judgment are deficient that we attempt to balance abstract probabilities. Tenthly: The question of the truth of testimony as against past experience and the alleged greater probability that testimony should be false, than that past experience should be unreliable, is greatly modified by the consideration that an overwhelming amount of the sum total of past experience rests for its acceptance on the validity of testimony itself. That portion which is not the result of our own individual experience rests for its truth exclusively on the validity of human testimony, and must be unreliable in proportion as testimony is invalid. It must be observed, however, that I by no means deny that testimony is much more frequently invalid in its narrations of extraordinary events than of ordinary ones. Eleventhly: While it is freely conceded that the evidence to prove the truth of a very extraordinary occurrence must be far stronger than that which is required to prove an ordinary one, it must never be forgotten that the amount of evidence necessary to prove any particular fact always varies with the amount of the antecedent probability of its occurrence. The very same action may be credible or otherwise, just in proportion as we can discern an adequate purpose for its performance, or infer the presence of a particular motive. If, for example, it were reported that a man of the highest character had been seen during the hours of early morning issuing from one of the lowest haunts of vice in London, those who knew him well would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to establish the truth of the assertion. They would undoubtedly fall back on the question of abstract probability, and argue that it was more likely that it was either a case of mistaken identity (a very common error), or a deliberate falsehood, than that the statement should be true. But, if, on the contrary, it could be shown that he had been sent for to visit a dying person, and had gone at his particular request, the whole of the antecedent improbability would vanish, and the otherwise incredible testimony would become perfectly credible. It follows, therefore, that the credibility of testimony varies with our knowledge of the motive for the performance of the action.