Page:System of Logic.djvu/388

382 It is obvious, too, that even when the probabilities are derived from observation and experiment, a very slight improvement in the data, by better observations, or by taking into fuller consideration the special circumstances of the case, is of more use than the most elaborate application of the calculus to probabilities founded on the data in their previous state of inferiority. The neglect of this obvious reflection has given rise to misapplications of the calculus of probabilities which have made it the real opprobrium of mathematics. It is sufficient to refer to the applications made of it to the credibility of witnesses, and to the correctness of the verdicts of juries. In regard to the first, common sense would dictate that it is impossible to strike a general average of the veracity and other qualifications for true testimony of mankind, or of any class of them; and even if it were possible, the employment of it for such a purpose implies a misapprehension of the use of averages, which serve, indeed, to protect those whose interest is at stake, against mistaking the general result of large masses of instances, but are of extremely small value as grounds of expectation in any one individual instance, unless the case be one of those in which the great majority of individual instances do not differ much from the average. In the case of a witness, persons of common sense would draw their conclusions from the degree of consistency of his statements, his conduct under cross-examination, and the relation of the case itself to his interests, his partialities, and his mental capacity, instead of applying so rude a standard (even if it were capable of being verified) as the ratio between the number of true and the number of erroneous statements which he may be supposed to make in the course of his life.

Again, on the subject of juries or other tribunals, some mathematicians have set out from the proposition that the judgment of any one judge or juryman is, at least in some small degree, more likely to be right than wrong, and have concluded that the chance of a number of persons concurring in a wrong verdict is diminished the more the number is increased; so that if the judges are only made sufficiently numerous, the correctness of the judgment may be reduced almost to certainty. I say nothing of the disregard shown to the effect produced on the moral position of the judges by multiplying their numbers, the virtual destruction of their individual responsibility, and weakening of the application of their minds to the subject. I remark only the fallacy of reasoning from a wide average to cases necessarily differing greatly from any average. It may be true that, taking all causes one with another, the opinion of any one of the judges would be oftener right than wrong; but the argument forgets that in all but the more simple cases, in all cases in which it is really of much consequence what the tribunal is, the proposition might probably be reversed; besides which, the cause of error, whether arising from the intricacy of the case or from some common prejudice or mental infirmity, if it acted upon one judge, would be extremely likely to affect all the others in the same man-