s that judgment which the mind forms of any proposition, for the truth or falsehood of which there is not sufficient evidence to produce science or absolute belief. That the three angles of a plane triangle are equal to two right angles, is not a matter of opinion, nor can it with propriety be called an object of the mathematician's belief; he does more than believe it, he knows it to be true. When two or three men, under no temptation to deceive, declare that they were witnesses of an uncommon though not preternatural event, their testimony is complete evidence, and produces absolute belief in the minds of those to whom it is given; but it does not produce science like rigid demonstration. The fact is not doubted, but those who have it on report do not know it to be true, as they know the truth of propositions intuitively or demonstrably certain. When one or two men relate a story including many circumstances to a third person, and another comes who positively contradicts it either in whole or in part, he to whom these jarring testimonies are given weighs all the circumstances in his own mind, balances the one against the other, and lends an assent, more or less wavering, to that side on which the evidence appears to preponderate. This assent is his opinion respecting the facts of which he has received such different accounts.