Direct evidence is the testimony, either verbal or written, of competent witnesses, who speak from their own actual and personal knowledge concerning matters which go immediately to a fact in issue. This is called direct or positive testimony.

Circumstantial evidence, on the other hand, does not go directly to the factum probandum, but relates immediately to subordinate facts which, by their connection, near or remote, to the fact in issue, inferen-tially tend to prove the existence of the fact sought to be proved.

Chief Justice Gilpin, in State vs. Carter, 1 Houst., Cr. C, 402, says: "As a matter of course, and from necessity, all judicial evidence must be either direct or circumstantial. When we speak of a fact as established by direct or positive evidence, we mean that it has been testified to by witnesses as having come under the cognizance of their senses, and of the truth of which there seems to be no reasonable doubt or question; and when we speak of a fact as established by circumstantial evidence, we mean that the existence of it is fairly and reasonably to be inferred from other facts and circumstances proved in the case."