A
second general law that you have arrived at in the same way is, that
tea-pots and spoons do not go out of a window spontaneously, and you are
satisfied that, as they are not now where you left them, they have been
removed. In the third place, you look at the marks on the windowsill,
and the shoe-marks outside, and you say that in all previous experience
the former kind of mark has never been produced by anything else but
the hand of a human being; and the same experience shows that no other
animal but man at present wears shoes with hob-nails in them such as
would produce the marks in the gravel. I do not know, even if we could
discover any of those "missing links" that are talked about, that they
would help us to any other conclusion! At any rate the law which states
our present experience is strong enough for my present purpose. You next
reach the conclusion that, as these kind [89] of marks have not been
left by any other animal than man, or are liable to be formed in any
other way than a man's hand and shoe, the marks in question have been
formed by a man in that way. You have, further, a general law, founded
on observation and experience, and that, too, is, I am sorry to say, a
very universal and unimpeachable one,--that some men are thieves;
and you assume at once from all these premisses--and that is what
constitutes your hypothesis--that the man who made the marks outside and
on the window-sill, opened the window, got into the room, and stole
your tea-pot and spoons.
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