In both of these respects he is beyond all
praise of mine, and I am ready to sit at his feet; but when he
begins to reason from the facts which he sets forth, then, like
every other reasoner, he is amenable to the laws of
argumentation, and his conclusions are to be tested by the
relation which they bear to the premises which he has advanced,
and by the proof which he furnishes for the premises
themselves."
We pass over, as of no consequence for our present purpose, the
various exceptions which he then takes to Huxley's arrangement of
his lectures, to the tone of his exceptions, and to his mode of
referring to the biblical hypothesis, and come to what he has to say
of Huxley's evidence, which he truly calls "circumstantial
evidence." The first thing he does is to define circumstantial
evidence; but here, at the very outset, we have been surprised to
find a logician who conceives himself capable of overhauling the
argumentation of the masters of science, going to a lawyer to get
"a statement of the principles which regulate the value of
circumstantial evidence.
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