impertinent, but have you ever given any
attention to the science of evidence?"

"How do you mean?" asked the Home Secretary, rather puzzled, adding,
with a melancholy smile, "I have had to lately. Of course, I've never
been a criminal lawyer, like some of my predecessors. But I should
hardly speak of it as a science; I look upon it as a question of
common-sense."

"Pardon me, sir. It is the most subtle and difficult of all the
sciences. It is, indeed, rather the science of the sciences. What is the
whole of Inductive Logic, as laid down, say, by Bacon and Mill, but an
attempt to appraise the value of evidence, the said evidence being the
trails left by the Creator, so to speak? The Creator has--I say it in
all reverence--drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the
true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in
detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross
apparent fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the
surface does lie."

"Very interesting, Mr. Grodman, but really----"

"Bear with me, sir. The science of evidence being thus so extremely
subtle, and demanding the most acute and trained observation of facts,
the most comprehensive understanding of human psychology, is naturally
given over to professors who have not the remotest idea that 'things are
not what they seem,' and that everything is other than it appears; to
professors, most of whom, by their year-long devotion to the
shop-counter or the desk, have acquired an intimate acquaintance with
all the infinite shades and complexities of things and human nature.
When twelve of these professors are put in a box, it is called a jury.
When one of these professors is put in a box by himself, he is called a
witness. The retailing of evidence--the observation of the facts--is
given over to people who go through their lives without eyes; the
appreciation of evidence--the judging of these facts--is surrendered to
people who may possibly be adepts in weighing out pounds of sugar. Apart
from their sheer inability to fulfill either function--to observe, or to
judge--their observation and their judgment alike are vitiated by all
sorts of irrelevant prejudices."

"You are attacking trial by jury."

"Not necessarily. I am prepared to accept that scientifically, on the
ground that, as there are, as a rule, only two alternatives, the balance
of probability is slightly in favor of the true decision being co