For the support of this assumption,--all that, on the present occasion, can be offered, is--an appeal to universal experience. As to the general foundations of the law of evidence,--for any excursion into so wide an expanse, neither this chapter nor any other part of this work would, it has been thought, be generally regarded as a proper place. What had been written on that subject has accordingly been discarded. SECTION 2. TIME BETWEEN RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION--ACTS CONTRADICTS LUKE. In the first place then, Saint Luke cannot have been the author of the Acts. The reason is very simple. In respect of the time between Jesus's resurrection and his ascension,--the one of these narratives gives one account, the other, another account: and, so wide is the difference between the two, that by one and the same person they could not have both been given. According to Saint Luke, the time during which, after his resurrection, and before his ascension, Jesus was seen by his disciples, extended not beyond _one_ day: according to the Acts, it extended as far as _forty_ days. By Saint Luke, that the time was not more than a day, is not indeed said in so many words; but upon examination of the text, it will be found, that, consistently with the particulars given, no longer duration can be assigned to it. In the Acts, that the time, during which he continued showing himself after his _passion_, Acts 1:3,[79] to the Apostles, was "_forty days_," is affirmed in those very words. The point here in question, be it observed, is not _truth_, but _consistency_: not the truth of either of the two accounts; but their consistency, the one with the other: and, instead of consistency, so palpable is the inconsistency, that the conclusion is,--by no one man, who did not, on one or other of the two occasions, intend thereby to deceive, can both of them, morally speaking, have been penned.