimonial evidence, and it may be that, where the circumstances are not perfectly clear and intelligible, it is a dangerous and unsafe kind of evidence; but it must not be forgotten that, in many cases, circumstantial is quite as conclusive as testimonial evidence, and that, not unfrequently, it is a great deal weightier than testimonial evidence.  For example, take the case to which I referred just now.  The circumstantial evidence may be better and more convincing than the testimonial evidence; for it may be impossible, under the conditions that I have defined, to suppose that the man met his death from any cause but the violent blow of an axe wielded by another man.  The circumstantial evidence in favour of a murder having been committed, in that case, is as complete and as convincing as evidence can be.  It is evidence which is open to no doubt and to no falsification.  But the testimony of a witness is open to multitudinous doubts.  He may have been mistaken.  He may have been actuated by malice.  It has constantly happened that even an accurate man has declared that a thing has happened in this, that, or the other way, when a careful analysis of the circumstantial evidence has shown that it did not happen in that way, but in some other way.

We may now consider the evidence in favour of or against the three hypotheses.  Let me first direct your attention to what is to be said about the hypothesis of the eternity of the state of things in which we now live.  What will first strike you is, that it is a hypothesis which, whether true or false, is not capable of verification by any evidence.  For, in order to obtain either circumstantial or testimonial evidence sufficient to prove the eternity of duration of the present state of nature, you must have an eternity of witnesses or an infinity of circumstances, and neither of these is attainable.  It is utterly impossible that such evidence should be carried beyond a certain point of time; and all that could be said, at most, would be, that so far as the evidence could be traced, there was nothing to contradict the hypothesis.  But when you look, not to the testimonial evidence—­which, considering the relative insignificance of the antiquity of human records, might not be good for much in this case—­but to the circumstantial evidence, then you find that this hypothesis is absolutely incompatible with such evidence as we have; which is of so plain and so simple a character that it is impossible in any way to escape from the conclusions which it forces upon us.