and one by another, I think fit to add yet more of a similar tendency:
in the hope that, by a natural induction, such instances may smoothe our
way.

When an eminent living geologist was prosecuting his researches at
Kirkdale cave, Yorkshire, he had calculated so nicely on the antecedent
probabilities, that his commands to the labourers were substantially
these: "Take your mattocks, and pick up that stone flooring; then take
your basket, and fill it--with the bones of hyænas and other creatures
which you will find there." We may fancy the ridicule wherewith
ignorance might have greeted science: but lo, the triumph of philosophy,
when its mandate soon assumed a bodily shape in--bushels of bones gnawed
as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull that looked like
a hyæna's! Do we not see how this bears on our coming argument? Such a
deposit was very unlikely to be found there in the eyes of the
unenlightened: but very likely to the wise man's ken. The real
probabilities were in favour of a strange fact, though the seeming
probabilities were against it.

Take another. We are all now convinced of the existence of America; and
so, some three or four hundred years back, was Christopher Columbus--but
nobody else. Alone, he proved that mighty continent so probable, from
geometrical measurements, and the balance of the world, and tides, and
trade-winds, and casual floatsams driven from some land beneath the
setting sun, that he was antecedently convinced of the fact: and it
would have been a shock to his reason, as well as to his faith, had he
found himself able to sail due west from Lisbon to China, without having
struck against his huge probability. I purposely abstain from applying
every illustration, or showing its specific difference regarding our
theme. It is better to lead a mind to think for itself than to endeavour