EVIDENCE. — From *e-videre* (Gr. εὐδείχνις), it is, in a general sense, the clarity and manifestation of the truth. The etymological meaning of the word leads to a more precise determination of the real content of the concept; the clarity of truth being ultimately nothing other than the necessity of judgment, evidence can define the objective necessity with which a judgment imposes itself upon thought. Everything and only that which imposes itself upon the mind as necessarily thinkable (of absolute or hypothetical necessity), by virtue of its objective conceptual determination or its concrete presentation in experience, is evident. Thus understood, evidence, while always implying, as a relative concept, a relation to the knowing subject, nevertheless asserts itself as an essentially objective value.
It must therefore not be confused either with certainty or with the clarity of perception (Descartes), both of which can be illusory and independent of the truth and necessity of judgment. Similarly, and consequently, it is only in relation to intellectual knowledge that one can speak of evidence in the proper sense; the so-called empirical and aesthetic evidence is formally not such, unless the data of sensible or aesthetic perception is assumed in the assertive act of the intellect, in which alone the formal value of truth is realized.
Evidence can be found both in private judgments (rational principles and intuitive judgments of fact) and in derived judgments; but even in these, evidence is mediated, inasmuch as it is obtained through the process of demonstration which shows its connection with evident truths and principles.
One then speaks of intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, according to whether the necessity of the judgment is grasped in the very relation between subject and predicate, or is instead known indirectly in the extrinsic value of authority (*elevata veritatis*, *evidentia auctoritatis*). Only intrinsic evidence is evidence in the formal sense.
Traditional gnoseology, following Aristotle, the Stoic-Epicurean school, and St. Thomas, places evidence as the universal criterion of certainty, in the sense that it is its necessary and sufficient condition. For knowledge is indeed perception, intuition: for this spirituality, as intuition is possible, the indispensable condition is that the object reveal itself in its intelligibility to thought; and it is also a sufficient condition, because the mind cannot but assent as soon as it has grasped the intelligibility and truth of the object. Nor is there, properly speaking, a need for a further criterion to distinguish true evidence from the so-called apparent evidence: the latter, precisely because it does not posit the absolute necessity or thinkability of the object, can always be overcome through rigorous mental discipline and full spiritual freedom that does not yield to merely subjective distortions.
It must however be noted that evidence, as a criterion of truth, cannot claim a greater value than that which the very notion of a criterion of truth entails (v. Criterion). Truth, by reason of the complexity of forms and levels according to which it is distributed in human knowledge, depending on the respective complexity of the objects, cannot be regulated by a single abstract and theoretical criterion. Evidence must therefore always be viewed and judged in the objective-subjective concreteness with which it presents itself in individual consciousness, where subjective and relative factors of individual personalities often intervene to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, in concreto, evidence comes to be, in a certain sense, a condition of truth itself and is subject to the same exigencies and apparent antinomies that the problem of truth entails in some of its aspects (v.).
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A. Blanche, *Sur l'usage de l'évidence comme suprême critique*, in *Revue thomiste*, 11 (1901), pp. 505-510;
C. Genty, *Critica*, 3rd ed., Rome 1932, pp. 56-91;
A. Brunner, *La connaissance humaine*, Paris 1943, p. 87 sqq.;
G. Van Riet, *L'épistémologie historique*, Louvain 1946, passim (v. index);
U. Vighno, *Possibilità e limiti dell'e.*, in *Études docete*, Comm. Urbaniana, 1 (1948), pp. 76-91.
**EVIL-MERODACH** (Bab. *Auzil-Marduk* = servant of Marduk =), Sept. Εἰμαγμασθέγ), — King of Babylon, son of Nebuchadnezzar, who succeeded him on the throne in 561 B.C. He reigned for only two years. The historians are silent about the foreign policy of the new king; only it is noted that he did not have a conciliatory diplomacy in internal politics to ingratiate and dominate the priestly party. And indeed E. was the victim of a conspiracy led by his brother-in-law Nergal-šar-usur with the help of the priestly caste.
Even though the annalists criticize him by accusing him of being “too arbitrary,” he manifested himself as a mild and humane king by releasing from prison Jehoiachin of Jerusalem, who had been in chains since 598-97, i.e., for about 37 years, blind. He was treated kindly by E. until his death (II Kings 25:27-30; Jer. 52:32-34).