Not the least usual error, in such investigations, is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral, or circumstantial events. It is malpractice to confine evidence and discussion too vigorously within the limits of the seemingly relevant. Experience has shown, and Philosophy will always show, that a vast portion, perhaps the larger portion of truth, arises from the apparently irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforseen. It is, thus, no longer philosophical to base upon what has been, a vision of what is to be.
Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure.
We make chance a matter of absolute certainty. We subject the unlooked- for and unimagined to the mathematical formulae of the schools. But what I wish now to observe is, that the small magistracies are too prone to ape the airs and echo the rectangular precepts of the courts. And, moreover, very much of what is rejected as evidence by a court, is the best of evidence to the intellect. For the court, guiding itself by the general principles of evidence the recognized and booked principles is adverse from swerving at particular instances.