But the testimony is scarcely ever found to stand that test, in cases in which the anomaly is not real. In the instances on record in which a great number of witnesses, of good reputation and scientific acquirements, have testified to the truth of something which has turned out untrue, there have almost always been circumstances which, to a keen observer who had taken due pains to sift the matter, would have rendered the testimony untrustworthy. There have generally been means of accounting for the impression on the senses or minds of the alleged percipients, by fallacious appearances; or some epidemic delusion, propagated by the contagious influence of popular feeling, has been concerned in the case; or some strong interest has been implicated--religious zeal, party feeling, vanity, or at least the passion for the marvellous, in persons strongly susceptible of it. When none of these or similar circumstances exist to account for the apparent strength of the testimony; and where the assertion is not in contradiction either to those universal laws which know no counteraction or anomaly, or to the generalizations next in comprehensiveness to them, but would only amount, if admitted, to the existence of an unknown cause or an anomalous Kind, in circumstances not so thoroughly explored but that it is credible that things hitherto unknown may still come to light; a cautious person will neither admit nor reject the testimony, but will wait for confirmation at other times and from other unconnected sources. Such ought to have been the conduct of the King of Siam when the Dutch travellers affirmed to him the existence of ice. But an ignorant person is as obstinate in his contemptuous incredulity as he is unreasonably credulous. Anything unlike his own narrow experience he disbelieves, if it flatters no propensity; any nursery tale is swallowed implicitly by him if it does. § 4. I shall now advert to a very serious misapprehension of the principles of the subject, which has been committed by some of the writers against Hume's Essay on Miracles, and by Bishop Butler before them, in their anxiety to destroy what appeared to them a formidable weapon of assault against the Christian religion; and the effect of which is entirely to confound the doctrine of the Grounds of Disbelief. The mistake consists in overlooking the distinction between (what may be called) improbability before the fact, and improbability after it; or (since, as Mr. Venn remarks, the distinction of past and future is not the material circumstance) between the improbability of a mere guess being right, and the improbability of an alleged fact being true.