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Title: An Essay In Aid Of A Grammar Of Assent

Author: John Henry Newman

Release Date: October 1, 2010 [Ebook #34022]
Last Updated: June 4, 2023

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR
OF ASSENT ***




                                 An Essay

                                In Aid Of

                           A Grammar Of Assent.

                                    by

                            John Henry Newman,

                             Of the Oratory.

       Non in dialecticà complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum.

                               ST. AMBROSE.

                                 London:

                           Burns, Oates, & Co.

            17 & 18, Portman Street, and 63, Paternoster Row.

                                   1874




CONTENTS


Dedication.
Part I. Assent And Apprehension.
   Chapter I. Modes Of Holding And Apprehending Propositions.
      § 1. Modes of Holding Propositions.
      § 2. Modes of apprehending Propositions.
   Chapter II. Assent Considered As Apprehensive.
   Chapter III. The Apprehension Of Propositions.
   Chapter IV. Notional And Real Assent.
      § 1. Notional Assents.
      § 2. Real Assents.
      § 3. Notional and Real Assents Contrasted.
   Chapter V. Apprehension And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.
      § 1. Belief in One God.
      § 2. Belief in the Holy Trinity.
      § 3. Belief in Dogmatic Theology.
Part II. Assent And Inference.
   Chapter VI. Assent Considered As Unconditional.
      § 1. Simple Assent.
      § 2. Complex Assent.
   Chapter VII. Certitude.
      § 1. Assent and Certitude Contrasted.
      § 2. Indefectibility of Certitude.
   Chapter VIII. Inference.
      § 1. Formal Inference.
      § 2. Informal Inference.
      § 3. Natural Inference.
   Chapter IX. The Illative Sense.
      § 1. The Sanction of the Illative Sense.
      § 2. The Nature of the Illative Sense.
      § 3. The Range of the Illative Sense.
   Chapter X. Inference And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.
      § 1. Natural Religion.
      § 2. Revealed Religion.
Note.
Footnotes






DEDICATION.


To

Edward Bellasis,

Serjeant At Law,

In Remembrance

Of A Long, Equable, Sunny Friendship;

In Gratitude

For Continual Kindnesses Shown To Me,

For An Unwearied Zeal In My Behalf,

For A Trust In Me Which Has Never Wavered,

And A Prompt, Effectual Succour And Support

In Times Of Special Trial,

From His Affectionate

J. H. N.

_February 21, 1870._




PART I. ASSENT AND APPREHENSION.




Chapter I. Modes Of Holding And Apprehending Propositions.


§ 1. Modes of Holding Propositions.


1. Propositions (consisting of a subject and predicate united by the
copula) may take a categorical, conditional, or interrogative form.

(1) An interrogative, when they ask a Question, (e. g. Does Free-trade
benefit the poorer classes?) and imply the possibility of an
affirmative or negative resolution of it.

(2) A conditional, when they express a Conclusion (e. g. Free-trade
therefore benefits the poorer classes), and both imply, and imply their
dependence on, other propositions.

(3) A categorical, when they simply make an Assertion (e. g. Free-trade
does benefit), and imply the absence of any condition or reservation of
any kind, looking neither before nor behind, as resting in themselves
and being intrinsically complete.

These three modes of shaping a proposition, distinct as they are from
each other, follow each other in natural sequence. A proposition,
which starts with being a Question, may become a Conclusion, and
then be changed into an Assertion; but it has of course ceased to
be a question, so far forth as it has become a conclusion, and has
rid itself of its argumentative form—that is, has ceased to be a
conclusion,—so far forth as it has become an assertion. A question has
not yet got so far as to be a conclusion, though it is the necessary
preliminary of a conclusion; and an assertion has got beyond being a
mere conclusion, though it is the natural issue of a conclusion. Their
correlation is the measure of their distinction one from another.

No one is likely to deny that a question is distinct both from a
conclusion and from an assertion; and an assertion will be found to be
equally distinct from a conclusion. For, if we rest our affirmation on
arguments, this shows that we are not asserting; and, when we assert,
we do not argue. An assertion is as distinct from a conclusion, as a
word of command is from a persuasion or recommendation. Command and
assertion, as such, both of them, in their different ways, dispense
with, discard, ignore, antecedents of any kind, though antecedents may
have been a _sine quâ non_ condition of their being elicited. They both
carry with them the pretension of being personal acts.

In insisting on the intrinsic distinctness of these three modes
of putting a proposition, I am not maintaining that they may not
co-exist as regards one and the same subject. For what we have already
concluded, we may, if we will, make a question of; and what we are
asserting, we may of course conclude over again. We may assert, to
one man, and conclude to another, and ask of a third; still, when we
assert, we do not conclude, and, when we assert or conclude, we do not
question.

2. The internal act of holding propositions is for the most part
analogous to the external act of enunciating them; as there are three
ways of enunciating, so are there three ways of holding them, each
corresponding to each. These three mental acts are Doubt, Inference,
and Assent. A question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion
is the expression of an act of inference; and an assertion is the
expression of an act of assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see
one’s way to hold that Free-trade is or that it is not a benefit; to
infer, is to hold on sufficient grounds that Free-trade may, must, or
should be a benefit; to assent to the proposition, is to hold that
Free-trade is a benefit.

Moreover, propositions, while they are the material of these three
enunciations, are the objects of the three corresponding mental acts;
and as without a proposition, there cannot be a question, conclusion,
or assertion, so without a proposition there is nothing to doubt about,
nothing to infer, nothing to assent to. Mental acts of whatever kind
presuppose their objects.

And, since the three enunciations are distinct from each other,
therefore the three mental acts also, Doubt, Inference, and Assent,
are, with reference to one and the same proposition, distinct from each
other; else, why should their several enunciations be distinct? And
indeed it is very evident, that, so far forth as we infer, we do not
doubt, and that, when we assent, we are not inferring, and, when we
doubt, we cannot assent.

And in fact, these three modes of entertaining propositions,—doubting
them, inferring them, assenting to them, are so distinct in their
action, that, when they are severally carried out into the intellectual
habits of an individual, they become the principles and notes of three
distinct states or characters of mind. For instance, in the case of
Revealed Religion, according as one or other of these is paramount
within him, a man is a sceptic as regards it; or a philosopher,
thinking it more or less probable considered as a conclusion of
reason; or he has an unhesitating faith in it, and is recognized as a
believer. If he simply disbelieves, or dissents, he is assenting to the
contradictory of the thesis, viz. that there is no Revelation.

Many minds of course there are, which are not under the predominant
influence of any one of the three. Thus men are to be found of
irreflective, impulsive, unsettled, or again of acute minds, who do
not know what they believe and what they do not, and who may be by
turns sceptics, inquirers, or believers; who doubt, assent, infer, and
doubt again, according to the circumstances of the season. Nay further,
in all minds there is a certain coexistence of these distinct acts;
that is, of two of them, for we can at once infer and assent, though
we cannot at once either assent or infer and also doubt. Indeed, in a
multitude of cases we infer truths, or apparent truths, before, and
while, and after we assent to them.

Lastly, it cannot be denied that these three acts are all natural to
the mind; I mean, that, in exercising them, we are not violating the
laws of our nature, as if they were in themselves an extravagance or
weakness, but are acting according to it, according to its legitimate
constitution. Undoubtedly, it is possible, it is common, in the
particular case, to err in the exercise of Doubt, of Inference, and of
Assent; that is, we may be withholding a judgment about propositions
on which we have the means of coming to some definitive conclusion; or
we may be assenting to propositions which we ought to receive only on
the credit of their premisses, or again to keep ourselves in suspense
about; but such errors of the individual belong to the individual, not
to his nature, and cannot avail to forfeit for him his natural right,
under proper circumstances, to doubt, or to infer, or to assent. We
do but fulfil our nature in doubting, inferring, and assenting; and
our duty is, not to abstain from the exercise of any function of our
nature, but to do what is in itself right rightly.

3. So far in general:—in this Essay I treat of propositions only in
their bearing upon concrete matter, and I am mainly concerned with
Assent; with Inference, in its relation to Assent, and only such
inference as is not demonstration; with Doubt hardly at all. I dismiss
Doubt with one observation. I have here spoken of it simply as a
suspense of mind, in which sense of the word, to have “no doubt” about
a thesis is equivalent to one or other of the two remaining acts,
either to inferring it or else assenting to it. However, the word is
often taken to mean the deliberate recognition of a thesis as being
uncertain; in this sense Doubt is nothing else than an assent, viz. an
assent to a proposition at variance with the thesis, as I have already
noticed in the case of Disbelief.

Confining myself to the subject of Assent and Inference, I observe two
points of contrast between them.

The first I have already noted. Assent is unconditional; else, it is
not really represented by assertion. Inference is conditional, because
a conclusion at least implies the assumption of premisses, and still
more, because in concrete matter, on which I am engaged, demonstration
is impossible.

The second has regard to the apprehension necessary for holding
a proposition. We cannot assent to a proposition, without some
intelligent apprehension of it; whereas we need not understand it at
all in order to infer it. We cannot give our assent to the proposition
that “x is z,” till we are told something about one or other of the
terms; but we can infer, if “x is y, and y is z, that x is z,” whether
we know the meaning of x and z or no.

These points of contrast and their results will come before us in
due course: here, for a time leaving the consideration of the modes
of holding propositions, I proceed to inquire into what is to be
understood by apprehending them.


§ 2. Modes of apprehending Propositions.


By our apprehension of propositions I mean our imposition of a sense
on the terms of which they are composed. Now what do the terms of a
proposition, the subject and predicate, stand for? Sometimes they stand
for certain ideas existing in our own minds, and for nothing outside of
them; sometimes for things simply external to us, brought home to us
through the experiences and informations we have of them. All things in
the exterior world are unit and individual, and are nothing else; but
the mind not only contemplates those unit realities, as they exist, but
has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it abstractions
and generalizations, which have no existence, no counterpart, out of it.

Now there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms
are common nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and
non-existing, such as “Man is an animal, some men are learned, an
Apostle is a creation of Christianity, a line is length without
breadth, to err is human, to forgive divine.” These I shall call
notional propositions, and the apprehension with which we infer or
assent to them, notional.

And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular nouns,
and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit and
individual, as “Philip was the father of Alexander,” “the earth goes
round the sun,” “the Apostles first preached to the Jews;” and these I
shall call real propositions, and their apprehension real.

There are then two apprehensions or interpretations to which
propositions may be subjected, notional and real.

Next I observe, that the same proposition may admit of both of these
interpretations at once, having a notional sense as used by one
man, and a real as used by another. Thus a schoolboy may perfectly
apprehend, and construe with spirit, the poet’s words, “Dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacitâ Virgine Pontifex;” he has seen steep hills, flights
of steps, and processions; he knows what enforced silence is; also he
knows all about the Pontifex Maximus, and the Vestal Virgins; he has
an abstract hold upon every word of the description, yet without the
words therefore bringing before him at all the living image which they
would light up in the mind of a contemporary of the poet, who had seen
the fact described, or of a modern historian who had duly informed
himself in the religious phenomena, and by meditation had realized the
Roman ceremonial, of the age of Augustus. Again, “Dulce et decorum
est pro patriâ mori,” is a mere common-place, a terse expression of
abstractions in the mind of the poet himself, if Philippi is to be the
index of his patriotism, whereas it would be the record of experiences,
a sovereign dogma, a grand aspiration, inflaming the imagination,
piercing the heart, of a Wallace or a Tell.

As the multitude of common nouns have originally been singular, it
is not surprising that many of them should so remain still in the
apprehension of particular individuals. In the proposition “Sugar
is sweet,” the predicate is a common noun as used by those who have
compared sugar in their thoughts with honey or glycerine; but it may be
the only distinctively sweet thing in the experience of a child, and
may be used by him as a noun singular. The first time that he tastes
sugar, if his nurse says, “Sugar is sweet” in a notional sense, meaning
by sugar, lump-sugar, powdered, brown, and candied, and by sweet, a
specific flavour or scent which is found in many articles of food and
many flowers, he may answer in a real sense, and in an individual
proposition “Sugar is sweet,” meaning “this sugar is this sweet thing.”

Thirdly, in the same mind and at the same time, the same proposition
may express both what is notional and what is real. When a lecturer in
mechanics or chemistry shows to his class by experiment some physical
fact, he and his hearers at once enunciate it as an individual thing
before their eyes, and also as generalized by their minds into a law of
nature. When Virgil says, “Varium et mutabile semper fœmina,” he both
sets before his readers what he means to be a general truth, and at the
same time applies it individually to the instance of Dido. He expresses
at once a notion and a fact.

Of these two modes of apprehending propositions, notional and real,
real is the stronger; I mean by stronger the more vivid and forcible.
It is so to be accounted for the very reason that it is concerned with
what is either real or taken for real; for intellectual ideas cannot
compete in effectiveness with the experience of concrete facts. Various
proverbs and maxims sanction me in so speaking, such as, “Facts are
stubborn things,” “Experientia docet,” “Seeing is believing;” and
the popular contrast between theory and practice, reason and sight,
philosophy and faith. Not that real apprehension, as such, impels to
action, any more than notional; but it excites and stimulates the
affections and passions, by bringing facts home to them as motive
causes. Thus it indirectly brings about what the apprehension of large
principles, of general laws, or of moral obligations, never could
effect.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Reverting to the two modes of holding propositions, conditional and
unconditional, which was the subject of the former Section, that
is, inferences and assents, I observe that inferences, which are
conditional acts, are especially cognate to notional apprehension, and
assents, which are unconditional, to real. This distinction, too, will
come before us in the course of the following chapters.

And now I have stated the main subjects of which I propose to treat;
viz., the distinctions in the use of propositions, which I have been
drawing, and the questions which those distinctions involve.




Chapter II. Assent Considered As Apprehensive.


I have already said of an act of Assent, first, that it is in itself
the absolute acceptance of a proposition without any condition; and
next that, in order to its being made, it presupposes the condition,
not only of some previous inference in favour of the proposition, but
especially of some concomitant apprehension of its terms. I proceed
to the latter of these two subjects; that is, of Assent considered as
apprehensive, leaving the discussion of Assent as unconditional for a
later place in this Essay.

By apprehension of a proposition, I mean, as I have already said, the
interpretation given to the terms of which it is composed. When we
infer, we consider a proposition in relation to other propositions;
when we assent to it, we consider it for its own sake and in its
intrinsic sense. That sense must be in some degree known to us; else,
we do but assert the proposition, we in no wise assent to it. Assent
I have described to be a mental assertion; in its very nature then it
is of the mind, and not of the lips. We can assert without assenting;
assent is more than assertion just by this much, that it is accompanied
by some apprehension of the matter asserted. This is plain; and the
only question is, what measure of apprehension is sufficient.

And the answer to this question is equally plain:—it is the predicate
of the proposition which must be apprehended. In a proposition one term
is predicated of another; the subject is referred to the predicate,
and the predicate gives us information about the subject;—therefore
to apprehend the proposition is to have that information, and to
assent to it is to acquiesce in it as true. Therefore I apprehend a
proposition, when I apprehend its predicate. The subject itself need
not be apprehended _per se_ in order to a genuine assent: for it is
the very thing which the predicate has to elucidate, and therefore
by its formal place in the proposition, so far as it is the subject,
it is something unknown, something which the predicate makes known;
but the predicate cannot make it known, unless it is known itself.
Let the question be, “What is Trade?” here is a distinct profession
of ignorance about “Trade;” and let the answer be, “Trade is the
interchange of goods;”—trade then need not be known, as a condition of
assent to the proposition, except so far as the account of it which
is given in answer, “the interchange of goods,” makes it known; and
that must be apprehended in order to make it known. The very drift of
the proposition is to tell us something about the subject; but there
is no reason why our knowledge of the subject, whatever it is, should
go beyond what the predicate tells us about it. Further than this the
subject need not be apprehended: as far as this it must; it will not be
apprehended thus far, unless we apprehend the predicate.

If a child asks, “What is Lucern?” and is answered, “Lucern is medicago
sativa, of the class Diadelphia and order Decandria;” and henceforth
says obediently, “Lucern is medicago sativa, &c.,” he makes no act
of assent to the proposition which he enunciates, but speaks like
a parrot. But, if he is told, “Lucern is food for cattle,” and is
shown cows grazing in a meadow, then though he never saw lucern, and
knows nothing at all about it, besides what he has learned from the
predicate, he is in a position to make as genuine an assent to the
proposition “Lucern is food for cattle,” on the word of his informant,
as if he knew ever so much more about lucern. And as soon as he has got
as far as this, he may go further. He now knows enough about lucern,
to enable him to apprehend propositions which have lucern for their
predicate, should they come before him for assent, as, “That field is
sown with lucern,” or “Clover is not lucern.”

Yet there is a way, in which the child can give an indirect assent even
to a proposition, in which he understood neither subject nor predicate.
He cannot indeed in that case assent to the proposition itself, but he
can assent to its truth. He cannot do more than assert that “Lucern is
medicago sativa,” but he can assent to the proposition, “That lucern is
medicago sativa is true.” For here is a predicate which he sufficiently
apprehends, what is inapprehensible in the proposition being confined
to the subject. Thus the child’s mother might teach him to repeat a
passage of Shakespeare, and when he asked the meaning of a particular
line, such as “The quality of mercy is not strained,” or “Virtue itself
turns vice, being misapplied,” she might answer him, that he was too
young to understand it yet, but that it had a beautiful meaning, as he
would one day know: and he, in faith on her word, might give his assent
to such a proposition,—not, that is, to the line itself which he had
got by heart, and which would be beyond him, but to its being true,
beautiful, and good.

Of course I am speaking of assent itself, and its intrinsic conditions,
not of the ground or motive of it. Whether there is an obligation upon
the child to trust his mother, or whether there are cases where such
trust is impossible, are irrelevant questions, and I notice them in
order to put them aside. I am examining the act of assent itself, not
its preliminaries, and I have specified three directions, which among
others the assent may take, viz. assent immediately to a proposition,
assent to its truth, and assent both to its truth and to the ground
of its being true together,—“Lucern is food for cattle,”—“That lucern
is medicago sativa is true,”—and “My mother’s word, that lucern is
medicago sativa, and is food for cattle, is the truth.” Now in each of
these there is one and the same absolute adhesion of the mind to the
proposition, on the part of the child; he assents to the apprehensible
proposition, and to the truth of the inapprehensible, and to the
veracity of his mother in her assertion of the inapprehensible. I say
the same absolute adhesion, because, unless he did assent without any
reserve to the proposition that lucern was food for cattle, or to the
accuracy of the botanical name and description of it, he would not be
giving an unreserved assent to his mother’s word: yet, though these
assents are all unreserved, still they certainly differ in strength,
and this is the next point to which I wish to draw attention. It is
indeed plain, that, though the child assents to his mother’s veracity,
without perhaps being conscious of his own act, nevertheless that
particular assent of his has a force and life in it which the other
assents have not, insomuch as he apprehends the proposition, which is
the subject of it, with greater keenness and energy than belongs to
his apprehension of the others. Her veracity and authority is to him
no abstract truth or item of general knowledge, but is bound up with
that image and love of her person which is part of himself, and makes a
direct claim on him for his summary assent to her general teachings.

Accordingly, by reason of this circumstance of his apprehension
he would not hesitate to say, did his years admit of it, that he
would lay down his life in defence of his mother’s veracity. On the
other hand, he would not make such a profession in the case of the
propositions, “Lucern is food for cattle,” or “That lucern is medicago
sativa is true;” and yet it is clear too, that, if he did in truth
assent to these propositions, he would have to die for them also,
rather than deny them, when it came to the point, unless he made up
his mind to tell a falsehood. That he would have to die for all three
propositions severally rather than deny them, shows the completeness
and absoluteness of assent in its very nature; that he would not
spontaneously challenge so severe a trial in the case of two out of the
three particular acts of assent, illustrates in what sense one assent
may be stronger than another.

It appears then, that, in assenting to propositions, an apprehension
in some sense of their terms is not only necessary to assent, as such,
but also gives a distinct character to its acts. If therefore we would
know more about Assent, we must know more about the apprehension which
accompanies it. Accordingly to the subject of Apprehension I proceed.




Chapter III. The Apprehension Of Propositions.


I said in my Introductory Chapter that there can be no assent to a
proposition, without some sort of apprehension of its terms; next that
there are two modes of apprehension, notional and real; thirdly, that,
while assent may be given to a proposition on either apprehension of
it, still its acts are elicited more heartily and forcibly, when they
are made upon real apprehension which has things for its objects,
than when they are made in favour of notions and with a notional
apprehension. The first of these three points I have just been
discussing; now I will proceed to the second, viz. the two modes of
apprehending propositions, leaving the third for the Chapters which
follow.

I have used the word _apprehension_, and not _understanding_,
because the latter word is of uncertain meaning, standing sometimes
for the faculty or act of conceiving a proposition, sometimes for
that of comprehending it, neither of which come into the sense of
_apprehension_. It is possible to apprehend without understanding.
I apprehend what is meant by saying that John is Richard’s wife’s
father’s aunt’s husband, but, if I am unable so to take in these
successive relationships as to understand the upshot of the whole,
viz. that John is great-uncle-in-law to Richard, I cannot be said to
understand the proposition. In like manner, I may take a just view
of a man’s conduct, and therefore apprehend it, and yet may profess
that I cannot understand it; that is, I have not the key to it, and
do not see its consistency in detail: I have no just conception of
it. Apprehension then is simply an intelligent acceptance of the idea
or of the fact which a proposition enunciates. “Pride will have a
fall;” “Napoleon died at St. Helena;” I have no difficulty in entering
into the sentiment contained in the former of these, or into the fact
declared in the latter; that is, I apprehend them both.

Now apprehension, as I have said, has two subject-matters:—according
as language expresses things external to us, or our own thoughts, so
is apprehension real or notional. It is notional in the grammarian, it
is real in the experimentalist. The grammarian has to determine the
force of words and phrases; he has to master the structure of sentences
and the composition of paragraphs; he has to compare language with
language, to ascertain the common ideas expressed under different
idiomatic forms, and to achieve the difficult work of recasting the
mind of an original author in the mould of a translation. On the
other hand, the philosopher or experimentalist aims at investigating,
questioning, ascertaining facts, causes, effects, actions, qualities:
these are things, and he makes his words distinctly subordinate to
these, as means to an end. The primary duty of a literary man is to
have clear conceptions, and to be exact and intelligible in expressing
them; but in a philosopher it is even a merit to be not altogether
vague, inchoate and obscure in his teaching, and if he fails even of
this low standard of language, we remind ourselves that his obscurity
perhaps is owing to his depth. No power of words in a lecturer would
be sufficient to make psychology easy to his hearers; if they are
to profit by him, they must throw their minds into the matters in
discussion, must accompany his treatment of them with an active,
personal concurrence, and interpret for themselves, as he proceeds,
the dim suggestions and adumbrations of objects, which he has a
right to presuppose, while he uses them, as images existing in their
apprehension as well as in his own.

In something of a parallel way it is the least pardonable fault in an
Orator to fail in clearness of style, and the most pardonable fault of
a Poet.

So again, an Economist is dealing with facts; whatever there is of
theory in his work professes to be founded on facts, by facts alone
must his sense be interpreted, and to those only who are well furnished
with the necessary facts does he address himself; yet a clever
schoolboy, from a thorough grammatical knowledge of both languages,
might turn into English a French treatise on national wealth, produce,
consumption, labour, profits, measures of value, public debt, and the
circulating medium, with an apprehension of what it was that his author
was stating sufficient for making it clear to an English reader, while
he had not the faintest conception himself what the treatise, which he
was translating really determined. The man uses language as the vehicle
of things, and the boy of abstractions.

Hence in literary examinations, it is a test of good scholarship to
be able to construe aright, without the aid of understanding the
sentiment, action, or historical occurrence conveyed in the passage
thus accurately rendered, let it be a battle in Livy, or some subtle
train of thought in Virgil or Pindar. And those who have acquitted
themselves best in the trial, will often be disposed to think they
have most notably failed, for the very reason that they have been too
busy with the grammar of each sentence, as it came, to have been able,
as they construed on, to enter into the facts or the feelings, which,
unknown to themselves, they were bringing out of it.

To take a very different instance of this contrast between notions and
facts;—pathology and medicine, in the interests of science, and as a
protection to the practitioner, veil the shocking realities of disease
and physical suffering under a notional phraseology, under the abstract
terms of debility, distress, irritability, paroxysm, and a host of
Greek and Latin words. The arts of medicine and surgery are necessarily
experimental; but for writing and conversing on these subjects they
require to be stripped of the association of the facts from which they
are derived.

Such are the two modes of apprehension. The terms of a proposition do
or do not stand for things. If they do, then they are singular terms,
for all things that are, are units. But if they do not stand for things
they must stand for notions, and are common terms. Singular nouns come
from experience, common from abstraction. The apprehension of the
former I call real, and of the latter notional. Now let us look at this
difference between them more narrowly.

1. Real Apprehension, is, as I have said, in the first instance
an experience or information about the concrete. Now, when these
informations are in fact presented to us, (that is, when they are
directly subjected to our bodily senses or our mental sensations,
as when we say, “The sun shines,” or “The prospect is charming,” or
indirectly by means of a picture or even a narrative,) then there is no
difficulty in determining what is meant by saying that our enunciation
of a proposition concerning them implies an apprehension of things;
because we can actually point out the objects which they indicate. But
supposing those things are no longer before us, supposing they have
passed beyond our field of view, or the book is closed in which the
description of them occurs, how can an apprehension of things be said
to remain to us? It remains on our minds by means of the faculty of
memory. Memory consists in a present imagination of things that are
past; memory retains the impressions and likenesses of what they were
when before us; and when we make use of the proposition which refers to
them, it supplies us with objects by which to interpret it. They are
things still, as being the reflections of things in a mental mirror.

Hence the poet calls memory “the mind’s eye.” I am in a foreign country
among unfamiliar sights; at will I am able to conjure up before me
the vision of my home, and all that belongs to it, its rooms and
their furniture, its books, its inmates, their countenances, looks
and movements. I see those who once were there and are no more; past
scenes, and the very expression of the features, and the tones of
the voices, of those who took part in them, in a time of trial or
difficulty. I create nothing; I see the facsimiles of facts; and of
these facsimiles the words and propositions which I use concerning them
are from habitual association the proper or the sole expression.

And so again, I may have seen a celebrated painting, or some great
pageant, or some public man; and I have on my memory stored up and
ready at hand, but latent, an impress more or less distinct of
that experience. The words “the Madonna di S. Sisto,” or “the last
Coronation,” or “the Duke of Wellington,” have power to revive that
impress of it. Memory has to do with individual things and nothing that
is not individual. And my apprehension of its notices is conveyed in a
collection of singular and real propositions.

I have hitherto been adducing instances from (for the most part)
objects of sight; but the memory preserves the impress, though not so
vivid, of the experiences which come to us through our other senses
also. The memory of a beautiful air, or the scent of a particular
flower, as far as any remembrance remains of it, is the continued
presence in our minds of a likeness of it, which its actual presence
has left there. I can bring before me the music of the _Adeste
Fideles_, as if I were actually hearing it; and the scent of a clematis
as if I were in my garden; and the flavour of a peach as if it were
in season; and the thought I have of all these is as of something
individual and from without,—as much as the things themselves, the
tune, the scent, and the flavour, are from without,—though, compared
with the things themselves, these images (as they may be called) are
faint and intermitting.

Nor need such an image be in any sense an abstraction, though I may
have eaten a hundred peaches in times past, the impression, which
remains on my memory of the flavour, may be of any of them, of the
ten, twenty, thirty units, as the case may be, not a general notion,
distinct from every one of them, and formed from all of them by a
fabrication of my mind.

And so again the apprehension which we have of our past mental acts of
any kind, of hope, inquiry, effort, triumph, disappointment, suspicion,
hatred, and a hundred others, is an apprehension of the memory of those
definite acts, and therefore an apprehension of things; not to say
that many of them do not need memory, but are such as admit of being
actually summoned and repeated at our will. Such an apprehension again
is elicited by propositions embodying the notices of our history, of
our pursuits and their results, of our friends, of our bereavements,
of our illnesses, of our fortunes, which remain imprinted upon our
memory as sharply and deeply as is any recollection of sight. Nay, and
such recollections may have in them an individuality and completeness
which outlives the impressions made by sensible objects. The memory of
countenances and of places in times past may fade away from the mind;
but the vivid image of certain anxieties or deliverances never.

And by means of these particular and personal experiences, thus
impressed upon us, we attain an apprehension of what such things are
at other times when we have not experience of them; an apprehension
of sights and sounds, of colours and forms, of places and persons,
of mental acts and states, parallel to our actual experiences, such,
that, when we meet with definite propositions expressive of them, our
apprehension cannot be called abstract and notional. If I am told
“there is a raging fire in London,” or “London is on fire,” “fire” need
not be a common noun in my apprehension more than “London.” The word
may recall to my memory the experience of a fire which I have known
elsewhere, or of some vivid description which I have read. It is of
course difficult to draw the line and to say where the office of memory
ends, and where abstraction takes its place; and again, as I said in my
first pages, the same proposition is to one man an image, to another a
notion; but still there is a host of predicates, of the most various
kinds, “lovely,” “vulgar,” “a conceited man,” “a manufacturing town,”
“a catastrophe,” and any number of others, which, though as predicates
they would be accounted common nouns, are in fact in the mouths of
particular persons singular, as conveying images of things individual,
as the rustic in Virgil says,—


    “Urbem, quam dicunt Romam, Melibœe, putavi,
    Stultus ego, huic nostræ similem.”


And so the child’s idea of a king, as derived from his picture-book,
will be that of a fierce or stern or venerable man, seated above a
flight of steps, with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand.
In these two instances indeed the experience does but mislead, when
applied to the unknown; but it often happens on the contrary, that it
is a serviceable help, especially when a man has large experiences and
has learned to distinguish between them and apply them duly, as in the
instance of the hero “who knew many cities of men and many minds.”

Further, we are able by an inventive faculty, or, as I may call it, the
faculty of composition, to follow the descriptions of things which have
never come before us, and to form, out of such passive impressions as
experience has heretofore left on our minds, new images, which, though
mental creations, are in no sense abstractions, and though ideal, are
not notional. They are concrete units in the minds both of the party
describing and the party informed of them. Thus I may never have seen a
palm or a banana, but I have conversed with those who have, or I have
read graphic accounts of it, and, from my own previous knowledge of
other trees, have been able with so ready an intelligence to interpret
their language, and to light up such an image of it in my thoughts,
that, were it not that I never was in the countries where the tree
is found, I should fancy that I had actually seen it. Hence again it
is the very praise we give to the characters of some great poet or
historian that he is so individual. I am able as it were to gaze on
Tiberius, as Tacitus draws him, and to figure to myself our James the
First, as he is painted in Scott’s Romance. The assassination of Cæsar,
his “Et tu, Brute?” his collecting his robes about him, and his fall
under Pompey’s statue, all this becomes a fact to me and an object
of real apprehension. Thus it is that we live in the past and in the
distant; by means of our capacity of interpreting the statements of
others about former ages or foreign climes by the lights of our own
experience. The picture, which historians are able to bring before us,
of Cæsar’s death, derives its vividness and effect from its virtual
appeal to the various images of our memory.

This faculty of composition is of course a step beyond experience, but
we have now reached its furthest point; it is mainly limited as regards
its materials, by the sense of sight. As regards the other senses,
new images cannot well be elicited and shaped out of old experiences.
No description, however complete, could convey to my mind an exact
likeness of a tune or an harmony, which I have never heard; and still
less of a scent, which I have never smelt. Generic resemblances and
metaphorical substitutes are indeed producible; but I should not
acquire any real knowledge of the Scotch air “There’s nae luck” by
being told it was like “Auld lang syne,” or “Robin Gray;” and if I said
that Mozart’s melodies were as a summer sky or as the breath of Zephyr,
I should be better understood by those who knew Mozart than by those
who did not. Such vague illustrations suggest intellectual notions, not
images.

And quite as difficult is it to create or to apprehend by description
images of mental facts, of which we have no direct experience. I may
indeed, as I have already said, bring home to my mind so complex a fact
as an historical character, by composition out of my experiences about
character generally; Tiberius, James the First, Louis the Eleventh, or
Napoleon; but who is able to infuse into me, or how shall I imbibe, a
sense of the peculiarities of the style of Cicero or Virgil, if I have
not read their writings? or how shall I gain a shadow of a perception
of the wit or the grace ascribed to the conversation of the French
salons, being myself an untravelled John Bull? And so again, as regards
the affections and passions of our nature, they are _sui generis_
respectively, and incommensurable, and must be severally experienced
in order to be apprehended really. I can understand the _rabbia_ of
a native of Southern Europe, if I am of a passionate temper myself;
and the taste for speculation or betting found in great traders or
on the turf, if I am fond of enterprise or games of chance; but on
the other hand, not all the possible descriptions of headlong love
will make me comprehend the _delirium_, if I have never had a fit of
it; nor will ever so many sermons about the inward satisfaction of
strict conscientiousness create in my mind the image of a virtuous
action and its attendant sentiments, if I have been brought up to
lie, thieve and indulge my appetites. Thus we meet with men of the
world who cannot enter into the very idea of devotion, and think,
for instance, that, from the nature of the case, a life of religious
seclusion must be either one of unutterable dreariness or abandoned
sensuality, because they know of no exercise of the affections but what
is merely human; and with others again, who, living in the home of
their own selfishness, ridicule as something fanatical and pitiable the
self-sacrifices of generous high-mindedness and chivalrous honour. They
cannot create images of these things, any more than children can on the
contrary of vice, when they ask whereabouts and who the bad men are;
for they have no personal memories, and have to content themselves with
notions drawn from books or from what others tell them.

So much on the apprehension of things and on the real sense in our use
of language; now let us pass on to the notional sense.

2. Experience tells us only of individual things, and these things are
innumerable. Our minds might have been so constructed as to be able to
receive and retain an exact image of each of these various objects,
one by one, as it came before us, but only in and for itself, without
the power of comparing it with any of the others. But this is not our
case: on the contrary, to compare and to contrast are among the most
prominent and busy of our intellectual functions. Instinctively, even
though unconsciously, we are ever instituting comparisons between
the manifold phenomena of the external world, as we meet with them,
criticizing, referring to a standard, collecting, analyzing them. Nay,
as if by one and the same action, as soon as we perceive them, we
also perceive that they are like each other or unlike, or rather both
like and unlike at once. We apprehend spontaneously, even before we
set about apprehending, that man is like man, yet unlike; and unlike
a horse, a tree, a mountain, or a monument, yet in some, though not
the same respects, like each of them. And in consequence, as I have
said, we are ever grouping and discriminating, measuring and sounding,
framing cross classes and cross divisions, and thereby rising from
particulars to generals, that is from images to notions.

In processes of this kind we regard things, not as they are in
themselves, but mainly as they stand in relation to each other. We
look at nothing simply for its own sake; we cannot look at any one
thing without keeping our eyes on a multitude of other things besides.
“Man” is no longer what he really is, an individual presented to us by
our senses, but as we read him in the light of those comparisons and
contrasts which we have made him suggest to us. He is attenuated into
an aspect, or relegated to his place in a classification. Thus his
appellation is made to suggest, not the real being which he is in this
or that specimen of himself, but a definition. If I might use a harsh
metaphor, I should say he is made the logarithm of his true self, and
in that shape is worked with the ease and satisfaction of logarithms.

It is plain what a different sense language will bear in this system
of intellectual notions from what it has when it is the representative
of things: and such a use of it is not only the very foundation of
all science, but may be, and is, carried out in literature and in the
ordinary intercourse of man with man. And then it comes to pass that
individual propositions about the concrete almost cease to be, and are
diluted or starved into abstract notions. The events of history and
the characters who figure in it lose their individuality. States and
governments, society and its component parts, cities, nations, even the
physical face of the country, things past, and things contemporary, all
that fulness of meaning which I have described as accruing to language
from experience, now that experience is absent, necessarily becomes
to the multitude of men nothing but a heap of notions, little more
intelligible than the beauties of a prospect to the short-sighted, or
the music of a great master to a listener who has no ear.

I suppose most men will recollect in their past years how many mistakes
they have made about persons, parties, local occurrences, nations and
the like, of which at the time they had no actual knowledge of their
own: how ashamed or how amused they have since been at their own
gratuitous idealism when they came into possession of the real facts
concerning them. They were accustomed to treat the definite Titus
or Sempronius as the _quidam homo_, the _individuum vagum_ of the
logician. They spoke of his opinions, his motives, his practices, as
their traditional rule for the _species_ Titus or Sempronius enjoined.
In order to find out what individual men in flesh and blood were, they
fancied that they had nothing to do but to refer to commonplaces,
alphabetically arranged. Thus they were well up with the character of
a Whig statesman or Tory magnate, a Wesleyan, a Congregationalist,
a parson, a priest, a philanthropist, a writer of controversy, a
sceptic; and found themselves prepared, without the trouble of direct
inquiry, to draw the individual after the peculiarities of his type.
And so with national character; the late Duke of Wellington must have
been impulsive, quarrelsome, witty, clever at repartee, for he was an
Irishman; in like manner, we must have cold and selfish Scots, crafty
Italians, vulgar Americans, and Frenchmen, half tiger, half monkey.
As to the French, those who are old enough to recollect the wars with
Napoleon, know what eccentric notions were popularly entertained about
them in England; how it was even a surprise to find some military man,
who was a prisoner of war, to be tall and stout, because it was a
received idea that all Frenchmen were undersized and lived on frogs.

Such again are the ideal personages who figure in romances and dramas
of the old school; tyrants, monks, crusaders, princes in disguise,
and captive damsels; or benevolent or angry fathers, and spendthrift
heirs; like the symbolical characters in some of Shakespeare’s plays,
“a Tapster,” or “a Lord Mayor,” or in the stage directions “Enter two
murderers.”

What I have been illustrating in the case of persons, might be
instanced in regard to places, transactions, physical calamities,
events in history. Words which are used by an eye-witness to express
things, unless he be especially eloquent or graphic, may only convey
general notions. Such is, and ever must be, the popular and ordinary
mode of apprehending language. On few subjects only have any of us the
opportunity of realizing in our minds what we speak and hear about;
and we fancy that we are doing justice to individual men and things by
making them a mere _synthesis_ of qualities, as if any number whatever
of abstractions would, by being fused together, be equivalent to one
concrete.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Here then we have two modes of thought, both using the same words,
both having one origin, yet with nothing in common in their results.
The informations of sense and sensation are the initial basis of both
of them; but in the one we take hold of objects from within them, and
in the other we view them from without them; we perpetuate them as
images in the one case, we transform them into notions in the other.
And natural to us as are both processes in their first elements and in
their growth, however divergent and independent in their direction,
they cannot really be inconsistent with each other; yet no one from the
sight of a horse or a dog would be able to anticipate its zoological
definition, nor from a knowledge of its definition to draw such a
picture as would direct another to the living specimen.

Each use of propositions has its own excellence and serviceableness,
and each has its own imperfection. To apprehend notionally is to have
breadth of mind, but to be shallow; to apprehend really is to be deep,
but to be narrow-minded. The latter is the conservative principle of
knowledge, and the former the principle of its advancement. Without the
apprehension of notions, we should for ever pace round one small circle
of knowledge; without a firm hold upon things, we shall waste ourselves
in vague speculations. However, real apprehension has the precedence,
as being the scope and end and the test of notional; and the fuller is
the mind’s hold upon things or what it considers such, the more fertile
is it in its aspects of them, and the more practical in its definitions.

Of course, as these two are not inconsistent with each other, they may
co-exist in the same mind. Indeed there is no one who does not to a
certain extent exercise both the one and the other. Viewed in relation
to Assent, which has led to my speaking of them, they do not in any way
affect the nature of the mental act, which is in all cases absolute and
unconditional; but they give it an external character corresponding
respectively to their own: so much so, that at first sight it might
seem as if Assent admitted of degrees, on account of the variation
of vividness in these different apprehensions. As notions come of
abstractions, so images come of experiences; the more fully the mind
is occupied by an experience, the keener will be its assent to it,
if it assents, and on the other hand, the duller will be its assent
and the less operative, the more it is engaged with an abstraction;
and thus a scale of assents is conceivable, either in the instance of
one mind upon different subjects, or of many minds upon one subject,
varying from an assent which looks like mere inference up to a belief
both intense and practical,—from the acceptance which we accord to some
accidental news of the day to the supernatural dogmatic faith of the
Christian.

It follows to treat of Assent under this double aspect of its
subject-matter,—assent to notions, and assent to things.




Chapter IV. Notional And Real Assent.


1. I have said that our apprehension of a proposition varies in
strength, and that it is stronger when it is concerned with a
proposition expressive to us of things than when concerned with a
proposition expressive of notions; and I have given this reason for it,
viz. that what is concrete exerts a force and makes an impression on
the mind which nothing abstract can rival. That is, I have argued that,
because the object is more powerful, therefore so is the apprehension
of it.

I do not think it unfair reasoning thus to take the apprehension for
its object. The mind is ever stimulated in proportion to the cause
stimulating it. Sights, for instance, sway us, as scents do not;
whether this be owing to a greater power in the thing seen, or to a
greater receptivity and expansiveness in the sense of seeing, is a
superfluous question. The strong object would make the apprehension
strong. Our sense of seeing is able to open to its object, as our sense
of smell cannot open to its own. Its objects are able to awaken the
mind, take possession of it, inspire it, act through it, with an energy
and variousness which is not found in the case of scents and their
apprehension. Since we cannot draw the line between the object and the
act, I am at liberty to say, as I have said, that, as is the thing
apprehended, so is the apprehension.

And so in like manner as regards apprehension of mental objects. If
an image derived from experience or information is stronger than an
abstraction, conception, or conclusion—if I am more arrested by our
Lord’s bearing before Pilate and Herod than by the “Justum et tenacem”
&c. of the poet, more arrested by His Voice saying to us, “Give to
him that asketh thee,” than by the best arguments of the Economist
against indiscriminate almsgiving, it does not matter for my present
purpose whether the objects give strength to the apprehension or the
apprehension gives large admittance into the mind to the object. It
is in human nature to be more affected by the concrete than by the
abstract; it may be the reverse with other beings. The apprehension,
then, may be as fairly said to possess the force which acts upon us, as
the object apprehended.

2. Real apprehension, then, may be pronounced stronger than
notional, because things, which are its objects, are confessedly
more impressive and affective than notions, which are the objects of
notional. Experiences and their images strike and occupy the mind,
as abstractions and their combinations do not. Next, passing on to
Assent, I observe that it is this variation in the mind’s apprehension
of an object to which it assents, and not any incompleteness in the
assent itself, which leads us to speak of strong and weak assents, as
if Assent itself admitted of degrees. In either mode of apprehension,
be it real or be it notional, the assent preserves its essential
characteristic of being unconditional. The assent of a Stoic to the
“Justum et tenacem” &c. may be as genuine an assent, as absolute and
entire, as little admitting of degree or variation, as distinct from an
act of inference, as the assent of a Christian to the history of our
Lord’s Passion in the Gospel.

3. However, characteristic as it is of Assent, to be thus in its nature
simply one and indivisible, and thereby essentially different from
Inference, which is ever varying in strength, never quite at the same
pitch in any two of its acts, still it is at the same time true that it
may be difficult in fact, by external tokens, to distinguish certain
acts of assent from certain acts of inference. Thus, whereas no one
could possibly confuse the real assent of a Christian to the fact of
our Lord’s crucifixion, with the notional acceptance of it, as a point
of history, on the part of a philosophical heathen (so removed from
each other, _toto cœlo_, are the respective modes of apprehending it in
the two cases, though in both the assent is in its nature one and the
same), nevertheless it would be easy to mistake the Stoic’s notional
assent, genuine though it might be, to the moral nobleness of the just
man “struggling in the storms of fate,” for a mere act of inference
resulting from the principles of his Stoical profession, or again for
an assent merely to the inferential necessity of the nobleness of that
struggle. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to praise men for their
consistency to their principles, whatever those principles are, that
is, to praise them on an inference, without thereby implying any assent
to the principles themselves.

The cause of this resemblance between acts so distinct is obvious. It
exists only in cases of notional assents; when the assent is given
to notions, then it is possible to hesitate in deciding whether it
is assent or inference, whether the mind is merely without doubt or
whether it is actually certain. And the reason is this: notional Assent
seems like Inference, because the apprehension which accompanies acts
of inference is notional also,—because Inference is engaged for the
most part on notional propositions, both premiss and conclusion. This
point, which I have implied throughout, I here distinctly record, and
shall enlarge upon hereafter. Only propositions about individuals are
not notional, and they are seldom the matter of inference. Thus, did
the Stoic infer the fact of our Lord’s death instead of assenting to
it, the proposition would have been as much an abstraction to him as
the “Justum et tenacem,” &c; nay further, the “Justus et tenax” was at
least a notion in his mind, but “Jesus Christ” would, in the schools
of Athens or of Rome, have stood for less, for an unknown being, the
x or y of a formula. Except then in some of the cases of singular
conclusions, inferences are employed on notions, that is, unless they
are employed on mere symbols; and, indeed, when they are symbolical,
then are they clearest and most cogent, as I shall hereafter show.
The next clearest are such as carry out the necessary results of
previous classifications, and therefore may be called definitions or
conclusions, as we please. For instance, having divided beings into
their classes, the definition of man is inevitable.

4. We may call it then the normal state of Inference to apprehend
propositions as notions:—and we may call it the normal state of Assent
to apprehend propositions as things. If notional apprehension is most
congenial to Inference, real apprehension will be the most natural
concomitant on Assent. An act of Inference includes in its object the
dependence of its thesis upon its premisses, that is, upon a relation,
which is abstract; but an act of Assent rests wholly on the thesis as
its object, and the reality of the thesis is almost a condition of its
unconditionality.

5. I am led on to make one remark more, and it shall be my last.

An act of assent, it seems, is the most perfect and highest of its
kind, when it is exercised on propositions, which are apprehended as
experiences and images, that is, which stand for things; and, on the
other hand, an act of inference is the most perfect and highest of its
kind, when it is exercised on propositions which are apprehended as
notions, that is, which are creations of the mind. An act of inference
indeed may be made with either of these modes of apprehension; so
may an act of assent; but, when inferences are exercised on things,
they tend to be conjectures or presentiments, without logical force;
and when assents are exercised on notions, they tend to be mere
assertions without any personal hold on them on the part of those who
make them. If this be so, the paradox is true, that, when Inference
is clearest, Assent may be least forcible, and, when Assent is most
intense, Inference may be least distinct;—for, though acts of assent
require previous acts of inference, they require them, not as adequate
causes, but as _sine quâ non_ conditions: and, while the apprehension
strengthens Assent, Inference often weakens the apprehension.


§ 1. Notional Assents.


I shall consider Assent made to propositions which express abstractions
or notions under five heads; which I shall call Profession, Credence,
Opinion, Presumption, and Speculation.

1. _Profession._

There are assents so feeble and superficial, as to be little more than
assertions. I class them all together under the head of Profession.
Such are the assents made upon habit and without reflection; as when
a man calls himself a Tory or a Liberal, as having been brought up as
such; or again, when he adopts as a matter of course the literary or
other fashions of the day, admiring the poems, or the novels, or the
music, or the personages, or the costume, or the wines, or the manners,
which happen to be popular, or are patronized in the higher circles.
Such again are the assents of men of wavering restless minds, who
take up and then abandon beliefs so readily, so suddenly, as to make
it appear that they had no view (as it is called) on the matter they
professed, and did not know to what they assented or why.

Then, again, when men say they have no doubt of a thing, this is a
case, in which it is difficult to determine whether they assent to it,
infer it, or consider it highly probable. There are many cases, indeed,
in which it is impossible to discriminate between assent, inference,
and assertion, on account of the otiose, passive, inchoate character
of the act in question. If I say that to-morrow will be fine, what
does this enunciation mean? Perhaps it means that it ought to be fine,
if the glass tells truly; then it is the inference of a probability.
Perhaps it means no more than a surmise, because it is fine to-day, or
has been so for the week past. And perhaps it is a compliance with the
word of another, in which case it is sometimes a real assent, sometimes
a polite assertion or a wish.

Many a disciple of a philosophical school, who talks fluently, does but
assert, when he seems to assent to the _dicta_ of his master, little as
he may be aware of it. Nor is he secured against this self-deception
by knowing the arguments on which those _dicta_ rest, for he may learn
the arguments by heart, as a careless schoolboy gets up his Euclid.
This practice of asserting simply on authority, with the pretence and
without the reality of assent, is what is meant by formalism. To say
“I do not understand a proposition, but I accept it on authority,” is
not formalism, but faith; it is not a direct assent to the proposition,
still it _is_ an assent to the authority which enunciates it; but what
I here speak of is professing to understand without understanding. It
is thus that political and religious watchwords are created; first
one man of name and then another adopts them, till their use becomes
popular, and then every one professes them, because every one else
does. Such words are “liberality,” “progress,” “light,” “civilization;”
such are “justification by faith only,” “vital religion,” “private
judgment,” “the Bible and nothing but the Bible.” Such again are
“Rationalism,” “Gallicanism,” “Jesuitism,” “Ultramontanism”—all of
which, in the mouths of conscientious thinkers, have a definite
meaning, but are used by the multitude as war-cries, nicknames,
and shibboleths, with scarcely enough of the scantiest grammatical
apprehension of them to allow of their being considered really more
than assertions.

Thus, instances occur now and then, when, in consequence of the
urgency of some fashionable superstition or popular delusion, some
eminent scientific authority is provoked to come forward, and to set
the world right by his “ipse dixit.” He, indeed, himself knows very
well what he is about; he has a right to speak, and his reasonings
and conclusions are sufficient, not only for his own, but for general
assent, and, it may be, are as simply true and impregnable, as they are
authoritative; but an intelligent hold on the matter in dispute, such
as he has himself, cannot be expected in the case of men in general.
They, nevertheless, one and all, repeat and retail his arguments, as
suddenly as if they had not to study them, as heartily as if they
understood them, changing round and becoming as strong antagonists of
the error which their master has exposed, as if they had never been its
advocates. If their word is to be taken, it is not simply his authority
that moves them, which would be sensible enough and suitable in them,
both apprehension and assent being in that case grounded on the maxim
“Cuique in arte suâ credendum,” but so far forth as they disown this
motive, and claim to judge in a scientific question of the worth of
arguments which require some real knowledge, they are little better,
not of course in a very serious matter, than pretenders and formalists.

Not only Authority, but Inference also may impose on us assents which
in themselves are little better than assertions, and which, so far as
they are assents, can only be notional assents, as being assents, not
to the propositions inferred, but to the truth of those propositions.
For instance, it can be proved by irrefragable calculations, that the
stars are not less than billions of miles distant from the earth; and
the process of calculation, upon which such statements are made, is
not so difficult as to require authority to secure our acceptance of
both it and of them; yet who can say that he has any real, nay, any
notional apprehension of a billion or a trillion? We can, indeed, have
some notion of it, if we analyze it into its factors, if we compare
it with other numbers, or if we illustrate it by analogies or by its
implications; but I am speaking of the vast number in itself. We cannot
assent to a proposition of which it is the predicate; we can but assent
to the truth of it.

This leads me to the question, whether belief in a mystery can be more
than an assertion. I consider it can be an assent, and my reasons
for saying so are as follows:—A mystery is a proposition conveying
incompatible notions, or is a statement of the inconceivable. Now we
can assent to propositions (and a mystery is a proposition), provided
we can apprehend them; therefore we can assent to a mystery, for,
unless we in some sense apprehended it, we should not recognize it
to be a mystery, that is, a statement uniting incompatible notions.
The same act, then, which enables us to discern that the words of
the proposition express a mystery, capacitates us for assenting to
it. Words which make nonsense, do not make a mystery. No one would
call Warton’s line—“Revolving swans proclaim the welkin near”—an
inconceivable assertion. It is equally plain, that the assent which
we give to mysteries, as such, is notional assent; for, by the
supposition, it is assent to propositions which we cannot conceive,
whereas, if we had had experience of them, we should be able to
conceive them, and without experience assent is not real.

But the question follows, Can processes of inference end in a mystery?
that is, not only in what is incomprehensible, that the stars are
billions of miles from each other, but in what is inconceivable, in the
co-existence of (seeming) incompatibilities? For how, it may be asked,
can reason carry out notions into their contradictories? since all the
developments of a truth must from the nature of the case be consistent
both with it and with each other. I answer, certainly processes of
inference, however accurate, can end in mystery; and I solve the
objection to such a doctrine thus:—our notion of a thing may be only
partially faithful to the original; it may be in excess of the thing,
or it may represent it incompletely, and, in consequence, it may serve
for it, it may stand for it, only to a certain point, in certain cases,
but no further. After that point is reached, the notion and the thing
part company; and then the notion, if still used as the representative
of the thing, will work out conclusions, not inconsistent with itself,
but with the thing to which it no longer corresponds.

This is seen most familiarly in the use of metaphors. Thus, in an
Oxford satire, which deservedly made a sensation in its day, it is said
that Vice “from its hardness takes a polish too.”(1) Whence we might
argue, that, whereas Caliban was vicious, he was therefore polished;
but politeness and Caliban are incompatible notions. Or again, when
some one said, perhaps to Dr. Johnson, that a certain writer (say
Hume) was a clear thinker, he made answer, “All shallows are clear.”
But supposing Hume to be in fact both a clear and a deep thinker,
yet supposing clearness and depth are incompatible in their literal
sense, which the objection seems to imply, and still in their full
literal sense were to be ascribed to Hume, then our reasoning about his
intellect has ended in the mystery, “Deep Hume is shallow;” whereas
the contradiction lies, not in the reasoning, but in the fancying that
inadequate notions can be taken as the exact representations of things.

Hence in science we sometimes use a definition or a _formula_, not as
exact, but as being sufficient for our purpose, for working out certain
conclusions, for a practical approximation, the error being small, till
a certain point is reached. This is what in theological investigations
I should call an economy.

A like contrast between notions and the things which they represent is
the principle of suspense and curiosity in those enigmatical sayings
which were frequent in the early stage of human society. In them the
problem proposed to the acuteness of the hearers, is to find some real
thing which may unite in itself certain conflicting notions which in
the question are attributed to it: “Out of the eater came forth meat,
and out of the strong came forth sweetness;” or, “What creature is
that, which in the morning goes on four legs, at noon on two, and on
three in the evening?” The answer, which names the thing, interprets
and thereby limits the notions under which it has been represented.

Let us take an example in algebra. Its calculus is commonly used
to investigate, not only the relations of quantity generally, but
geometrical facts in particular. Now it is at once too wide and too
narrow for such a purpose, fitting on to the doctrine of lines and
angles with a bad fit, as the coat of a short and stout man might serve
the needs of one who was tall and slim. Certainly it works well for
geometrical purposes up to a certain point, as when it enables us to
dispense with the cumbrous method of proof in questions of ratio and
proportion, which is adopted in the fifth book of Euclid; but what are
we to make of the fourth power of _a_, when it is to be translated into
geometrical language? If from this algebraical expression we determined
that space admitted of four dimensions, we should be enunciating a
mystery, because we should be applying to space a notion which belongs
to quantity. In this case algebra is in excess of geometrical truth.
Now let us take an instance in which it falls short of geometry,—What
is the meaning of the square root of _minus a_? Here the mystery is on
the side of algebra; and, in accordance with the principle which I am
illustrating, it has sometimes been considered as an abortive effort to
express, what is really beyond the capacity of algebraical notation,
the direction and position of lines in the third dimension of space,
as well as their length upon a plane. When the calculus is urged on by
the inevitable course of the working to do what it cannot do, it stops
short as if in resistance, and protests by an absurdity.

Our notions of things are never simply commensurate with the things
themselves; they are aspects of them, more or less exact, and
sometimes a mistake _ab initio_. Take an instance from arithmetic:—We
are accustomed to subject all that exists to numeration; but, to
be correct, we are bound first to reduce to some level of possible
comparison the things which we wish to number. We must be able to say,
not only that they are ten, twenty, or a hundred, but so many definite
somethings. For instance, we could not without extravagance throw
together Napoleon’s brain, ambition, hand, soul, smile, height, and
age at Marengo, and say that there were seven of them, though there
are seven words; nor will it even be enough to content ourselves with
what may be called a negative level, viz. that these seven were an
un-English or are a departed seven. Unless numeration is to issue in
nonsense, it must be conducted on conditions. This being the case,
there are, for what we know, collections of beings, to whom the notion
of number cannot be attached, except _catachrestically_, because, taken
individually, no positive point of real agreement can be found between
them, by which to call them. If indeed we can denote them by a plural
noun, then we can measure that plurality; but if they agree in nothing,
they cannot agree in bearing a common name, and to say that they amount
to a thousand these or those, is not to number them, but to count up a
certain number of names or words which we have written down.

Thus, the Angels have been considered by divines to have each of them
a species to himself; and we may fancy each of them so absolutely _sui
similis_ as to be like nothing else, so that it would be as untrue
to speak of a thousand Angels as of a thousand Hannibals or Ciceros.
It will be said, indeed, that all beings but One at least will come
under the notion of creatures, and are dependent upon that One; but
that is true of the brain, smile, and height of Napoleon, which no one
would call three creatures. But, if all this be so, much more does it
apply to our speculations concerning the Supreme Being, whom it may
be unmeaning, not only to number with other beings, but to subject to
number in regard to His own intrinsic characteristics. That is, to
apply arithmetical notions to Him may be as unphilosophical as it is
profane. Though He is at once Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the word
“Trinity” belongs to those notions of Him which are forced on us by the
necessity of our finite conceptions, the real and immutable distinction
which exists between Person and Person implying in itself no
infringement of His real and numerical Unity. And if it be asked how,
if we cannot properly speak of Him as Three, we can speak of Him as
One, I reply that He is not One in the way in which created things are
severally units; for one, as applied to ourselves, is used in contrast
to two or three and a whole series of numbers; but of the Supreme Being
it is safer to use the word “monad” than unit, for He has not even such
relation to His creatures as to allow, philosophically speaking, of our
contrasting Him with them.

Coming back to the main subject, which I have illustrated at the
risk of digression, I observe, that an alleged fact is not therefore
impossible because it is inconceivable; for the incompatible notions,
in which consists its inconceivableness, need not each of them really
belong to it in that fulness which involves their being incompatible
with each other. It is true indeed that I deny the possibility of
two straight lines enclosing a space, on the ground of its being
inconceivable; but I do so because a straight line is a notion and
nothing more, and not a thing, to which I may have attached a notion
more or less unfaithful. I have defined a straight line in my own way
at my own pleasure; the question is not one of facts at all, but of
the consistency with each other of definitions and of their logical
consequences.

“Space is not infinite, for nothing but the Creator is such:”—starting
from this thesis as a theological information, to be assumed as a
fact, though not one of experience, we arrive at once at an insoluble
mystery; for, if space be not infinite, it is finite, and finite space
is a contradiction in notions, space, as such, implying the absence
of boundaries. Here again it is our notion that carries us beyond the
fact, and in opposition to it, showing that from the first what we
apprehend of space does not in all respects correspond to the thing, of
which indeed we have no image.

This, then, is another instance in which the juxtaposition of notions
by the logical faculty lands us in what are commonly called mysteries.
Notions are but aspects of things; the free deductions from one of
these necessarily contradicts the free deductions from another. After
proceeding in our investigations a certain way, suddenly a blank or
a maze presents itself before the mental vision, as when the eye is
confused by the varying slides of a telescope. Thus, we believe in the
infinitude of the Divine Attributes, but we can have no experience of
infinitude as a fact; the word stands for a definition or a notion.
Hence, when we try how to reconcile in the moral world the fulness
of mercy with exactitude in sanctity and justice, or to explain that
the physical tokens of creative skill need not suggest any want of
creative power, we feel we are not masters of our subject. We apprehend
sufficiently to be able to assent to these theological truths as
mysteries; did we not apprehend them at all, we should be merely
asserting; though even then we might convert that assertion into an
assent, if we wished to do so, as I have already shown, by making it
the subject of a proposition, and predicating of it that it is true.

2. _Credence._

What I mean by giving credence to propositions is pretty much the same
as having “no doubt” about them. It is the sort of assent which we
give to those opinions and professed facts which are ever presenting
themselves to us without any effort of ours, and which we commonly
take for granted, thereby obtaining a broad foundation of thought
for ourselves, and a medium of intercourse between ourselves and
others. This form of notional assent comprises a great variety of
subject-matters; and is, as I have implied, of an otiose and passive
character, accepting whatever comes to hand, from whatever quarter,
warranted or not, so that it convey nothing on the face of it to its
own disadvantage. From the time that we begin to observe, think, and
reason, to the final failure of our powers, we are ever acquiring
fresh and fresh informations by means of our senses, and still more
from others and from books. The friends or strangers whom we fall in
with in the course of the day, the conversations or discussions to
which we are parties, the newspapers, the light reading of the season,
our recreations, our rambles in the country, our foreign tours, all
pour their contributions of intellectual matter into the storehouses
of our memory; and, though much may be lost, much is retained. These
informations, thus received with a spontaneous assent, constitute the
furniture of the mind, and make the difference between its civilized
condition and a state of nature. They are its education, as far as
general knowledge can so be called; and, though education is discipline
as well as learning, still, unless the mind implicitly welcomes the
truths, real or ostensible, which these informations supply, it will
gain neither formation nor a stimulus for its activity and progress.
Besides, to believe frankly what it is told, is in the young an
exercise of teachableness and humility.

Credence is the means by which, in high and low, in the man of the
world and in the recluse, our bare and barren nature is overrun and
diversified from without with a rich and living clothing. It is by
such ungrudging, prompt assents to what is offered to us so lavishly,
that we become possessed of the principles, doctrines, sentiments,
facts, which constitute useful, and especially liberal knowledge. These
various teachings, shallow though they be, are of a breadth which
secures us against those _lacunæ_ of knowledge which are apt to befall
the professed student, and keep us up to the mark in literature, in
the arts, in history, and in public matters. They give us in great
measure our morality, our politics, our social code, our art of
life. They supply the elements of public opinion, the watchwords of
patriotism, the standards of thought and action; they are our mutual
understandings, our channels of sympathy, our means of co-operation,
and the bond of our civil union. They become our moral language; we
learn them as we learn our mother tongue; they distinguish us from
foreigners; they are, in each of us, not indeed personal, but national
characteristics.

This account of them implies that they are received with a notional,
not a real assent; they are too manifold to be received in any
other way. Even the most practised and earnest minds must needs be
superficial in the greater part of their attainments. They know just
enough on all subjects, in literature, history, politics, philosophy,
and art, to be able to converse sensibly on them, and to understand
those who are really deep in one or other of them. This is what is
called, with a special appositeness, a gentleman’s knowledge, as
contrasted with that of a professional man, and is neither worthless
nor despicable, if used for its proper ends; but it is never more than
the furniture of the mind, as I have called it; it never is thoroughly
assimilated with it. Yet of course there is nothing to hinder those who
have even the largest stock of such notions from devoting themselves
to one or other of the subjects to which those notions belong, and
mastering it with a real apprehension; and then their general knowledge
of all subjects may be made variously useful in the direction of that
particular study or pursuit which they have selected.

I have been speaking of secular knowledge; but religion may be made a
subject of notional assent also, and is especially so made in our own
country. Theology, as such, always is notional, as being scientific:
religion, as being personal, should be real; but, except within a
small range of subjects, it commonly is not real in England. As to
Catholic populations, such as those of medieval Europe, or the Spain
of this day, or quasi-Catholic as those of Russia, among them assent
to religious objects is real, not notional. To them the Supreme Being,
our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, Angels and Saints, heaven and hell, are
as present as if they were objects of sight; but such a faith does
not suit the genius of modern England. There is in the literary world
just now an affectation of calling religion a “sentiment;” and it must
be confessed that usually it is nothing more with our own people,
educated or rude. Objects are barely necessary to it. I do not say so
of old Calvinism or Evangelical Religion; I do not call the religion of
Leighton, Beveridge, Wesley, Thomas Scott, or Cecil a mere sentiment;
nor do I so term the high Anglicanism of the present generation.
But these are only denominations, parties, schools, compared with
the national religion of England in its length and breadth. “Bible
Religion” is both the recognized title and the best description of
English religion.

It consists, not in rites or creeds, but mainly in having the Bible
read in Church, in the family, and in private. Now I am far indeed from
undervaluing that mere knowledge of Scripture which is imparted to the
population thus promiscuously. At least in England, it has to a certain
point made up for great and grievous losses in its Christianity. The
reiteration, again and again, in fixed course in the public service,
of the words of inspired teachers under both Covenants, and that in
grave majestic English, has in matter of fact been to our people a vast
benefit. It has attuned their minds to religious thoughts; it has given
them a high moral standard; it has served them in associating religion
with compositions which, even humanly considered, are among the most
sublime and beautiful ever written; especially, it has impressed
upon them the series of Divine Providences in behalf of man from his
creation to his end, and, above all, the words, deeds, and sacred
sufferings of Him in whom all the Providences of God centre.

So far the indiscriminate reading of Scripture has been of service;
still, much more is necessary than the benefits which I have
enumerated, to answer to the idea of a Religion; whereas our national
form professes to be little more than thus reading the Bible and
living a correct life. It is not a religion of persons and things, of
acts of faith and of direct devotion; but of sacred scenes and pious
sentiments. It has been comparatively careless of creed and catechism;
and has in consequence shown little sense of the need of consistency
in the matter of its teaching. Its doctrines are not so much facts, as
stereotyped aspects of facts; and it is afraid, so to say, of walking
round them. It induces its followers to be content with this meagre
view of revealed truth; or, rather, it is suspicious and protests,
or is frightened, as if it saw a figure in a picture move out of its
frame, when our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, or the Holy Apostles, are
spoken of as real beings, and really such as Scripture implies them to
be. I am not denying that the assent which it inculcates and elicits is
genuine as regards its contracted range of doctrine, but it is at best
notional. What Scripture especially illustrates from its first page to
its last, is God’s Providence; and that is nearly the only doctrine
held with a real assent by the mass of religious Englishmen. Hence the
Bible is so great a solace and refuge to them in trouble. I repeat, I
am not speaking of particular schools and parties in England, whether
of the High Church or the Low, but of the mass of piously-minded and
well-living people in all ranks of the community.

3. _Opinion._

That class of assents which I have called Credence, being a spontaneous
acceptance of the various informations, which are by whatever means
conveyed to our minds, sometimes goes by the name of Opinion. When
we speak of a man’s opinions, what do we mean, but the collection
of notions which he happens to have, and does not easily part with,
though he has neither sufficient proof nor firm grasp of them? This
is true; however, Opinion is a word of various significations, and
I prefer to use it in my own. Besides standing for Credence, it is
sometimes taken to mean Conviction, as when we speak of the “variety of
religious opinions,” or of being “persecuted for religious opinions,”
or of our having “no opinion on a particular point,” or of another
having “no religious opinions.” And sometimes it is used in contrast
with Conviction, as synonymous with a light and casual, though genuine
assent; thus, if a man was every day changing his mind, that is, his
assents, we might say, that he was very changeable in his opinions.

I shall here use the word to denote an assent, but an assent to a
proposition, not as true, but as probably true, that is, to the
probability of that which the proposition enunciates; and, as that
probability may vary in strength without limit, so may the cogency and
moment of the opinion. This account of Opinion may seem to confuse
it with Inference; for the strength of an inference varies with its
premisses, and is a probability; but the two acts of mind are really
distinct. Opinion, as being an assent, is independent of premisses. We
have opinions which we never think of defending by argument, though,
of course, we think they can be so defended. We are even obstinate in
them, or what is called “opinionated,” and may say that we have a right
to think just as we please, reason or no reason; whereas Inference is
in its nature and by its profession conditional and uncertain. To say
that “we shall have a fine hay-harvest if the present weather lasts,”
does not come of the same state of mind as, “I am of opinion that we
shall have a fine hay-harvest this year.”

Opinion, thus explained, has more connexion with Credence than with
Inference. It differs from Credence in these two points, viz. that,
while Opinion explicitly assents to the probability of a given
proposition, Credence is an implicit assent to its truth. It differs
from Credence in a third respect, viz. in being a reflex act;—when we
take a thing for granted, we have credence in it; when we begin to
reflect upon our credence, and to measure, estimate, and modify it,
then we are forming an opinion.

It is in this sense that Catholics speak of theological opinion, in
contrast with faith in dogma. It is much more than an inferential
act, but it is distinct from an act of certitude. And this is really
the sense which Protestants give to the word, when they interpret it
by Conviction; for their highest opinion in religion is, generally
speaking, an assent to a probability—as even Butler has been understood
or misunderstood to teach,—and therefore consistent with toleration of
its contradictory.

Opinion, being such as I have described, is a notional assent, for the
predicate of the proposition, on which it is exercised, is the abstract
word “probable.”

4. _Presumption._

By Presumption I mean an assent to first principles; and by first
principles I mean the propositions with which we start in reasoning on
any given subject-matter. They are in consequence very numerous, and
vary in great measure with the persons who reason, according to their
judgment and power of assent, being received by some minds, not by
others, and only a few of them received universally. They are all of
them notions, not images, because they express what is abstract, not
what is individual and from direct experience.

1. Sometimes our trust in our powers of reasoning and memory, that
is, our implicit assent to their telling truly, is treated as a first
principle; but we cannot properly be said to have any trust in them as
faculties. At most we trust in particular acts of memory and reasoning.
We are sure there was a yesterday, and that we did this or that in it;
we are sure that three times six is eighteen, and that the diagonal
of a square is longer than the side. So far as this we may be said to
trust the mental act, by which the object of our assent is verified;
but, in doing so, we imply no recognition of a general power or
faculty, or of any capability or affection of our minds, over and above
the particular act. We know indeed that we have a faculty by which we
remember, as we know we have a faculty by which we breathe; but we gain
this knowledge by abstraction or inference from its particular acts,
not by direct experience. Nor do we trust in the faculty of memory or
reasoning as such, even after that we have inferred its existence; for
its acts are often inaccurate, nor do we invariably assent to them.

However, if I must speak my mind, I have another ground for reluctance
to speak of our trusting memory or reasoning, except indeed by a
figure of speech. It seems to me unphilosophical to speak of trusting
ourselves. We are what we are, and we use, not trust our faculties. To
debate about trusting in a case like this, is parallel to the confusion
implied in wishing I had had a choice if I would be created or no, or
speculating what I should be like, if I were born of other parents.
“Proximus sum egomet mihi.” Our consciousness of self is prior to all
questions of trust or assent. We act according to our nature, by means
of ourselves, when we remember or reason. We are as little able to
accept or reject our mental constitution, as our being. We have not the
option; we can but misuse or mar its functions. We do not confront or
bargain with ourselves; and therefore I cannot call the trustworthiness
of the faculties of memory and reasoning one of our first principles.

2. Next, as to the proposition, that things exist external to
ourselves, this I do consider a first principle, and one of universal
reception. It is founded on an instinct; I so call it, because the
brute creation possesses it. This instinct is directed towards
individual phenomena, one by one, and has nothing of the character of
a generalization; and, since it exists in brutes, the gift of reason
is not a condition of its existence, and it may justly be considered
an instinct in man. What the human mind does is what brutes cannot
do, viz. to draw from our ever-recurring experiences of its testimony
in particulars a general proposition, and, because this instinct or
intuition acts whenever the phenomena of sense present themselves, to
lay down in broad terms, by an inductive process, the great aphorism,
that there is an external world, and that all the phenomena of sense
proceed from it. This general proposition, to which we go on to assent,
goes (_extensivè_, though not _intensivè_) far beyond our experience,
illimitable as that experience may be, and represents a notion.

3. I have spoken, and I think rightly spoken, of instinct as a force
which spontaneously impels us, not only to bodily movements, but to
mental acts. It is instinct which leads the quasi-intelligent principle
(whatever it is) in brutes to perceive in the phenomena of sense a
something distinct from and beyond those phenomena. It is instinct
which impels the child to recognize in the smiles or the frowns of
a countenance which meets his eyes, not only a being external to
himself, but one whose looks elicit in him confidence or fear. And,
as he instinctively interprets these physical phenomena, as tokens
of things beyond themselves, so from the sensations attendant upon
certain classes of his thoughts and actions he gains a perception of
an external being, who reads his mind, to whom he is responsible,
who praises and blames, who promises and threatens. As I am only
illustrating a general view by examples, I shall take this analogy for
granted here. As then we have our initial knowledge of the universe
through sense, so do we in the first instance begin to learn about its
Lord and God from conscience; and, as from particular acts of that
instinct, which makes experiences, mere images (as they ultimately are)
upon the retina, the means of our perceiving something real beyond
them, we go on to draw the general conclusion that there is a vast
external world, so from the recurring instances in which conscience
acts, forcing upon us importunately the mandate of a Superior, we have
fresh and fresh evidence of the existence of a Sovereign Ruler, from
whom those particular dictates which we experience proceed; so that,
with limitations which cannot here be made without digressing from
my main subject, we may, by means of that induction from particular
experiences of conscience, have as good a warrant for concluding the
Ubiquitous Presence of One Supreme Master, as we have, from parallel
experience of sense, for assenting to the fact of a multiform and vast
world, material and mental.

However, this assent is notional, because we generalize a consistent,
methodical form of Divine Unity and Personality with Its attributes,
from particular experiences of the religious instinct, which are
themselves, only _intensivè_, not _extensivè_, and in the imagination,
not intellectually, notices of Its Presence; though at the same
time that assent may become real of course, as may the assent to
the external world, viz. when we apply our general knowledge to a
particular instance of that knowledge, as, according to a former
remark, the general “varium et mutabile” was realized in Dido. And in
thus treating the origin of these great notions, I am not forgetting
the aid which from our earliest years we receive from teachers, nor
am I denying the influence of certain original forms of thinking or
formative ideas, connatural with our minds, without which we could not
reason at all. I am only contemplating the mind as it moves in fact,
by whatever hidden mechanism; as a locomotive engine could not move
without steam, but still, under whatever number of forces, it certainly
does start from Birmingham and does arrive in London.

4. And so again, as regards the first principles expressed in such
propositions as “There is a right and a wrong,” “a true and a false,”
“a just and an unjust,” “a beautiful and a deformed;” they are
abstractions to which we give a notional assent in consequence of our
particular experiences of qualities in the concrete, to which we give a
real assent. As we form our notion of whiteness from the actual sight
of snow, milk, a lily, or a cloud, so, after experiencing the sentiment
of approbation which arises in us on the sight of certain acts one by
one, we go on to assign to that sentiment a cause, and to those acts
a quality, and we give to this notional cause or quality the name of
virtue, which is an abstraction, not a thing. And in like manner, when
we have been affected by a certain specific admiring pleasure at the
sight of this or that concrete object, we proceed by an arbitrary act
of the mind to give a name to the hypothetical cause or quality in
the abstract, which excites it. We speak of it as beautifulness, and
henceforth, when we call a thing beautiful, we mean by the word nothing
else than a certain quality of things which creates in us this special
sensation.

These so-called first principles, I say, are really conclusions or
abstractions from particular experiences; and an assent to their
existence is not an assent to things or their images, but to notions,
real assent being confined to the propositions directly embodying those
experiences. Such notions indeed are an evidence of the reality of the
special sentiments in particular instances, without which they would
not have been formed; but in themselves they are abstractions from
facts, not elementary truths prior to reasoning.

I am not of course dreaming of denying the objective existence of the
Moral Law, nor our instinctive recognition of the immutable difference
in the moral quality of acts, as elicited in us by one instance of
them. Even one act of cruelty, ingratitude, generosity, or justice
reveals to us at once _intensivè_ the immutable distinction between
those qualities and their contraries; that is, in that particular
instance and _pro hac vice_. From such experience—an experience which
is ever recurring—we proceed to abstract and generalize; and thus the
abstract proposition “There is a right and a wrong,” as representing
an act of inference, is received by the mind with a notional, not a
real assent. However, in proportion as we obey the particular dictates
which are its tokens, so are we led on more and more to view it in the
association of those particulars, which are real, and virtually to
change our notion of it into the image of that objective fact, which in
each particular case it undeniably is.

5. Another of these presumptions is the belief in causation. It is to
me a perplexity that grave authors seem to enunciate as an intuitive
truth, that every thing must have a cause. If this were so, the voice
of nature would tell false; for why in that case stop short at One, who
is Himself without cause? The assent which we give to the proposition,
as a first principle, that nothing happens without a cause, is
derived, in the first instance, from what we know of ourselves; and
we argue analogically from what is within us to what is external to
us. One of the first experiences of an infant is that of his willing
and doing; and, as time goes on, one of the first temptations of the
boy is to bring home to himself the fact of his sovereign arbitrary
power, though it be at the price of waywardness, mischievousness, and
disobedience. And when his parents, as antagonists of this wilfulness,
begin to restrain him, and to bring his mind and conduct into shape,
then he has a second series of experiences of cause and effect, and
that upon a principle or rule. Thus the notion of causation is one of
the first lessons which he learns from experience, that experience
limiting it to agents possessed of intelligence and will. It is the
notion of power combined with a purpose and an end. Physical phenomena,
as such, are without sense; and experience teaches us nothing about
physical phenomena as causes. Accordingly, wherever the world is
young, the movements and changes of physical nature have been and are
spontaneously ascribed by its people to the presence and will of hidden
agents, who haunt every part of it, the woods, the mountains and the
streams, the air and the stars, for good or for evil;—just as children
again, by beating the ground after falling, imply that what has bruised
them has intelligence;—nor is there anything illogical in such a
belief. It rests on the argument from analogy.

As time goes on, and society is formed, and the idea of science
is mastered, a different aspect of the physical universe presents
itself to the mind. Since causation implies a sequence of acts in our
own case, and our doing is always posterior, never contemporaneous
or prior, to our willing, therefore, when we witness invariable
antecedents and consequents, we call the former the cause of the
latter, though intelligence is absent, from the analogy of external
appearances. At length we go on to confuse causation with order;
and, because we happen to have made a successful analysis of some
complicated assemblage of phenomena, which experience has brought
before us in the visible scene of things, and have reduced them to a
tolerable dependence on each other, we call the ultimate points of
this analysis, and the hypothetical facts in which the whole mass of
phenomena is gathered up, by the name of causes, whereas they are
really only the formula under which those phenomena are conveniently
represented. Thus the constitutional formula, “The king can do no
wrong,” is not a fact, or a cause of the Constitution, but a happy mode
of bringing out its genius, of determining the correlations of its
elements, and of grouping or regulating political rules and proceedings
in a particular direction and in a particular form. And in like manner,
that all the particles of matter throughout the universe are attracted
to each other with a force varying inversely with the square of their
respective distances, is a profound idea, harmonizing the physical
works of the Creator; but even could it be proved to be a universal
fact, and also to be the actual cause of the movements of all bodies
in the universe, still it would not be an experience, any more than is
the mythological doctrine of the presence of innumerable spirits in
physical phenomena.

Of these two senses of the word “cause,” viz. that which brings a thing
to be, and that on which a thing under given circumstances follows,
the former is that of which our experience is the earlier and more
intimate, being suggested to us by our consciousness of willing and
doing. The latter of the two requires a discrimination and exactness of
thought for its apprehension, which implies special mental training;
else, how do we learn to call food the cause of refreshment, but day
never the cause of night, though night follows day more surely than
refreshment follows food? Starting, then, from experience, I consider
a cause to be an effective will; and, by the doctrine of causation, I
mean the notion, or first principle, that all things come of effective
will; and the reception or presumption of this notion is a notional
assent.

6. As to causation in the second sense (viz. an ordinary succession of
antecedents and consequents, or what is called the Order of Nature),
when so explained, it falls under the doctrine of general laws; and of
this I proceed to make mention, as another first principle or notion,
derived by us from experience, and accepted with what I have called
a presumption. By natural law I mean the fact that things happen
uniformly according to certain circumstances, and not without them and
at random: that is, that they happen in an order; and, as all things
in the universe are unit and individual, order implies a certain
repetition, whether of things or like things, or of their affections
and relations. Thus we have experience, for instance, of the regularity
of our physical functions, such as the beating of the pulse and the
heaving of the breath; of the recurring sensations of hunger and
thirst; of the alternation of waking and sleeping, and the succession
of youth and age. In like manner we have experience of the great
recurring phenomena of the heavens and earth, of day and night, summer
and winter. Also, we have experience of a like uniform succession in
the instance of fire burning, water choking, stones falling down and
not up, iron moving towards a magnet, friction followed by sparks and
crackling, an oar looking bent in the stream, and compressed steam
bursting its vessel. Also, by scientific analysis, we are led to the
conclusion that phenomena, which seem very different from each other,
admit of being grouped together as modes of the operation of one
hypothetical law, acting under varied circumstances. For instance, the
motion of a stone falling freely, of a projectile, and of a planet, may
be generalized as one and the same property, in each of them, of the
particles of matter; and this generalization loses its character of
hypothesis, and becomes a probability, in proportion as we have reason
for thinking on other grounds that the particles of all matter really
move and act towards each other in one certain way in relation to space
and time, and not in half a dozen ways; that is, that nature acts
by uniform laws. And thus we advance to the general notion or first
principle of the sovereignty of law throughout the universe.

There are philosophers who go farther, and teach, not only a general,
but an invariable, and inviolable, and necessary uniformity in the
action of the laws of nature, holding that every thing is the result
of some law or laws, and that exceptions are impossible; but I do
not see on what ground of experience or reason they take up this
position. Our experience rather is adverse to such a doctrine, for
what concrete fact or phenomenon exactly repeats itself? Some abstract
conception of it, more perfect than the recurrent phenomenon itself,
is necessary, before we are able to say that it has happened even
twice, and the variations which accompany the repetition are of the
nature of exceptions. The earth, for instance, never moves exactly in
the same orbit year by year, but is in perpetual vacillation. It will,
indeed, be replied that this arises from the interaction of one law
with another, of which the actual orbit is only the accidental issue,
that the earth is under the influence of a variety of attractions from
cosmical bodies, and that, if it is subject to continual aberrations
in its course, these are accounted for accurately or sufficiently by
the presence of those extraordinary and variable attractions:—science,
then, by its analytical processes sets right the _primâ facie_
confusion. Of course; still let us not by our words imply that we are
appealing to experience, when really we are only accounting, and that
by hypothesis, for the absence of experience. The confusion is a fact,
the reasoning processes are not facts. The extraordinary attractions
assigned to account for our experience of that confusion are not
themselves experienced phenomenal facts, but more or less probable
hypotheses, argued out by means of an assumed analogy between the
cosmical bodies to which those attractions are referred and falling
bodies on the earth. I say “assumed,” because that analogy (in other
words, the unfailing uniformity of nature) is the very point which
has to be proved. It is true, that we can make experiment of the law
of attraction in the case of bodies on the earth; but, I repeat, to
assume from analogy that, as stones do fall to the earth, so Jupiter,
if let alone, would fall upon the earth and the earth upon Jupiter,
and with certain peculiarities of velocity on either side, is to have
recourse to an explanation which is not necessarily valid, unless
nature is necessarily uniform. Nor, indeed, has it yet been proved,
nor ought it to be assumed, even that the law of velocity of falling
bodies on the earth is invariable in its operation; for that again is
only an instance of the general proposition, which is the very thesis
in debate. It seems safer then to hold that the order of nature is not
necessary, but general in its manifestations.

But, it may be urged, if a thing happens once, it must happen always;
for what is to hinder it? Nay, on the contrary, why, because one
particle of matter has a certain property, should all particles have
the same? Why, because particles have instanced the property a thousand
times, should the thousand and first instance it also? It is _primâ
facie_ unaccountable that an accident should happen twice, not to
speak of its happening always. If we expect a thing to happen twice,
it is because we think it is not an accident, but has a cause. What
has brought about a thing once, may bring it about twice. _What_ is to
hinder its happening? rather, What is to make it happen? Here we are
thrown back from the question of Order to that of Causation. A law is
not a cause, but a fact; but when we come to the question of cause,
then, as I have said, we have no experience of any cause but Will. If,
then, I must answer the question, What is to alter the order of nature?
I reply, That which willed it;—That which willed it, can unwill it; and
the invariableness of law depends on the unchangeableness of that Will.

And here I am led to observe that, as a cause implies a will, so order
implies a purpose. Did we see flint celts, in their various receptacles
all over Europe, scored always with certain special and characteristic
marks, even though those marks had no assignable meaning or final
cause whatever, we should take that very repetition, which indeed is
the principle of order, to be a proof of intelligence. The agency then
which has kept up and keeps up the general laws of nature, energizing
at once in Sirius and on the earth, and on the earth in its primary
period as well as in the nineteenth century, must be Mind, and nothing
else, and Mind at least as wide and as enduring in its living action,
as the immeasurable ages and spaces of the universe on which that
agency has left its traces.

In these remarks I have digressed from my immediate subject, but
they have some bearing on points which will subsequently come into
discussion.

5. _Speculation._

Speculation is one of those words which, in the vernacular, have so
different a sense from what they bear in philosophy. It is commonly
taken to mean a conjecture, or a venture on chances; but its proper
meaning is mental sight, or the contemplation of mental operations and
their results as opposed to experience, experiment, or sense, analogous
to its meaning in Shakspeare’s line, “Thou hast no speculation in those
eyes.” In this sense I use it here.

And I use it in this sense to denote those notional assents which are
the most direct, explicit, and perfect of their kind, viz. those which
are the firm, conscious acceptance of propositions as true. This kind
of assent includes the assent to all reasoning and its conclusions, to
all general propositions, to all rules of conduct, to all proverbs,
aphorisms, sayings, and reflections on men and society. Of course
mathematical investigations and truths are the subjects of this
speculative assent. So are legal judgments, and constitutional maxims,
as far as they appeal to us for assent. So are the determinations
of science; so are the principles, disputations, and doctrines of
theology. That there is a God, that He has certain attributes, and in
what sense He can be said to have attributes, that He has done certain
works, that He has made certain revelations of Himself and of His will,
and what they are, and the multiplied bearings of the parts of the
teaching, thus developed and formed, upon each other, all this is the
subject of notional assent, and of that particular department of it
which I have called Speculation. As far as these particular subjects
can be viewed in the concrete and represent experiences, they can be
received by real assent also; but as expressed in general propositions
they belong to notional apprehension and assent.


§ 2. Real Assents.


I have in a measure anticipated the subject of Real Assent by what
I have been saying about Notional. In comparison of the directness
and force of the apprehension, which we have of an object, when our
assent is to be called real, Notional Assent and Inference seem to be
thrown back into one and the same class of intellectual acts, though
the former of the two is always an unconditional acceptance of a
proposition, and the latter is an acceptance on the condition of an
acceptance of its premisses. In its notional assents as well as in
its inferences, the mind contemplates its own creations instead of
things; in real, it is directed towards things, represented by the
impressions which they have left on the imagination. These images, when
assented-to, have an influence both on the individual and on society,
which mere notions cannot exert.

I have already given various illustrations of Real Assent; I will
follow them up here by some instances of the change of Notional Assent
into Real.

1. For instance: boys at school look like each other, and pursue the
same studies, some of them with greater success than others; but it
will sometimes happen, that those who acquitted themselves but poorly
in class, when they come into the action of life, and engage in some
particular work, which they have already been learning in its theory
and with little promise of proficiency, are suddenly found to have
what is called an eye for that work—an eye for trade matters, or for
engineering, or a special taste for literature—which no one expected
from them at school, while they were engaged on notions. Minds of
this stamp not only know the received rules of their profession, but
enter into them, and even anticipate them, or dispense with them, or
substitute other rules instead. And when new questions are opened,
and arguments are drawn up on one side and the other in long array,
they with a natural ease and promptness form their views and give
their decision, as if they had no need to reason, from their clear
apprehension of the lie and issue of the whole matter in dispute, as
if it were drawn out in a map before them. These are the reformers,
systematizers, inventors, in various departments of thought,
speculative and practical; in education, in administration, in social
and political matters, in science. Such men indeed are far from
infallible; however great their powers, they sometimes fall into great
errors, in their own special department, while second-rate men who go
by rule come to sound and safe conclusions. Images need not be true;
but I am illustrating what vividness of apprehension is, and what is
the strength of belief consequent upon it.

2. Again:—twenty years ago, the Duke of Wellington wrote his celebrated
letter on the subject of the national defences. His authority gave
it an immediate circulation among all classes of the community; none
questioned what he said, nor as if taking his words on faith merely,
but as intellectually recognizing their truth; yet few could be said
to see or feel that truth. His letter lay, so to say, upon the pure
intellect of the national mind, and nothing for a time came of it.
But eleven years afterwards, after his death, the anger of the French
colonels with us, after the attempt upon Louis Napoleon’s life,
transferred its facts to the charge of the imagination. Then forthwith
the national assent became in various ways an operative principle,
especially in its promotion of the volunteer movement. The Duke, having
a special eye for military matters, had realized the state of things
from the first; but it took a course of years to impress upon the
public mind an assent to his warning deeper and more energetic than the
reception it is accustomed to give to a clever article in a newspaper
or a review.

3. And so generally: great truths, practical or ethical, float on
the surface of society, admitted by all, valued by few, exemplifying
the poet’s adage, “Probitas laudatur et alget,” until changed
circumstances, accident, or the continual pressure of their advocates,
force them upon its attention. The iniquity, for instance, of the
slave-trade ought to have been acknowledged by all men from the first;
it was acknowledged by many, but it needed an organized agitation, with
tracts and speeches innumerable, so to affect the imagination of men as
to make their acknowledgment of that iniquitousness operative.

In like manner, when Mr. Wilberforce, after succeeding in the slave
question, urged the Duke of Wellington to use his great influence
in discountenancing duelling, he could only get from him in answer,
“A relic of barbarism, Mr. Wilberforce;” as if he accepted a notion
without realizing a fact: at length, the growing intelligence of
the community, and the shock inflicted upon it by the tragical
circumstances of a particular duel, were fatal to that barbarism.
The governing classes were roused from their dreamy acquiescence in
an abstract truth, and recognized the duty of giving it practical
expression.

4. Let us consider, too, how differently young and old are affected by
the words of some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages,
which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor
worse than a hundred others which any clever writer might supply, which
he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks,
successfully, in his own flowing versification, at length come home
to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of
life, and pierce him, as if he had never before known them, with their
sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how
it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an
Ionian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation
after generation, for thousands of years, with a power over the mind,
and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all
its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival. Perhaps this is
the reason of the medieval opinion about Virgil, as if a prophet or
magician; his single words and phrases, his pathetic half lines, giving
utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness,
yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in
every time.

5. And what the experience of the world effects for the illustration
of classical authors, that office the religious sense, carefully
cultivated, fulfils towards Holy Scripture. To the devout and
spiritual, the Divine Word speaks of things, not merely of notions.
And, again, to the disconsolate, the tempted, the perplexed, the
suffering, there comes, by means of their very trials, an enlargement
of thought, which enables them to see in it what they never saw before.
Henceforth there is to them a reality in its teachings, which they
recognize as an argument, and the best of arguments, for its divine
origin. Hence the practice of meditation on the Sacred Text, so highly
thought of by Catholics. Reading, as we do, the Gospels from our youth
up, we are in danger of becoming so familiar with them as to be dead
to their force, and to view them as a mere history. The purpose, then,
of meditation is to realize them; to make the facts which they relate
stand out before our minds as objects, such as may be appropriated by a
faith as living as the imagination which apprehends them.

It is obvious to refer to the unworthy use made of the more solemn
parts of the sacred volume by the mere popular preacher. His very mode
of reading, whether warnings or prayers, is as if he thought them to
be little more than fine writing, poetical in sense, musical in sound,
and worthy of inspiration. The most awful truths are to him but sublime
or beautiful conceptions, and are adduced and used by him, in season
and out of season, for his own purposes, for embellishing his style or
rounding his periods. But let his heart at length be ploughed by some
keen grief or deep anxiety, and Scripture is a new book to him. This
is the change which so often takes place in what is called religious
conversion, and it is a change so far simply for the better, by
whatever infirmity or error it is in the particular case accompanied.
And it is strikingly suggested to us, to take a saintly example, in the
confession of the patriarch Job, when he contrasts his apprehension
of the Almighty before and after his afflictions. He says he had
indeed a true apprehension of the Divine Attributes before as well as
after; but with the trial came a great change in the character of that
apprehension:—“With the hearing of the ear,” he says, “I have heard
Thee, but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I reprehend myself, and do
penance in dust and ashes.”

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Let these instances suffice of Real Assent in its relation to Notional;
they lead me to make three remarks in further illustration of its
character.

1. The fact of the distinctness of the images, which are required for
real assent, is no warrant for the existence of the objects which those
images represent. A proposition, be it ever so keenly apprehended,
may be true or may be false. If we simply put aside all inferential
information, such as is derived from testimony, from general belief,
from the concurrence of the senses, from common sense, or otherwise,
we have no right to consider that we have apprehended a truth, merely
because of the strength of our mental impression of it. Hence the
proverb, “Fronti nulla fides.” An image, with the characters of perfect
veracity and faithfulness, may be ever so distinct and eloquent an
object presented before the mind (or, as it is sometimes called,
an “objectum internum,” or a “subject-object”); but, nevertheless,
there may be no external reality in the case, corresponding to it, in
spite of its impressiveness. One of the most remarkable instances of
this fallacious impressiveness is the illusion which possesses the
minds of able men, those especially who are exercised in physical
investigations, in favour of the inviolability of the laws of nature.
Philosophers of the school of Hume discard the very supposition of
miracles, and scornfully refuse to hear evidence in their behalf in
given instances, from their intimate experience of physical order and
of the ever-recurring connexion of antecedent and consequent. Their
imagination usurps the functions of reason; and they cannot bring
themselves even to entertain as a hypothesis (and this is all that they
are asked to do) a thought contrary to that vivid impression of which
they are the victims, that the uniformity of nature, which they witness
hour by hour, is equivalent to a necessary, inviolable law.

Yet it is plain, and I shall take it for granted here, that when
I assent to a proposition, I ought to have some more legitimate
reason for doing so, than the brilliancy of the image of which that
proposition is the expression. That I have no experience of a thing
happening except in one way, is a cause of the intensity of my assent,
if I assent, but not the reason of my assenting. In saying this, I
am not disposed to deny the presence in some men of an idiosyncratic
sagacity, which really and rightly sees reasons in impressions which
common men cannot see, and is secured from the peril of confusing truth
with make-belief; but this is genius, and beyond rule. I grant too, of
course, that accidentally impressiveness does in matter of fact, as in
the instance which I have been giving, constitute the motive principle
of belief; for the mind is ever exposed to the danger of being carried
away by the liveliness of its conceptions, to the sacrifice of good
sense and conscientious caution, and the greater and the more rare are
its gifts, the greater is the risk of swerving from the line of reason
and duty; but here I am not speaking of transgressions of rule any more
than of exceptions to it, but of the normal constitution of our minds,
and of the natural and rightful effect of acts of the imagination upon
us, and this is, not to create assent, but to intensify it.

2. Next, Assent, however strong, and accorded to images however
vivid, is not therefore necessarily practical. Strictly speaking, it
is not imagination that causes action; but hope and fear, likes and
dislikes, appetite, passion, affection, the stirrings of selfishness
and self-love. What imagination does for us is to find a means of
stimulating those motive powers; and it does so by providing a supply
of objects strong enough to stimulate them. The thought of honour,
glory, duty, self-aggrandisement, gain, or on the other hand of Divine
Goodness, future reward, eternal life, perseveringly dwelt upon, leads
us along a course of action corresponding to itself, but only in case
there be that in our minds which is congenial to it. However, when
there is that preparation of mind, the thought does lead to the act.
Hence it is that the fact of a proposition being accepted with a real
assent is accidentally an earnest of that proposition being carried out
in conduct, and the imagination may be said in some sense to be of a
practical nature, inasmuch as it leads to practice indirectly by the
action of its object upon the affections.

3. There is a third remark suggested by the view which I have been
taking of real assents, viz. that they are of a personal character,
each individual having his own, and being known by them. It is
otherwise with notions; notional apprehension is in itself an ordinary
act of our common nature. All of us have the power of abstraction, and
can be taught either to make or to enter into the same abstractions;
and thus to co-operate in the establishment of a common measure
between mind and mind. And, though for one and all of us to assent
to the notions which we thus apprehend in common, is a further step,
as requiring the adoption of a common stand-point of principle and
judgment, yet this too depends in good measure on certain logical
processes of thought, with which we are all familiar, and on facts
which we all take for granted. But we cannot make sure, for ourselves
or others, of real apprehension and assent, because we have to secure
first the images which are their objects, and these are often peculiar
and special. They depend on personal experience; and the experience of
one man is not the experience of another. Real assent, then, as the
experience which it presupposes, is proper to the individual, and, as
such, thwarts rather than promotes the intercourse of man with man. It
shuts itself up, as it were, in its own home, or at least it is its own
witness and its own standard; and, as in the instances above given, it
cannot be reckoned on, anticipated, accounted for, inasmuch as it is
the accident of this man or that.

I call the characteristics of an individual accidents, in spite of the
universal reign of law, because they are severally the co-incidents of
many laws, and there are no laws as yet discovered of such coincidence.
A man who is run over in the street and killed, in one sense suffers
according to rule or law; he was crossing, he was short-sighted or
preoccupied in mind, or he was looking another way; he was deaf, lame,
or flurried; and the cab came up at a great pace. If all this was
so, it was by a necessity that he was run over; it would have been a
miracle if he had escaped. So far is clear; but what is not clear is
how all these various conditions met together in the particular case,
how it was that a man, short-sighted, hard of hearing, deficient in
presence of mind, happened to get in the way of a cab hurrying along to
catch a train. This concrete fact does not come under any law of sudden
deaths, but, like the earth’s yearly path which I spoke of above, is
the accident of the individual.

It does not meet the case to refer to the law of averages, for such
laws deal with percentages, not with individuals, and it is about
individuals that I am speaking. That this particular man out of
the three millions congregated in the metropolis, was to have the
experience of this catastrophe, and to be the select victim to appease
that law of averages, no statistical tables could foretell, even
though they could determine that it was in the fates that in that week
or day some four persons in the length and breadth of London should
be run over. And in like manner that this or that person should have
the particular experiences necessary for real assent on any point,
that the Deist should become a Theist, the Erastian a Catholic, the
Protectionist a Free-trader, the Conservative a Legitimist, the high
Tory an out-and-out Democrat, are facts, each of which may be the
result of a multitude of coincidences in one and the same individual,
coincidences which we have no means of determining, and which,
therefore, we may call accidents. For—


    “There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends,
    Rough hew them how we will.”


Such accidents are the characteristics of persons, as _differentiæ_ and
properties are the characteristics of species or natures.

That a man dies when deprived of air, is not an accident of his person,
but a law of his nature; that he cannot live without quinine or opium,
or out of the climate of Madeira, is his own peculiarity. If all men
every where usually had the yellow fever once in their lives, we should
call it (speaking according to our knowledge) a law of the human
constitution; if the inhabitants of a particular country commonly had
it, we should call it a law of the climate; if a healthy man has a
fever in a healthy place, in a healthy season, we call it an accident,
though it be reducible to the coincidence of laws, because there is
no known law of their coincidence. To be rational, to have speech, to
pass through successive changes of mind and body from infancy to death,
belong to man’s nature; to have a particular history, to be married or
single, to have children or to be childless, to live a given number of
years, to have a certain constitution, moral temperament, intellectual
outfit, mental formation, these and the like, taken all together, are
the accidents which make up our notion of a man’s person, and are the
ground-work or condition of his particular experiences.

Moreover, various of the experiences which befall this man may be the
same as those which befall that, although those experiences result
each from the combination of its own accidents, and are ultimately
traceable each to its own special condition or history. That is, images
which are possessed in common, with their apprehensions and assents,
may nevertheless be personal characteristics. If two or three hundred
men are to be found, who cannot live out of Madeira, that inability
would still be an accident and a peculiarity of each of them. Even
if in each case it implied delicacy of lungs, still that delicacy is
a vague notion, comprehending under it a great variety of cases in
detail. If “five hundred brethren at once” saw our risen Lord, that
common experience would not be a law, but a personal accident which
was the prerogative of each. And so again in this day the belief of
so many thousands in His Divinity, is not therefore notional, because
it is common, but may be a real and personal belief, being produced
in different individual minds by various experiences and disposing
causes, variously combined; such as a warm or strong imagination,
great sensibility, compunction and horror at sin, frequenting the
Mass and other rites of the Church, meditating on the contents of
the Gospels, familiarity with hymns and religious poems, dwelling on
the Evidences, parental example and instruction, religious friends,
strange providences, powerful preaching. In each case the image in
the mind, with the experiences out of which it is formed, would be a
personal result; and, though the same in all, would in each case be so
idiosyncratic in its circumstances, that it would stand by itself, a
special formation, unconnected with any law; though at the same time it
would necessarily be a principle of sympathy and a bond of intercourse
between those whose minds had been thus variously wrought into a common
assent, far stronger than could follow upon any multitude of mere
notions which they unanimously held. And even when that assent is not
the result of concurrent causes, if such a case is possible, but has
one single origin, as the study of Scripture, careful teaching, or a
religious temper, still its presence argues a special history, and a
personal formation, which an abstraction does not. For an abstraction
can be made at will, and may be the work of a moment; but the moral
experiences which perpetuate themselves in images, must be sought after
in order to be found, and encouraged and cultivated in order to be
appropriated.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I have now said all that occurs to me on the subject of Real Assents,
perhaps not without some risk of subtlety and minuteness. They are
sometimes called beliefs, convictions, certitudes; and, as given to
moral objects, they are perhaps as rare as they are powerful. Till we
have them, in spite of a full apprehension and assent in the field of
notions, we have no intellectual moorings, and are at the mercy of
impulses, fancies, and wandering lights, whether as regards personal
conduct, social and political action, or religion. These beliefs,
be they true or false in the particular case, form the mind out of
which they grow, and impart to it a seriousness and manliness which
inspires in other minds a confidence in its views, and is one secret
of persuasiveness and influence in the public stage of the world.
They create, as the case may be, heroes and saints, great leaders,
statesmen, preachers, and reformers, the pioneers of discovery in
science, visionaries, fanatics, knight-errants, demagogues, and
adventurers. They have given to the world men of one idea, of immense
energy, of adamantine will, of revolutionary power. They kindle
sympathies between man and man, and knit together the innumerable units
which constitute a race and a nation. They become the principle of
its political existence; they impart to it homogeneity of thought and
fellowship of purpose. They have given form to the medieval theocracy
and to the Mahometan superstition; they are now the life both of “Holy
Russia,” and of that freedom of speech and action which is the special
boast of Englishmen.


§ 3. Notional and Real Assents Contrasted.


It appears from what has been said, that, though Real Assent is not
intrinsically operative, it accidentally and indirectly affects
practice. It is in itself an intellectual act, of which the object is
presented to it by the imagination; and though the pure intellect does
not lead to action, nor the imagination either, yet the imagination has
the means, which pure intellect has not, of stimulating those powers of
the mind from which action proceeds. Real Assent then, or Belief, as it
may be called, viewed in itself, that is, simply as Assent, does not
lead to action; but the images in which it lives, representing as they
do the concrete, have the power of the concrete upon the affections and
passions, and by means of these indirectly become operative. Still this
practical influence is not invariable, nor to be relied on; for given
images may have no tendency to affect given minds, or to excite them to
action. Thus, a philosopher or a poet may vividly realize the brilliant
rewards of military genius or of eloquence, without wishing either to
be a commander or an orator. However, on the whole, broadly contrasting
Belief with Notional Assent and with Inference, we shall not, with this
explanation, be very wrong in pronouncing that acts of Notional Assent
and of Inference do not affect our conduct, and acts of Belief, that
is, of Real Assent, do (not necessarily, but do) affect it.

I have scarcely spoken of Inference since my Introductory Chapter,
though I intend, before I conclude, to consider it fully; but I have
said enough to admit of my introducing it here in contrast with Real
Assent or Belief, and that contrast is necessary in order to complete
what I have been saying about the latter. Let me then, for the sake
of the latter, be allowed here to say, that, while Assent, or Belief,
presupposes some apprehension of the things believed, Inference
requires no apprehension of the things inferred; that in consequence,
Inference is necessarily concerned with surfaces and aspects; that it
begins with itself, and ends with itself; that it does not reach as
far as facts; that it is employed upon formulas; that, as far as it
takes real objects of whatever kind into account, such as motives and
actions, character and conduct, art, science, taste, morals, religion,
it deals with them, not as they are, but simply in its own line, as
materials of argument or inquiry, that they are to it nothing more than
major and minor premisses and conclusions. Belief, on the other hand,
being concerned with things concrete, not abstract, which variously
excite the mind from their moral and imaginative properties, has for
its object, not only directly what is true, but inclusively what is
beautiful, useful, admirable, heroic; objects which kindle devotion,
rouse the passions, and attach the affections; and thus it leads the
way to actions of every kind, to the establishment of principles, and
the formation of character, and is thus again intimately connected with
what is individual and personal.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I insisted on this marked distinction between Beliefs on the one hand,
and Notional Assents and Inferences on the other, many years ago in
words which it will be to my purpose to use now.(2) I quote them,
because, over and above their appositeness in this place, they present
the doctrine on which I have been insisting, from a second point of
view, and with a freshness and force which I cannot now command, and,
moreover, (though they are my own, nevertheless, from the length of
time which has elapsed since their publication,) almost with the
cogency of an independent testimony.

They occur in a protest which I had occasion to write in February,
1841, against a dangerous doctrine maintained, as I considered, by two
very eminent men of that day, now no more—Lord Brougham and Sir Robert
Peel. That doctrine was to the effect that the claims of religion could
be secured and sustained in the mass of men, and in particular in the
lower classes of society, by acquaintance with literature and physical
science, and through the instrumentality of Mechanics’ Institutes and
Reading Rooms, to the serious disparagement, as it seemed to me, of
direct Christian instruction. In the course of my remarks is found the
passage which I shall here quote, and which, with whatever differences
in terminology, and hardihood of assertion, befitting the circumstances
of its publication, nay, as far as words go, inaccuracy of theological
statement, suitably illustrates the subject here under discussion. It
runs thus:—

“People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity
should regain the organic power in human society which once it
possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a
politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy and
resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations;
but do not tell them to be romantic and then solace them with ‘glory:’
do not attempt by philosophy what once was done by religion. The
ascendency of faith may be impracticable, but the reign of knowledge
is incomprehensible. The problem for statesmen of this age is how to
educate the masses, and literature and science cannot give the solution.

“Science gives us the grounds or premisses from which religious truths
are to be enforced; but it does not set about inferring them, much
less does it reach the inference—that is not its province. It brings
before us phenomena, and it leaves us, if we will, to call them works
of design, wisdom, or benevolence; and further still, if we will, to
proceed to confess an Intelligent Creator. We have to take its facts,
and to give them a meaning, and to draw our own conclusions from them.
First comes knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, and then belief.
This is why science has so little of a religious tendency; deductions
have no power of persuasion. The heart is commonly reached, not
through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct
impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by
description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us,
deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man
will be a martyr for a conclusion. A conclusion is but an opinion; it
is not a thing which _is_, but which we are ‘_quite sure about_;’ and
it has often been observed, that we never say we are sure and certain
without implying that we doubt. To say that a thing _must_ be, is
to admit that it _may not_ be. No one, I say, will die for his own
calculations: he dies for realities. This is why a literary religion
is so little to be depended upon; it looks well in fair weather; but
its doctrines are opinions, and, when called to suffer for them, it
slips them between its folios, or burns them at its hearth. And this
again is the secret of the distrust and raillery with which moralists
have been so commonly visited. They say and do not. Why? Because they
are contemplating the fitness of things, and they live by the square,
when they should be realizing their high maxims in the concrete. Now
Sir Robert Peel thinks better of natural history, chemistry, and
astronomy than of such ethics; but these too, what are they more than
divinity _in posse_? He protests against ‘_controversial_ divinity:’ is
_inferential_ much better?

“I have no confidence, then, in philosophers who cannot help being
religious, and are Christians by implication. They sit at home, and
reach forward to distances which astonish us; but they hit without
grasping, and are sometimes as confident about shadows as about
realities. They have worked out by a calculation the lie of a country
which they never saw, and mapped it by means of a gazetteer; and, like
blind men, though they can put a stranger on his way, they cannot walk
straight themselves, and do not feel it quite their business to walk at
all.

“Logic makes but a sorry rhetoric with the multitude; first shoot
round corners, and you may not despair of converting by a syllogism.
Tell men to gain notions of a Creator from His works, and, if they
were to set about it (which nobody does) they would be jaded and
wearied by the labyrinth they were tracing. Their minds would be gorged
and surfeited by the logical operation. Logicians are more set upon
concluding rightly, than on right conclusions. They cannot see the
end for the process. Few men have that power of mind which may hold
fast and firmly a variety of thoughts. We ridicule ’men of one idea;’
but a great many of us are born to be such, and we should be happier
if we knew it. To most men argument makes the point in hand only more
doubtful, and considerably less impressive. After all, man is _not_
a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting
animal. He is influenced by what is direct and precise. It is very well
to freshen our impressions and convictions from physics, but to create
them we must go elsewhere. Sir Robert Peel ‘never can think it possible
that a mind can be so constituted, that, after being familiarized
with the wonderful discoveries which have been made in every part of
experimental science, it can retire from such contemplation without
more enlarged conceptions of God’s providence, and a higher reverence
for His Name!’ If he speaks of religious minds, he perpetrates a
truism; if of irreligious, he insinuates a paradox.

“Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never
have done beginning, if we determine to begin with proof. We shall ever
be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and
divines into textuaries. We shall never get at our first principles.
Resolve to believe nothing, and you must prove your proof and analyze
your elements, sinking farther and farther, and finding ‘in the lowest
depth a lower deep,’ till you come to the broad bosom of scepticism.
I would rather be bound to defend the reasonableness of assuming that
Christianity is true, than to demonstrate a moral governance from the
physical world. Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for every
thing, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that
assumption is faith.

“Let no one suppose, that in saying this I am maintaining that all
proofs are equally difficult, and all propositions equally debatable.
Some assumptions are greater than others, and some doctrines involve
postulates larger than others, and more numerous. I only say, that
impressions lead to action, and that reasonings lead from it. Knowledge
of premisses, and inferences upon them,—this is not to _live_. It is
very well as a matter of liberal curiosity and of philosophy to analyze
our modes of thought: but let this come second, and when there is
leisure for it, and then our examinations will in many ways even be
subservient to action. But if we commence with scientific knowledge
and argumentative proof, or lay any great stress upon it as the basis
of personal Christianity, or attempt to make man moral and religious
by libraries and museums, let us in consistency take chemists for our
cooks, and mineralogists for our masons.

“Now I wish to state all this as matter of fact, to be judged by the
candid testimony of any persons whatever. Why we are so constituted
that faith, not knowledge or argument, is our principle of action, is
a question with which I have nothing to do; but I think it is a fact,
and, if it be such, we must resign ourselves to it as best we may,
unless we take refuge in the intolerable paradox, that the mass of men
are created for nothing, and are meant to leave life as they entered it.

“So well has this practically been understood in all ages of the world,
that no religion yet has been a religion of physics or of philosophy.
It has ever been synonymous with revelation. It never has been a
deduction from what we know; it has ever been an assertion of what
we are to believe. It has never lived in a conclusion; it has ever
been a message, a history, or a vision. No legislator or priest ever
dreamed of educating our moral nature by science or by argument. There
is no difference here between true religions and pretended. Moses was
instructed not to reason from the creation, but to work miracles.
Christianity is a history supernatural, and almost scenic: it tells us
what its Author is, by telling us what He has done.

“Lord Brougham himself has recognized the force of this principle. He
has not left his philosophical religion to argument; he has committed
it to the keeping of the imagination. Why should he depict a great
republic of letters, and an intellectual pantheon, but that he feels
that instances and patterns, not logical reasonings, are the living
conclusions which alone have a hold over the affections or can form the
character?”




Chapter V. Apprehension And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.


We are now able to determine what a dogma of faith is, and what it is
to believe it. A dogma is a proposition; it stands for a notion or for
a thing; and to believe it is to give the assent of the mind to it, as
it stands for the one or for the other. To give a real assent to it is
an act of religion; to give a notional, is a theological act. It is
discerned, rested in, and appropriated as a reality, by the religious
imagination; it is held as a truth, by the theological intellect.

Not as if there were in fact, or could be, any line of demarcation
or party-wall between these two modes of assent, the religious
and the theological. As intellect is common to all men as well as
imagination, every religious man is to a certain extent a theologian,
and no theology can start or thrive without the initiative and abiding
presence of religion. As in matters of this world, sense, sensation,
instinct, intuition, supply us with facts, and the intellect uses
them; so, as regards our relations with the Supreme Being, we get our
facts from the witness, first of nature, then of revelation, and our
doctrines, in which they issue, through the exercise of abstraction and
inference. This is obvious; but it does not interfere with holding that
there is a theological habit of mind, and a religious, each distinct
from each, religion using theology, and theology using religion. This
being understood, I propose to consider the dogmas of the Being of a
God, and of the Divine Trinity in Unity, in their relation to assent,
both notional and real, and principally to real assent;—however, I have
not yet finished all I have to say by way of introduction.

Now first, my subject is assent, and not inference. I am not proposing
to set forth the arguments which issue in the belief of these
doctrines, but to investigate what it is to believe in them, what the
mind does, what it contemplates, when it makes an act of faith. It
is true that the same elementary facts which create an object for an
assent, also furnish matter for an inference: and in showing what we
believe, I shall unavoidably be in a measure showing why we believe;
but this is the very reason that makes it necessary for me at the
outset to insist on the real distinction between these two concurring
and coincident courses of thought, and to premise by way of caution,
lest I should be misunderstood, that I am not considering the question
that there is a God, but rather what God is.

And secondly, I mean by belief, not precisely faith, because faith,
in its theological sense, includes a belief, not only in the thing
believed, but also in the ground of believing; that is, not only
belief in certain doctrines, but belief in them expressly because God
has revealed them; but here I am engaged only with what is called the
material object of faith, not with the formal,—with the thing believed.
The Almighty witnesses to Himself in Revelation; we believe that He
is One and that He is Three, because He says so. We believe also what
He tells us about His Attributes, His providences and dispensations,
His determinations and acts, what He has done and what He will do. And
if all this is too much for us, whether to bring before our minds at
one time from its variety, or even to apprehend at all or enunciate
from our narrowness of intellect or want of learning, then at least
we believe _in globo_ all that He has revealed to us about Himself,
and that, because He has revealed it. However, this “because He says
it” does not enter into the scope of the present inquiry, but only
the truths themselves, and these particular truths, “He is One,” “He
is Three;” and of these two, both of which are in Revelation, I shall
consider “He is One,” not as a revealed truth, but as, what it is also,
a natural truth, the foundation of all religion. And with it I begin.


§ 1. Belief in One God.


There is one GOD, such and such in Nature and Attributes.

I say “such and such,” for, unless I explain what I mean by “one God,”
I use words which may mean any thing or nothing. I may mean a mere
_anima mundi_; or an initial principle which once was in action and now
is not; or collective humanity. I speak then of the God of the Theist
and of the Christian: a God who is numerically One, who is Personal;
the Author, Sustainer, and Finisher of all things, the life of Law and
Order, the Moral Governor; One who is Supreme and Sole; like Himself,
unlike all things besides Himself, which all are but His creatures;
distinct from, independent of them all; One who is self-existing,
absolutely infinite, who has ever been and ever will be, to whom
nothing is past or future; who is all perfection, and the fulness and
archetype of every possible excellence, the Truth Itself, Wisdom, Love,
Justice, Holiness; One who is All-powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent,
Incomprehensible. These are some of the distinctive prerogatives which
I ascribe unconditionally and unreservedly to the great Being whom I
call God.

This being what Theists mean when they speak of God, their assent to
this truth admits without difficulty of being what I have called a
notional assent. It is an assent following upon acts of inference,
and other purely intellectual exercises; and it is an assent to a
large development of predicates, correlative to each other, or at
least intimately connected together, drawn out as if on paper, as we
might map a country which we had never seen, or construct mathematical
tables, or master the methods of discovery of Newton or Davy, without
being geographers, mathematicians, or chemists ourselves.

So far is clear; but the question follows, Can I attain to any more
vivid assent to the Being of a God, than that which is given merely to
notions of the intellect? Can I enter with a personal knowledge into
the circle of truths which make up that great thought? Can I rise to
what I have called an imaginative apprehension of it? Can I believe as
if I saw? Since such a high assent requires a present experience or
memory of the fact, at first sight it would seem as if the answer must
be in the negative; for how can I assent as if I saw, unless I have
seen? but no one in this life can see God. Yet I conceive a real assent
is possible, and I proceed to show how.

When it is said that we cannot see God, this is undeniable; but in what
sense have we a discernment of His creatures, of the individual beings
which surround us? The evidence which we have of their presence lies
in the phenomena which address our senses, and our warrant for taking
these for evidence is our instinctive certitude that they are evidence.
By the law of our nature we associate those sensible phenomena or
impressions with certain units, individuals, substances, whatever they
are to be called, which are outside and out of the reach of sense, and
we picture them to ourselves in those phenomena. The phenomena are
as if pictures; but at the same time they give us no exact measure
or character of the unknown things beyond them;—for who will say
there is any uniformity between the impressions which two of us would
respectively have of some third thing, supposing one of us had only the
sense of touch, and the other only the sense of hearing? Therefore,
when we speak of our having a picture of the things which are perceived
through the senses, we mean a certain representation, true as far as it
goes, but not adequate.

And so of those intellectual and moral objects which are brought
home to us through our senses:—that they exist, we know by instinct;
that they are such and such, we apprehend from the impressions which
they leave upon our minds. Thus the life and writings of Cicero or
Dr. Johnson, of St. Jerome or St. Chrysostom, leave upon us certain
impressions of the intellectual and moral character of each of them,
_sui generis_, and unmistakable. We take up a passage of Chrysostom or
a passage of Jerome; there is no possibility of confusing the one with
the other; in each case we see the man in his language. And so of any
great man whom we may have known: that he is not a mere impression on
our senses, but a real being, we know by instinct; that he is such and
such, we know by the matter or quality of that impression.

Now certainly the thought of God, as Theists entertain it, is not
gained by an instinctive association of His presence with any sensible
phenomena; but the office which the senses directly fulfil as regards
creation that devolves indirectly on certain of our mental phenomena
as regards the Creator. Those phenomena are found in the sense of
moral obligation. As from a multitude of instinctive perceptions,
acting in particular instances, of something beyond the senses, we
generalize the notion of an external world, and then picture that world
in and according to those particular phenomena from which we started,
so from the perceptive power which identifies the intimations of
conscience with the reverberations or echoes (so to say) of an external
admonition, we proceed on to the notion of a Supreme Ruler and Judge,
and then again we image Him and His attributes in those recurring
intimations, out of which, as mental phenomena, our recognition of
His existence was originally gained. And, if the impressions which
His creatures make on us through our senses oblige us to regard those
creatures as _sui generis_ respectively, it is not wonderful that the
notices, which He indirectly gives us through our conscience, of His
own nature are such as to make us understand that He is like Himself
and like nothing else.

I have already said I am not proposing here to prove the Being of a
God; yet I have found it impossible to avoid saying where I look for
the proof of it. For I am looking for that proof in the same quarter
as that from which I would commence a proof of His attributes and
character,—by the same means as those by which I show how we apprehend
Him, not merely as a notion, but as a reality. The last indeed of these
three investigations alone concerns me here, but I cannot altogether
exclude the two former from my consideration. However, I repeat, what
I am directly aiming at, is to explain how we gain an image of God and
give a real assent to the proposition that He exists. And next, in
order to do this, of course I must start from some first principle;—and
that first principle, which I assume and shall not attempt to prove,
is that which I should also use as a foundation in those other two
inquiries, viz. that we have by nature a conscience.

I assume, then, that Conscience has a legitimate place among our
mental acts; as really so, as the action of memory, of reasoning,
of imagination, or as the sense of the beautiful; that, as there
are objects which, when presented to the mind, cause it to feel
grief, regret, joy, or desire, so there are things which excite in
us approbation or blame, and which we in consequence call right or
wrong; and which, experienced in ourselves, kindle in us that specific
sense of pleasure or pain, which goes by the name of a good or bad
conscience. This being taken for granted, I shall attempt to show that
in this special feeling, which follows on the commission of what we
call right or wrong, lie the materials for the real apprehension of a
Divine Sovereign and Judge.

The feeling of conscience (being, I repeat, a certain keen sensibility,
pleasant or painful,—self-approval and hope, or compunction and
fear,—attendant on certain of our actions, which in consequence we
call right or wrong) is twofold:—it is a moral sense, and a sense of
duty; a judgment of the reason and a magisterial dictate. Of course
its act is indivisible; still it has these two aspects, distinct from
each other, and admitting of a separate consideration. Though I lost
my sense of the obligation which I lie under to abstain from acts
of dishonesty, I should not in consequence lose my sense that such
actions were an outrage offered to my moral nature. Again; though I
lost my sense of their moral deformity, I should not therefore lose
my sense that they were forbidden to me. Thus conscience has both a
critical and a judicial office, and though its promptings, in the
breasts of the millions of human beings to whom it is given, are not
in all cases correct, that does not necessarily interfere with the
force of its testimony and of its sanction: its testimony that there
is a right and a wrong, and its sanction to that testimony conveyed in
the feelings which attend on right or wrong conduct. Here I have to
speak of conscience in the latter point of view, not as supplying us,
by means of its various acts, with the elements of morals, such as may
be developed by the intellect into an ethical code, but simply as the
dictate of an authoritative monitor bearing upon the details of conduct
as they come before us, and complete in its several acts, one by one.

Let us then thus consider conscience, not as a rule of right conduct,
but as a sanction of right conduct. This is its primary and most
authoritative aspect; it is the ordinary sense of the word. Half the
world would be puzzled to know what was meant by the moral sense; but
every one knows what is meant by a good or bad conscience. Conscience
is ever forcing on us by threats and by promises that we must follow
the right and avoid the wrong; so far it is one and the same in the
mind of every one, whatever be its particular errors in particular
minds as to the acts which it orders to be done or to be avoided; and
in this respect it corresponds to our perception of the beautiful and
deformed. As we have naturally a sense of the beautiful and graceful
in nature and art, though tastes proverbially differ, so we have a
sense of duty and obligation, whether we all associate it with the
same certain actions in particular or not. Here, however, Taste and
Conscience part company: for the sense of beautifulness, as indeed the
Moral Sense, has no special relations to persons, but contemplates
objects in themselves; conscience, on the other hand, is concerned with
persons primarily, and with actions mainly as viewed in their doers,
or rather with self alone and one’s own actions, and with others only
indirectly and as if in association with self. And further, taste is
its own evidence, appealing to nothing beyond its own sense of the
beautiful or the ugly, and enjoying the specimens of the beautiful
simply for their own sake; but conscience does not repose on itself,
but vaguely reaches forward to something beyond self, and dimly
discerns a sanction higher than self for its decisions, as is evidenced
in that keen sense of obligation and responsibility which informs them.
And hence it is that we are accustomed to speak of conscience as a
voice,—a term which we should never think of applying to the sense of
the beautiful; and moreover a voice, or the echo of a voice, imperative
and constraining, like no other dictate in the whole of our experience.

And again, in consequence of this prerogative of dictating and
commanding, which is of its essence, Conscience has an intimate
bearing on our affections and emotions, leading us to reverence and
awe, hope and fear, especially fear, a feeling which is foreign for
the most part, not only to Taste, but even to the Moral Sense, except
in consequence of accidental associations. No fear is felt by any one
who recognizes that his conduct has not been beautiful, though he may
be mortified at himself, if perhaps he has thereby forfeited some
advantage; but, if he has been betrayed into any kind of immorality,
he has a lively sense of responsibility and guilt, though the act
be no offence against society,—of distress and apprehension, even
though it may be of present service to him,—of compunction and
regret, though in itself it be most pleasurable,—of confusion of
face, though it may have no witnesses. These various perturbations of
mind, which are characteristic of a bad conscience, and may be very
considerable,—self-reproach, poignant shame, haunting remorse, chill
dismay at the prospect of the future,—and their contraries, when the
conscience is good, as real though less forcible, self-approval, inward
peace, lightness of heart, and the like,—these emotions constitute
a specific difference between conscience and our other intellectual
senses,—common sense, good sense, sense of expedience, taste, sense
of honour, and the like,—as indeed they would also constitute
between conscience and the moral sense, supposing these two were not
aspects of one and the same feeling, exercised upon one and the same
subject-matter.

So much for the characteristic phenomena, which conscience presents,
nor is it difficult to determine what they imply. I refer once more to
our sense of the beautiful. This sense is attended by an intellectual
enjoyment, and is free from whatever is of the nature of emotion,
except in one case, viz. when it is excited by personal objects; then
it is that the tranquil feeling of admiration is exchanged for the
excitement of affection and passion. Conscience too, considered as a
moral sense, an intellectual sentiment, is a sense of admiration and
disgust, of approbation and blame: but it is something more than a
moral sense; it is always, what the sense of the beautiful is only in
certain cases; it is always emotional. No wonder then that it always
implies what that sense only sometimes implies; that it always involves
the recognition of a living object, towards which it is directed.
Inanimate things cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with
persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are
frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that
there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed,
whose claims upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong, we feel the same
tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother;
if, on doing right, we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mind, the same
soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise
from a father, we certainly have within us the image of some person,
to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we find our
happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in
whose anger we are troubled and waste away. These feelings in us are
such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being: we are
not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse
or a dog; we have no remorse or compunction on breaking mere human
law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions,
confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and on the other hand it
sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a
hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. “The
wicked flees, when no one pursueth;” then why does he flee? whence his
terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden
chambers of his heart? If the cause of these emotions does not belong
to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed
must be Supernatural and Divine; and thus the phenomena of Conscience,
as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the picture(3)
of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing,
retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as the Moral
Sense is the principle of ethics.

And let me here refer again to the fact, to which I have already drawn
attention, that this instinct of the mind recognizing an external
Master in the dictate of conscience, and imaging the thought of Him
in the definite impressions which conscience creates, is parallel to
that other law of, not only human, but of brute nature, by which the
presence of unseen individual beings is discerned under the shifting
shapes and colours of the visible world. Is it by sense, or by reason,
that brutes understand the real unities, material and spiritual, which
are signified by the lights and shadows, the brilliant ever-changing
calidoscope, as it may be called, which plays upon their _retina_? Not
by reason, for they have not reason; not by sense, because they are
transcending sense; therefore it is an instinct. This faculty on the
part of brutes, unless we were used to it, would strike us as a great
mystery. It is one peculiarity of animal natures to be susceptible of
phenomena through the channels of sense; it is another to have in those
sensible phenomena a perception of the individuals to which this or
that group of them belongs. This perception of individual things, amid
the maze of shapes and colours which meets their sight, is given to
brutes in large measures, and that, apparently from the moment of their
birth. It is by no mere physical instinct, such as that which leads him
to his mother for milk, that the new-dropped lamb recognizes each of
his fellow lambkins as a whole, consisting of many parts bound up in
one, and, before he is an hour old, makes experience of his and their
rival individualities. And much more distinctly do the horse and dog
recognize even the personality of their masters. How are we to explain
this apprehension of things, which are one and individual, in the midst
of a world of pluralities and transmutations, whether in the instance
of brutes or again of children? But until we account for the knowledge
which an infant has of his mother or his nurse, what reason have we
to take exception at the doctrine, as strange and difficult, that in
the dictate of conscience, without previous experiences or analogical
reasoning, he is able gradually to perceive the voice, or the echoes of
the voice, of a Master, living, personal, and sovereign?

I grant, of course, that we cannot assign a date, ever so early,
before which he had learned nothing at all, and formed no mental
associations, from the words and conduct of those who have the care of
him. But still, if a child of five or six years old, when reason is
at length fully awake, has already mastered and appropriated thoughts
and beliefs, in consequence of their teaching, in such sort as to be
able to handle and apply them familiarly, according to the occasion, as
principles of intellectual action, those beliefs at the very least must
be singularly congenial to his mind, if not connatural with its initial
action. And that such a spontaneous reception of religious truths is
common with children, I shall take for granted, till I am convinced
that I am wrong in so doing. The child keenly understands that there
is a difference between right and wrong; and when he has done what he
believes to be wrong, he is conscious that he is offending One to whom
he is amenable, whom he does not see, who sees him. His mind reaches
forward with a strong presentiment to the thought of a Moral Governor,
sovereign over him, mindful, and just. It comes to him like an impulse
of nature to entertain it.

It is my wish to take an ordinary child, but still one who is safe from
influences destructive of his religious instincts. Supposing he has
offended his parents, he will all alone and without effort, as if it
were the most natural of acts, place himself in the presence of God,
and beg of Him to set him right with them. Let us consider how much
is contained in this simple act. First, it involves the impression on
his mind of an unseen Being with whom he is in immediate relation, and
that relation so familiar that he can address Him whenever he himself
chooses; next, of One whose goodwill towards him he is assured of,
and can take for granted—nay, who loves him better, and is nearer to
him, than his parents; further, of One who can hear him, wherever he
happens to be, and who can read his thoughts, for his prayer need
not be vocal; lastly, of One who can effect a critical change in the
state of feeling of others towards him. That is, we shall not be wrong
in holding that this child has in his mind the image of an Invisible
Being, who exercises a particular providence among us, who is present
every where, who is heart-reading, heart-changing, ever-accessible,
open to impetration. What a strong and intimate vision of God must he
have already attained, if, as I have supposed, an ordinary trouble of
mind has the spontaneous effect of leading him for consolation and aid
to an Invisible Personal Power!

Moreover, this image brought before his mental vision is the image
of One who by implicit threat and promise commands certain things
which he, the same child, coincidently, by the same act of his mind,
approves; which receive the adhesion of his moral sense and judgment,
as right and good. It is the image of One who is good, inasmuch
as enjoining and enforcing what is right and good, and who, in
consequence, not only excites in the child hope and fear,—nay (it may
be added), gratitude towards Him, as giving a law and maintaining it by
reward and punishment,—but kindles in him love towards Him, as giving
him a good law, and therefore as being good Himself, for it is the
property of goodness to kindle love, or rather the very object of love
is goodness; and all those distinct elements of the moral law, which
the typical child, whom I am supposing, more or less consciously loves
and approves,—truth, purity, justice, kindness, and the like,—are but
shapes and aspects of goodness. And having in his degree a sensibility
towards them all, for the sake of them all he is moved to love the
Lawgiver, who enjoins them upon him. And, as he can contemplate
these qualities and their manifestations under the common name of
goodness, he is prepared to think of them as indivisible, correlative,
supplementary of each other in one and the same Personality, so that
there is no aspect of goodness which God is not; and that the more,
because the notion of a perfection embracing all possible excellences,
both moral and intellectual, is especially congenial to the mind, and
there are in fact intellectual attributes, as well as moral, included
in the child’s image of God, as above represented.

Such is the apprehension which even a child may have of his Sovereign
Lawgiver and Judge; which is possible in the case of children, because,
at least, some children possess it, whether others possess it or no;
and which, when it is found in children, is found to act promptly and
keenly, by reason of the paucity of their ideas. It is an image of the
good God, good in Himself, good relatively to the child, with whatever
incompleteness; an image before it has been reflected on, and before it
is recognized by him as a notion. Though he cannot explain or define
the word “God,” when told to use it, his acts show that to him it is
far more than a word. He listens, indeed, with wonder and interest to
fables or tales; he has a dim, shadowy sense of what he hears about
persons and matters of this world; but he has that within him which
actually vibrates, responds, and gives a deep meaning to the lessons of
his first teachers about the will and the providence of God.

How far this initial religious knowledge comes from without, and how
far from within, how much is natural, how much implies a special divine
aid which is above nature, we have no means of determining, nor is
it necessary for my present purpose to determine. I am not engaged
in tracing the image of God in the mind of a child or a man to its
first origins, but showing that he can become possessed of such an
image, over and above all mere notions of God, and in what that image
consists. Whether its elements, latent in the mind, would ever be
elicited without extrinsic help is very doubtful; but whatever be the
actual history of the first formation of the divine image within us, so
far at least is certain, that, by informations external to ourselves,
as time goes on, it admits of being strengthened and improved. It is
certain too, that, whether it grows brighter and stronger, or, on the
other hand, is dimmed, distorted, or obliterated, depends on each of
us individually, and on his circumstances. It is more than probable
that, in the event, from neglect, from the temptations of life, from
bad companions, or from the urgency of secular occupations, the light
of the soul will fade away and die out. Men transgress their sense
of duty, and gradually lose those sentiments of shame and fear, the
natural supplements of transgression, which, as I have said, are the
witnesses of the Unseen Judge. And, even were it deemed impossible
that those who had in their first youth a genuine apprehension of Him,
could ever utterly lose it, yet that apprehension may become almost
undistinguishable from an inferential acceptance of the great truth, or
may dwindle into a mere notion of their intellect. On the contrary, the
image of God, if duly cherished, may expand, deepen, and be completed,
with the growth of their powers and in the course of life, under the
varied lessons, within and without them, which are brought home to them
concerning that same God, One and Personal, by means of education,
social intercourse, experience, and literature.

To a mind thus carefully formed upon the basis of its natural
conscience, the world, both of nature and of man, does but give back a
reflection of those truths about the One Living God, which have been
familiar to it from childhood. Good and evil meet us daily as we pass
through life, and there are those who think it philosophical to act
towards the manifestations of each with some sort of impartiality, as
if evil had as much right to be there as good, or even a better, as
having more striking triumphs and a broader jurisdiction. And because
the course of things is determined by fixed laws, they consider that
those laws preclude the present agency of the Creator in the carrying
out of particular issues. It is otherwise with the theology of a
religious imagination. It has a living hold on truths which are really
to be found in the world, though they are not upon the surface. It is
able to pronounce by anticipation, what it takes a long argument to
prove—that good is the rule, and evil the exception. It is able to
assume that, uniform as are the laws of nature, they are consistent
with a particular Providence. It interprets what it sees around it by
this previous inward teaching, as the true key of that maze of vast
complicated disorder; and thus it gains a more and more consistent
and luminous vision of God from the most unpromising materials. Thus
conscience is a connecting principle between the creature and his
Creator; and the firmest hold of theological truths is gained by habits
of personal religion. When men begin all their works with the thought
of God, acting for His sake and to fulfil His will, when they ask His
blessing on themselves and their life, pray to Him for the objects they
desire, and see Him in the event, whether it be according to their
prayers or not, they will find every thing that happens tend to confirm
them in the truth about Him which live in their imagination, varied
and unearthly as those truths may be. Then they are brought into His
presence as that of a Living Person, and are able to hold converse with
Him, and that with a directness and simplicity, with a confidence and
intimacy, _mutatis mutandis_, which we use towards an earthly superior;
so that it is doubtful whether we realize the company of our fellow-men
with greater keenness than these favoured minds are able to contemplate
and adore the Unseen, Incomprehensible Creator.

This vivid apprehension of religious objects, on which I have been
enlarging, is independent of the written records of Revelation; it
does not require any knowledge of Scripture, nor of the history or the
teaching of the Catholic Church. It is independent of books. But if
so much may be traced out in the twilight of Natural Religion, it is
obvious how great an addition in fulness and exactness is made to our
mental image of the Divine Personality and Attributes, by the light of
Christianity. And, indeed, to give us a clear and sufficient object
for our faith, is one main purpose of the supernatural Dispensations
of Religion. This purpose is carried out in the written Word, with
an effectiveness which inspiration alone could secure, first, by
the histories which form so large a portion of the Old Testament;
and scarcely less impressively in the prophetical system, as it is
gradually unfolded and perfected in the writings of those who were
its ministers and spokesmen. And as the exercise of the affections
strengthens our apprehension of the object of them, it is impossible to
exaggerate the influence exerted on the religious imagination by a book
of devotions so sublime, so penetrating, so full of deep instruction
as the Psalter, to say nothing of other portions of the Hagiographa.
And then as regards the New Testament, the Gospels, from their subject,
contain a manifestation of the Divine Nature, so special, as to make
it appear from the contrast as if nothing were known of God, when they
are unknown. Lastly, the Apostolic Epistles, the long history of the
Church, with its fresh exhibitions of Divine Agency, the Lives of the
Saints, and the reasonings, internal collisions, and decisions of the
Theological School, form an extended comment on the words and works of
our Lord.

I think I need not say more in illustration of the subject which I
proposed for consideration in this Section. I have wished to trace
the process by which the mind arrives, not only at a notional, but
at an imaginative or real assent to the doctrine that there is One
God, that is, an assent made with an apprehension, not only of what
the words of the proposition mean, but of the object denoted by them.
Without a proposition or thesis there can be no assent, no belief, at
all; any more than there can be an inference without a conclusion. The
proposition that there is One Personal and Present God may be held in
either way; either as a theological truth, or as a religious fact or
reality. The notion and the reality assented-to are represented by
one and the same proposition, but serve as distinct interpretations
of it. When the proposition is apprehended for the purposes of proof,
analysis, comparison, and the like intellectual exercises, it is used
as the expression of a notion; when for the purposes of devotion, it
is the image of a reality. Theology, properly and directly, deals with
notional apprehension; religion with imaginative.

Here we have the solution of the common mistake of supposing that there
is a contrariety and antagonism between a dogmatic creed and vital
religion. People urge that salvation consists, not in believing the
propositions that there is a God, that there is a Saviour, that our
Lord is God, that there is a Trinity, but in believing in God, in a
Saviour, in a Sanctifier; and they object that such propositions are
but a formal and human medium destroying all true reception of the
Gospel, and making religion a matter of words or of logic, instead
of its having its seat in the heart. They are right so far as this,
that men can and sometimes do rest in the propositions themselves as
expressing intellectual notions; they are wrong, when they maintain
that men need do so or always do so. The propositions may and must be
used, and can easily be used, as the expression of facts, not notions,
and they are necessary to the mind in the same way that language is
ever necessary for denoting facts, both for ourselves as individuals,
and for our intercourse with others. Again, they are useful in their
dogmatic aspect as ascertaining and making clear for us the truths
on which the religious imagination has to rest. Knowledge must ever
precede the exercise of the affections. We feel gratitude and love, we
feel indignation and dislike, when we have the informations actually
put before us which are to kindle those several emotions. We love our
parents, as our parents, when we know them to be our parents; we must
know concerning God, before we can feel love, fear, hope, or trust
towards Him. Devotion must have its objects; those objects, as being
supernatural, when not represented to our senses by material symbols,
must be set before the mind in propositions. The formula, which
embodies a dogma for the theologian, readily suggests an object for the
worshipper. It seems a truism to say, yet it is all that I have been
saying, that in religion the imagination and affections should always
be under the control of reason. Theology may stand as a substantive
science, though it be without the life of religion; but religion
cannot maintain its ground at all without theology. Sentiment, whether
imaginative or emotional, falls back upon the intellect for its stay,
when sense cannot be called into exercise; and it is in this way that
devotion falls back upon dogma.


§ 2. Belief in the Holy Trinity.


Of course I cannot hope to carry all inquiring minds with me in what
I have been laying down in the foregoing Section. I have appealed to
the testimony given implicitly by our conscience to the Divine Being
and His Attributes, and there are those, I know, whose experience
will not respond to the appeal:—doubtless; but are there any truths
which have reality, whether of experience or of reason, which are
not disputed by some schools of philosophy or some bodies of men? If
we assume nothing but what has universal reception, the field of our
possible discussions will suffer much contraction; so that it must
be considered sufficient in any inquiry, if the principles or facts
assumed have a large following. This condition is abundantly fulfilled
as regards the authority and religious meaning of conscience;—that
conscience is the voice of God has almost grown into a proverb. This
solemn dogma is recognized as such by the great mass both of the
young and of the uneducated, by the religious few and the irreligious
many. It is proclaimed in the history and literature of nations;
it has had supporters in all ages, places, creeds, forms of social
life, professions, and classes. It has held its ground under great
intellectual and moral disadvantages; it has recovered its supremacy,
and ultimately triumphed in the minds of those who had rebelled against
it. Even philosophers, who have been antagonists on other points, agree
in recognizing the inward voice of that solemn Monitor, personal,
peremptory, unargumentative, irresponsible, minatory, definitive. This
I consider relieves me of the necessity of arguing with those who would
resolve our sense of right and wrong into a sense of the Expedient or
the Beautiful, or would refer its authoritative suggestions to the
effect of teaching or of association. There are those who can see and
hear for all the common purposes of life, yet have no eye for colours
or their shades, or no ear for music; moreover, there are degrees of
sensibility to colours and to sounds, in the comparison of man with
man, while some men are stone-blind or stone-deaf. Again, all men, as
time goes on, have the prospect of losing that keenness of sight and
hearing which they possessed in their youth; and so, in like manner,
we may lose in manhood and in age that sense of a Supreme Teacher
and Judge which was the gift of our first years; and that the more,
because in most men the imagination suffers from the lapse of time and
the experience of life, long before the bodily senses fail. And this
accords with the advice of the sacred writer to “remember our Creator
in the days of our youth,” while our moral sensibilities are fresh,
“before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars be darkened,
and the clouds return after the rain.” Accordingly, if there be those
who deny that the dictate of conscience is ever more than a taste, or
an association, it is a less difficulty to me to believe that they are
deficient either in the religious sense or in their memory of early
years, than that they never had at all what those around them without
hesitation profess to have received from nature.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

So much on the doctrine of the Being and Attributes of God, and of
the real apprehension with which we can contemplate and assent to
it:—now I turn to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, with the purpose of
investigating in like manner how far it belongs to theology, how far
to the faith and devotion of the individual; how far the propositions
enunciating it are confined to the expression of intellectual notions,
and how far they stand for things also, and admit of that assent which
we give to objects presented to us by the imagination. And first I have
to state what our doctrine is.

No one is to be called a Theist, who does not believe in a Personal
God, whatever difficulty there may be in defining the word “Personal.”
Now it is the belief of Catholics about the Supreme Being, that
this essential characteristic of His Nature is reiterated in three
distinct ways or modes; so that the Almighty God, instead of being
One Person only, which is the teaching of Natural Religion, has Three
Personalities, and is at once, according as we view Him in the one or
the other of them, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—a Divine Three,
who bear towards Each Other the several relations which those names
indicate, and are in that respect distinct from Each Other, and in that
alone.

This is the teaching of the Athanasian Creed; viz. that the One
Personal God, who is not a logical or physical unity, but a Living
_Monas_, more really one even than an individual man is one—He
(“unus,” not “unum,” because of the inseparability of His Nature and
Personality),—He at once is Father, is Son, is Holy Ghost, Each of whom
is that One Personal God in the fulness of His Being and Attributes; so
that the Father is all that is meant by the word “God,” as if we knew
nothing of Son, or of Spirit; and in like manner the Son and the Spirit
are Each by Himself all that is meant by the word, as if the Other Two
were unknown; moreover, that by the word “God” is meant nothing over
and above what is meant by the “Father,” or by “the Son,” or by “the
Holy Ghost;” and that the Father is in no sense the Son, nor the Son
the Holy Ghost, nor the Holy Ghost the Father. Such is the prerogative
of the Divine Infinitude, that that One and Single Personal Being, the
Almighty God, is really Three, while He is absolutely One.

Indeed, the Catholic dogma may be said to be summed up in this very
formula on which St. Augustine lays so much stress, “Tres et Unus,”
not merely “Unum;” hence that formula is the key-note, as it may be
called, of the Athanasian Creed. In that Creed we testify to the Unus
Increatus, to the Unus Immensus, Omnipotens, Deus, and Dominus; yet
Each of the Three also is by Himself Increatus, Immensus, Omnipotens,
for Each is that One God, though Each is not the Other; Each, as
is intimated by Unus Increatus, is the One Personal God of Natural
Religion.

That this doctrine, thus drawn out, is of a notional character, is
plain; the question before me is whether in any sense it can become the
object of real apprehension, that is, whether any portion of it may be
considered as addressed to the imagination, and is able to exert that
living mastery over the mind, which is instanced as I have shown above,
as regards the proposition, “There is a God.”

“There is a God,” when really apprehended, is the object of a strong
energetic adhesion, which works a revolution in the mind; but when held
merely as a notion, it requires but a cold and ineffective acceptance,
though it be held ever so unconditionally. Such in its character is the
assent of thousands, whose imaginations are not at all kindled, nor
their hearts inflamed, nor their conduct affected, by the most august
of all conceivable truths. I ask, then, as concerns the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity, such as I have drawn it out to be, is it capable of
being apprehended otherwise than notionally? Is it a theory, undeniable
indeed, but addressed to the student, and to no one else? Is it the
elaborate, subtle, triumphant exhibition of a truth, completely
developed, and happily adjusted, and accurately balanced on its centre,
and impregnable on every side, as a scientific view, “totus, teres,
atque rotundus,” challenging all assailants, or, on the other hand,
does it come to the unlearned, the young, the busy, and the afflicted,
as a fact which is to arrest them, penetrate them, and to support and
animate them in their passage through life? That is, does it admit of
being held in the imagination, and being embraced with a real assent? I
maintain it does, and that it is the normal faith which every Christian
has, on which he is stayed, which is his spiritual life, there being
nothing in the exposition of the dogma, as I have given it above, which
does not address the imagination, as well as the intellect.

Now let us observe what is not in that exposition;—there are no
scientific terms in it. I will not allow that “Personal” is such,
because it is a word in common use, and though it cannot mean
precisely the same when used of God as when it is used of man, yet it
is sufficiently explained by that common use, to allow of its being
intelligibly applied to the Divine Nature. The other words, which occur
in the above account of the doctrine,—Three, One, He, God, Father, Son,
Spirit,—are none of them words peculiar to theology, have all a popular
meaning, and are used according to that obvious and popular meaning,
when introduced into the Catholic dogma. No human words indeed are
worthy of the Supreme Being, none are adequate; but we have no other
words to use but human, and those in question are among the simplest
and most intelligible that are to be found in language.

There are then no terms in the foregoing exposition which do not admit
of a plain sense, and they are there used in that sense; and, moreover,
that sense is what I have called real, for the words in their ordinary
use stand for things. The words, Father, Son, Spirit, He, One, and
the rest, are not abstract terms, but concrete, and adapted to excite
images. And these words thus simple and clear, are embodied in simple,
clear, brief, categorical propositions. There is nothing abstruse
either in the terms themselves, or in their setting. It is otherwise
of course with formal theological treatises on the subject of the
dogma. There we find such words as substance, essence, existence, form,
subsistence, notion, circumincession; and, though these are far easier
to understand than might at first sight be thought, still they are
doubtless addressed to the intellect, and can only command a notional
assent.

It will be observed also that not even the words “mysteriousness”
and “mystery” occur in the exposition which I have above given of
the doctrine; I omitted them, because they are not parts of the
Divine Verity as such, but in relation to creatures and to the human
intellect; and because they are of a notional character. It is plain
of course even at first sight that the doctrine is an inscrutable
mystery, or has an inscrutable mysteriousness; few minds indeed but
have theology enough to see this; and if an educated man, to whom it
is presented, does not perceive that mysteriousness at once, that
is a sure token that he does not rightly apprehend the propositions
which contain the doctrine. Hence it follows that the thesis “the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Unity is mysterious” is indirectly an
article of faith. But such an article, being a reflection made upon a
revealed truth in an inference, expresses a notion, not a thing. It
does not relate to the direct apprehension of the object, but to a
judgment of our reason upon the object. Accordingly the mysteriousness
of the doctrine is not, strictly speaking, intrinsical to it, as it
is proposed to the religious apprehension, though in matter of fact
a devotional mind, on perceiving that mysteriousness, will lovingly
appropriate it, as involved in the divine revelation; and, as such a
mind turns all thoughts which come before it to a sacred use, so will
it dwell upon the Mystery of the Trinity with awe and veneration, as a
truth befitting, so to say, the Immensity and Incomprehensibility of
the Supreme Being.

However, I do not put forward the mystery as the direct object of real
or religious apprehension; nor again, the complex doctrine (when it is
viewed, _per modum unius_, as one whole), in which the mystery lies.
Let it be observed, it is possible for the mind to hold a number of
propositions either in their combination as one whole, or one by one;
one by one, with an intelligent perception indeed of each, and of the
general direction of each towards the rest, yet of each separately
from the rest, for its own sake only, and not in connexion and one
with the rest. Thus I may know London quite well, and find my way from
street to street in any part of it without difficulty, yet be quite
unable to draw a map of it. Comparison, calculation, cataloguing,
arranging, classifying, are intellectual acts subsequent upon, and not
necessary for, a real apprehension of the things on which they are
exercised. Strictly speaking then, the dogma of the Holy Trinity, as a
complex whole, or as a mystery, is not the formal object of religious
apprehension and assent; but as a number of propositions, taken one
by one. That mystery also is of course the object of assent, but it
is the notional object; and when presented to religious minds, it is
received by them notionally; and again implicitly, viz. in the real
assent which they give to the word of God as conveyed to them through
the instrumentality of His Church. On these points it may be right to
enlarge.

Of course, as I have been saying, a man of ordinary intelligence
will be at once struck with the apparent contrariety between the
propositions one with another which constitute the Heavenly Dogma,
and, by reason of his spontaneous activity of mind and by an habitual
association, he will be compelled to view the Dogma in the light
of that contrariety,—so much so, that to hold one and all of these
separate propositions will be to such a man all one with holding
the mystery, as a mystery; and in consequence he will so hold
it;—but still, I say, so far he will hold it only with a notional
apprehension. He will accurately take in the meaning of each of the
dogmatic propositions in its relation to the rest of them, combining
them into one whole and embracing what he cannot realize, with an
assent, notional indeed, but as genuine and thorough as any real assent
can be. But the question is whether a real assent to the mystery,
as such, is possible; and I say it is not possible, because, while
we can image the separate propositions, we cannot image them all
together. We cannot, because the mystery transcends all our experience;
we have no experiences in our memory which we can put together,
compare, contrast, unite, and thereby transmute into an image of the
Ineffable Verity;—certainly; but what is in some degree a matter of
experience, what is presented for the imagination, the affections,
the devotion, the spiritual life of the Christian to repose upon
with a real assent, what stands for things, not for notions only, is
each of those propositions taken one by one, and that, not in the
case of intellectual and thoughtful minds only, but of all religious
minds whatever, in the case of a child or a peasant, as well as of a
philosopher.

This is only one instance of a general principle which holds good
in all such real apprehension as is possible to us, of God and His
Attributes. Not only do we see Him at best only in shadows, but we
cannot bring even those shadows together, for they flit to and fro,
and are never present to us at once. We can indeed combine the various
matters which we know of Him by an act of the intellect, and treat them
theologically, but such theological combinations are no objects for the
imagination to gaze upon. Our image of Him never is one, but broken
into numberless partial aspects, independent each of each. As we cannot
see the whole starry firmament at once, but have to turn ourselves
from east to west, and then round to east again, sighting first one
constellation and then another, and losing these in order to gain
those, so it is, and much more, with such real apprehensions as we can
secure of the Divine Nature. We know one truth about Him and another
truth,—but we cannot image both of them together; we cannot bring them
before us by one act of the mind; we drop the one while we turn to take
up the other. None of them are fully dwelt on and enjoyed, when they
are viewed in combination. Moreover, our devotion is tried and confused
by the long list of propositions which theology is obliged to draw up,
by the limitations, explanations, definitions, adjustments, balancings,
cautions, arbitrary prohibitions, which are imperatively required by
the weakness of human thought and the imperfections of human language.
Such exercises of reasoning indeed do but increase and harmonize
our notional apprehension of the dogma, but they add little to the
luminousness and vital force with which its separate propositions come
home to our imagination, and if they are necessary, as they certainly
are, they are necessary not so much for faith, as against unbelief.

Break a ray of light into its constituent colours, each is beautiful,
each may be enjoyed; attempt to unite them, and perhaps you produce
only a dirty white. The pure and indivisible Light is seen only by the
blessed inhabitants of heaven; here we have but such faint reflections
of it as its diffraction supplies; but they are sufficient for faith
and devotion. Attempt to combine them into one, and you gain nothing
but a mystery, which you can describe as a notion, but cannot depict as
an imagination. And this, which holds of the Divine Attributes, holds
also of the Holy Trinity in Unity. And hence, perhaps, it is that the
latter doctrine is never spoken of as a Mystery in the New Testament,
which is addressed far more to the imagination and affections than to
the intellect. Hence, too, what is more remarkable, the dogma is not
called a mystery in the Creeds; not in the Apostles’ nor the Nicene,
nor even in the Athanasian. The reason seems to be, that the Creeds
have a place in the Ritual; they are devotional acts, and of the nature
of prayers, addressed to God; and, in such addresses, to speak of
intellectual difficulties would be out of place. It must be recollected
especially that the Athanasian Creed has sometimes been called the
“Psalmus _Quicunque_.” It is not a mere collection of notions, however
momentous. It is a psalm or hymn of praise, of confession, and of
profound, self-prostrating homage, parallel to the canticles of the
elect in the Apocalypse. It appeals to the imagination quite as much
as to the intellect. It is the war-song of faith, with which we warn
first ourselves, then each other, and then all those who are within its
hearing, and the hearing of the Truth, who our God is, and how we must
worship Him, and how vast our responsibility will be, if we know what
to believe, and yet believe not. It is


    “The Psalm that gathers in one glorious lay
    All chants that e’er from heaven to earth found way;
    Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the Blest,
    And calm-breathed warning of the kindliest love
    That ever heaved a wakeful mother’s breast.”


For myself, I have ever felt it as the most simple and sublime, the
most devotional formulary to which Christianity has given birth,
more so even than the _Veni Creator_ and the _Te Deum_. Even the
antithetical form of its sentences, which is a stumbling-block to
so many, as seeming to force, and to exult in forcing a mystery
upon recalcitrating minds, has to my apprehension, even notionally
considered, a very different drift. It is intended as a check upon our
reasonings, lest they rush on in one direction beyond the limits of the
truth, and it turns them back into the opposite direction. Certainly it
implies a glorying in the Mystery; but it is not simply a statement of
the Mystery for the sake of its mysteriousness.

What is more remarkable still, a like silence as to the mysteriousness
of the doctrine is observed in the successive definitions of the Church
concerning it. Confession after confession, canon after canon is drawn
up in the course of centuries; Popes and Councils have found it their
duty to insist afresh upon the dogma; they have enunciated it in new
or additional propositions; but not even in their most elaborate
formularies do they use the word “mystery,” as far as I know. The
great Council of Toledo pursues the scientific ramifications of the
doctrine, with the exact diligence of theology, at a length four times
that of the Athanasian Creed; the fourth Lateran completes, by a final
enunciation, the development of the sacred doctrine after the mind
of St. Augustine; the Creed of Pope Pius IV. prescribes the general
rule of faith against the heresies of these latter times; but in none
of them do we find either the word “mystery,” or any suggestion of
mysteriousness.

Such is the usage of the Church in its dogmatic statements concerning
the Holy Trinity, as if fulfilling the maxim, “Lex orandi, lex
credendi.” I suppose it is founded on a tradition, because the
custom is otherwise as regards catechisms and theological treatises.
These belong to particular ages and places, and are addressed to the
intellect. In them, certainly, the mysteriousness of the doctrine is
almost uniformly insisted on. But, however this contrast of usage
is to be explained, the Creeds are enough to show that the dogma
may be taught in its fulness for the purposes of popular faith and
devotion without directly insisting on that mysteriousness, which is
necessarily involved in the combined view of its separate propositions.
That systematized whole is the object of notional assent, and its
propositions, one by one, are the objects of real.

To show this in fact, I will enumerate the separate propositions of
which the dogma consists. They are nine, and stand as follows:—

1. There are Three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word
or Son, and the Holy Spirit. 2. From the Father is, and ever has been,
the Son. 3. From the Father and Son is, and ever has been, the Spirit.

4. The Father is the One Eternal Personal God. 5. The Son is the One
Eternal Personal God. 6. The Spirit is the One Eternal Personal God.

7. The Father is not the Son. 8. The Son is not the Holy Ghost. 9. The
Holy Ghost is not the Father.

Now I think it is a fact, that, whereas these nine propositions
contain the Mystery, yet, taken, not as a whole, but separately,
each by itself, they are not only apprehensible, but admit of a real
apprehension.

Thus, for instance, if the proposition “There is One who bears witness
of Himself,” or “reveals Himself,” would admit of a real assent, why
does not also the proposition “There are Three who bear witness”?

Again, if the word “God” may create an image in our minds, why may not
the proposition “The Father is God”? or again, “The Son,” or “The Holy
Ghost is God”?

Again, to say that “the Son is other than the Holy Ghost,” or “neither
Son nor Holy Ghost is the Father,” is not a simple negative, but also
a declaration that Each of the Divine Three by Himself is complete in
Himself, and simply and absolutely God as though the Other Two were not
revealed to us.

Again, from our experience of the works of man, we accept with a real
apprehension the proposition “The Angels are made by God,” correcting
the word “made,” as is required in the case of a creating Power, and a
spiritual work:—why may we not in like matter refine and elevate the
human analogy, yet keep the image, when a Divine Birth is set before
us in terms which properly belong to what is human and earthly? If our
experience enables us to apprehend the essential fact of sonship, as
being a communication of being and of nature from one to another, why
should we not thereby in a certain measure realize the proposition “The
Word is the Son of God”?

Again, we have abundant instances in nature of the general law of
one thing coming from another or from others:—as the child issues
in the man as his successor, and the child and the man issue in the
old man, like them both, but not the same, so different as almost
to have a fresh personality distinct from each, so we may form some
image, however vague, of the procession of the Holy Spirit from Father
and Son. This is what I should say of the propositions which I have
numbered two and three, which are the least susceptible of a real
assent out of the nine.

So much at first sight; but the force of what I have been saying will
be best understood, by considering what Scripture and the Ritual of the
Church witness in accordance with it. In referring to these two great
store-houses of faith and devotion, I must premise, as when I spoke of
the Being of a God, that I am not proving by means of them the dogma of
the Holy Trinity, but using the one and the other in illustration of
the action of the separate articles of that dogma upon the imagination,
though the complex truth, in which, when combined, they issue, is not
in sympathy or correspondence with it, but altogether beyond it; and
next of the action and influence of those separate articles, by means
of the imagination, upon the affections and obedience of Christians,
high and low.

This being understood, I ask what chapter of St. John or St. Paul is
not full of the Three Divine Names, introduced in one or other of the
above nine propositions, expressed or implied, or in their parallels,
or in parts or equivalents of them? What lesson is there given us by
these two chief writers of the New Testament, which does not grow out
of Their Persons and Their Offices? At one time we read of the grace
of the Second Person, the love of the First, and the communication
of the Third; at another we are told by the Son, “I will pray the
Father, and He will send you another Paraclete;” and then, “All that
the Father hath are Mine; the Paraclete shall receive of Mine.” Then
again we read of “the foreknowledge of the Father, the sanctification
of the Spirit, the Blood of Jesus Christ;” and again we are to “pray
in the Holy Ghost, abide in the love of God, and look for the mercy of
Jesus.” And so, in like manner, to Each, in one passage or another, are
ascribed the same titles and works: Each is acknowledged as Lord; Each
is eternal; Each is Truth; Each is Holiness; Each is all in all; Each
is Creator; Each wills with a Supreme Will; Each is the Author of the
new birth; Each speaks in His ministers; Each is the Revealer; Each is
the Lawgiver; Each is the Teacher of the elect; in Each the elect have
fellowship; Each leads them on; Each raises them from the dead. What is
all this, but “the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost
Eternal; the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Omnipotent; the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost God,” of the Athanasian Creed? And if the New Testament
be, as it confessedly is, so real in its teaching, so luminous, so
impressive, so constraining, so full of images, so sparing in mere
notions, whence is this but because, in its references to the Object
of our supreme worship, it is ever ringing the changes (so to say) on
the nine propositions which I have set down, and on the particular
statements into which they may be severally resolved?

Take one of them, as an instance, viz. the dogmatic sentence “The Son
is God.” What an illustration of the real assent which can be given
to this proposition, and its power over our affections and emotions,
is the first half of the first chapter of St. John’s gospel! or again
the vision of our Lord in the first chapter of the Apocalypse! or the
first chapter of St. John’s first Epistle! Again, how burning are St.
Paul’s words when he speaks of our Lord’s crucifixion and death! what
is the secret of that flame, but this same dogmatic sentence, “The
Son is God”? why should the death of the Son be more awful than any
other death, except that He, though man, was God? And so, again, all
through the Old Testament, what is it which gives an interpretation
and a persuasive power to so many passages and portions, especially of
the Psalms and the Prophets, but this same theological formula, “The
Messias is God,” a proposition which never could thus vivify in the
religious mind the letter of the sacred text, unless it appealed to the
imagination, and could be held with a much stronger assent than any
that is merely notional.

This same power of the dogma may be illustrated from the Ritual.
Consider the services for Christmas or Epiphany; for Easter, Ascension,
and (I may say) pre-eminently Corpus Christi; what are these great
Festivals but comments on the words, “The Son is God”? Yet who will
say that they have the subtlety, the aridity, the coldness of mere
scholastic science? Are they addressed to the pure intellect, or to
the imagination? do they interest our logical faculty, or excite
our devotion? Why is it that personally we often find ourselves so
ill-fitted to take part in them, except that we are not good enough,
that in our case the dogma is far too much a theological notion, far
too little an image living within us? And so again, as to the Divinity
of the Holy Ghost: consider the breviary offices for Pentecost and
its Octave, the grandest perhaps in the whole year; are they created
out of mere abstractions and inferences, or has not the categorical
proposition of St. Athanasius, “The Holy Ghost is God,” such a place in
the imagination and the heart, as suffices to give birth to the noble
Hymns, _Veni Creator_, and _Veni Sancte Spiritus_?

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I sum up then to the same effect as in the preceding Section. Religion
has to do with the real, and the real is the particular; theology
has to do with what is notional, and the notional is the general and
systematic. Hence theology has to do with the dogma of the Holy Trinity
as a whole made up of many propositions; but Religion has to do with
each of those separate propositions which compose it, and lives and
thrives in the contemplation of them. In them it finds the motives for
devotion and faithful obedience; while theology on the other hand forms
and protects them by virtue of its function of regarding them, not
merely one by one, but as a system of truth.

One other remark is in place here. If the separate articles of the
Athanasian Creed are so closely connected with vital and personal
religion as I have shown them to be, if they supply motives on which a
man may act, if they determine the state of mind, the special thoughts,
affections, and habits, which he carries with him from this world to
the next, is there cause to wonder, that the Creed should proclaim
aloud, that those who are not internally such as Christ, by means
of it, came to make them, are not capable of the heaven to which He
died to bring them? Is not the importance of accepting the dogma the
very explanation of that careful minuteness with which the few simple
truths which compose it are inculcated, are reiterated, in the Creed?
And shall the Church of God, to whom “the dispensation” of the Gospel
is committed, forget the concomitant obligation, “Woe is unto me if I
preach not the Gospel”? Are her ministers by their silence to bring
upon themselves the Prophet’s anathema, “Cursed is he that doth the
work of the Lord deceitfully”? Can they ever forget the lesson conveyed
to them in the Apostle’s protestation, “God is faithful, as our
preaching which was among you was not Yea and Nay.... For we are a good
odour of Christ unto God in them that are in the way of salvation, and
in them that are perishing. For we are not as the many, who adulterate
the word of God; but with sincerity, but as from God, in the presence
of God, so speak we in Christ”?


§ 3. Belief in Dogmatic Theology.


It is a familiar charge against the Catholic Church in the mouths of
her opponents, that she imposes on her children as matters of faith,
not only such dogmas as have an intimate bearing on moral conduct and
character, but a great number of doctrines which none but professed
theologians can understand, and which in consequence do but oppress the
mind, and are the perpetual fuel of controversy. The first who made
this complaint was no less a man than the great Constantine, and on no
less an occasion than the rise of the Arian heresy, which he, as yet
a catechumen, was pleased to consider a trifling and tolerable error.
So, deciding the matter, he wrote at once a letter to Alexander, Bishop
of Alexandria, and to Arius, who was a presbyter in the same city,
exhorting them to drop the matter in dispute, and to live in peace with
one another. He was answered by the meeting of the Council of Nicæa,
and by the insertion of the word “Consubstantial” into the Creed of the
Church.

What the Emperor thought of the controversy itself, that Bishop Jeremy
Taylor thought of the insertion of the “Consubstantial,” viz. that
it was a mischievous affair, and ought never to have taken place. He
thus quotes and comments on the Emperor’s letter: “The Epistle of
Constantine to Alexander and Arius tells the truth, and chides them
both for commencing the question, Alexander for broaching it, Arius
for taking it up. And although this be true, that it had been better
for the Church it had never begun, yet, being begun, what is to be
done with it? Of this also, in that admirable epistle, we have the
Emperor’s judgment (I suppose not without the advice and privity of
Hosius), ... for first he calls it a certain vain piece of a question,
ill begun, and more unadvisedly published,—a question which no law or
ecclesiastical canon defineth; a fruitless contention; the product of
idle brains; a matter so nice, so obscure, so intricate, that it was
neither to be explicated by the clergy nor understood by the people;
a dispute of words, a doctrine inexplicable, but most dangerous when
taught, lest it introduce discord or blasphemy; and, therefore, the
objector was rash, and the answer unadvised, for it concerned not the
substance of faith or the worship of God, nor the chief commandment
of Scripture; and, therefore, why should it be the matter of discord?
for though the matter be grave, yet, because neither necessary nor
explicable, the contention is trifling and toyish.... So that the
matter being of no great importance, but vain and a toy in respect
of the excellent blessings of peace and charity, it were good that
Alexander and Arius should leave contending, keep their opinions to
themselves, ask each other forgiveness, and give mutual toleration.(4)”

Moreover, Taylor is of opinion that “they both did believe One God,
and the Holy Trinity;” an opinion in the teeth of historical fact.
Also he is of opinion, that “that faith is best which hath greatest
simplicity, and that it is better in all cases humbly to submit, than
curiously to inquire and pry into the mystery under the cloud, and to
hazard our faith by improving knowledge.” He is, further, of opinion,
that “if the Nicene Fathers had done so too, possibly the Church would
never have repented it.” He also thinks that their insertion of the
“Consubstantial” into the Creed was a bad precedent.

Whether it was likely to act as a precedent or not, it has not been
so in fact, for fifteen hundred years have passed since the Nicene
Council, and it is the one instance of a scientific word having been
introduced into the Creed from that day to this. And after all,
the word in question has a plain meaning, as the Council used it,
easily stated and intelligible to all; for “consubstantial with the
Father,” means nothing more than “really one with the Father,” being
adopted to meet the evasion of the Arians. The Creed then remains
now what it was in the beginning, a popular form of faith, suited to
every age, class, and condition. Its declarations are categorical,
brief, clear, elementary, of the first importance, expressive of the
concrete, the objects of real apprehension, and the basis and rule
of devotion. As to the proper Nicene formula itself, excepting the
one term “Consubstantial,” it has not a word which does not relate to
the rudimental facts of Christianity. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan
and the various ante-Nicene Symbols, of which the Apostles’ is one,
add summarily one or two notional articles, such as “the communion of
Saints,” and “the forgiveness of sins,” which, however, may be readily
converted into real propositions. On the other hand, one chief dogma,
which is easy to popular apprehension, is necessarily absent from all
of them, the Real Presence; but the omission is owing to the ancient
“Disciplina Arcani,” which withheld the Sacred Mystery from catechumens
and heathen, to whom the Creed was known.

So far the charge which Taylor brings forward has no great
plausibility; but it is not the whole of his case. I cannot deny that
a large and ever-increasing collection of propositions, abstract
notions, not concrete truths, become, by the successive definitions of
Councils, a portion of the _credenda_, and have an imperative claim
upon the faith of every Catholic; and this being the case, it will be
asked me how I am borne out by facts in enlarging, as I have done, on
the simplicity and directness, on the tangible reality, of the Church’s
dogmatic teaching.

I will suppose the objection urged thus:—why has not the Catholic
Church limited her _credenda_ to propositions such as those in her
Creed, concrete and practical, easy of apprehension, and of a character
to win assent? such as “Christ is God;” “This is My Body;” “Baptism
gives life to the soul;” “The Saints intercede for us;” “Death,
judgment, heaven, hell, the four last things;” “There are seven gifts
of the Holy Ghost,” “three theological virtues,” “seven capital sins,”
and the like, as they are found in her catechisms. On the contrary,
she makes it imperative on every one, priest and layman, to profess
as revealed truth all the canons of the Councils, and innumerable
decisions of Popes, propositions so various, so notional, that but few
can know them, and fewer can understand them. What sense, for instance,
can a child or a peasant, nay, or any ordinary Catholic, put upon
the Tridentine Canons, even in translation? such as, “Siquis dixerit
homines sine Christi justitiâ, per quam nobis meruit, justificari, aut
per eam ipsam formaliter justos esse, anathema sit;” or “Siquis dixerit
justificatum peccare, dum intuitu æternæ mercedis bene operatur,
anathema sit.” Or again, consider the very anathema annexed by the
Nicene Council to its Creed, the language of which is so obscure, that
even theologians differ about its meaning. It runs as follows:—“Those
who say that once the Son was not, and before He was begotten He was
not, and that He was made out of that which was not, or who pretend
that He was of other hypostasis or substance, or that the Son of God is
created, mutable, or alterable, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church
anathematizes.” These doctrinal enunciations are _de fide_; peasants
are bound to believe them as well as controversialists, and to believe
them as truly as they believe that our Lord is God. How then are the
Catholic _credenda_ easy and within reach of all men?

I begin my answer to this objection by recurring to what has already
been said concerning the relation of theology with its notional
propositions to religious and devotional assent. Devotion is excited
doubtless by the plain, categorical truths of revelation, such as the
articles of the Creed; on these it depends; with these it is satisfied.
It accepts them one by one; it is careless about intellectual
consistency; it draws from each of them the spiritual nourishment which
it was intended to supply. Far different, certainly, is the nature and
duty of the intellect. It is ever active, inquisitive, penetrating;
it examines doctrine and doctrine; it compares, contrasts, and forms
them into a science; that science is theology. Now theological
science, being thus the exercise of the intellect upon the _credenda_
of revelation, is, though not directly devotional, at once natural,
excellent, and necessary. It is natural, because the intellect is one
of our highest faculties; excellent, because it is our duty to use
our faculties to the full; necessary, because, unless we apply our
intellect to revealed truth rightly, others will exercise their minds
upon it wrongly. Accordingly, the Catholic intellect makes a survey
and a catalogue of the doctrines contained in the _depositum_ of
revelation, as committed to the Church’s keeping; it locates, adjusts,
defines them each, and brings them together into a whole. Moreover,
it takes particular aspects or portions of them; it analyzes them,
whether into first principles really such, or into hypotheses of an
illustrative character. It forms generalizations, and gives names to
them. All these deductions are true, if rightly deduced, because they
are deduced from what is true; and therefore in one sense they are a
portion of the _depositum_ of faith or _credenda_, while in another
sense they are additions to it: however, additions or not, they have,
I readily grant, the characteristic disadvantage of being abstract and
notional statements.

Nor is this all: error gives opportunity to many more additions than
truth. There is another set of deductions, inevitable also, and also
part or not part of the revealed _credenda_, according as we please
to view them. If a proposition is true, its contradictory is false.
If then a man believes that Christ is God, he believes also, and that
necessarily, that to say He is not God is false, and that those who
so say are in error. Here then again the prospect opens upon us of a
countless multitude of propositions, which in their first elements
are close upon devotional truth,—of groups of propositions, and those
groups divergent, independent, ever springing into life with an
inexhaustible fecundity, according to the ever-germinating forms of
heresy, of which they are the antagonists. These too have their place
in theological science.

Such is theology in contrast to religion; and as follows from the
circumstances of its formation, though some of its statements easily
find equivalents in the language of devotion, the greater number of
them are more or less unintelligible to the ordinary Catholic, as
law-books to the private citizen. And especially those portions of
theology which are the indirect creation, not of orthodox, but of
heretical thought, such as the repudiations of error contained in the
Canons of Councils, of which specimens have been given above, will ever
be foreign, strange, and hard to the pious but uncontroversial mind;
for what have good Christians to do, in the ordinary course of things,
with the subtle hallucinations of the intellect? This is manifest from
the nature of the case; but then the question recurs, why should the
refutations of heresy be our objects of faith? if no mind, theological
or not, can believe what it cannot understand, in what sense can the
Canons of Councils and other ecclesiastical determinations be included
in those _credenda_ which the Church presents to every Catholic as if
apprehensible, and to which every Catholic gives his firm interior
assent?

In solving this difficulty I wish it first observed, that, if it is
the duty of the Church to act as “the pillar and ground of the Truth,”
she is manifestly obliged from time to time, and to the end of time,
to denounce opinions incompatible with that truth, whenever able and
subtle minds in her communion venture to publish such opinions. Suppose
certain Bishops and priests at this day began to teach that Islamism
or Buddhism was a direct and immediate revelation from God, she would
be bound to use the authority which God has given her to declare that
such a proposition will not stand with Christianity, and that those
who hold it are none of hers; and she would be bound to impose such a
declaration on that very knot of persons who had committed themselves
to the novel proposition, in order that, if they would not recant,
they might be separated from her communion, as they were separate
from her faith. In such a case, her masses of population would either
not hear of the controversy, or they would at once take part with
her, and without effort take any test, which secured the exclusion
of the innovators; and she on the other hand would feel that what is
a rule for some Catholics must be a rule for all. Who is to draw the
line between who are to acknowledge it, and who are not? It is plain,
there cannot be two rules of faith in the same communion, or rather,
as the case really would be, an endless variety of rules, coming into
force according to the multiplication of heretical theories, and to
the degrees of knowledge and varieties of sentiment in individual
Catholics. There is but one rule of faith for all; and it would be a
greater difficulty to allow of an uncertain rule of faith, than (if
that was the alternative, as it is not), to impose upon uneducated
minds a profession which they cannot understand.

But it is not the necessary result of unity of profession, nor is it
the fact, that the Church imposes dogmatic statements on the interior
assent of those who cannot apprehend them. The difficulty is removed
by the dogma of the Church’s infallibility, and of the consequent duty
of “implicit faith” in her word. The “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church” is an article of the Creed, and an article, which, inclusive
of her infallibility, all men, high and low, can easily master and
accept with a real and operative assent. It stands in the place of all
abstruse propositions in a Catholic’s mind, for to believe in her word
is virtually to believe in them all. Even what he cannot understand, at
least he can believe to be true; and he believes it to be true because
he believes in the Church.

The _rationale_ of this provision for unlearned devotion is as
follows:—It stands to reason that all of us, learned and unlearned, are
bound to believe the whole revealed doctrine in all its parts and in
all that it implies, according as portion after portion is brought home
to our consciousness as belonging to it; and it also stands to reason,
that a doctrine, so deep and so various, as the revealed _depositum_
of faith, cannot be brought home to us and made our own all at once.
No mind, however large, however penetrating, can directly and fully
by one act understand any one truth, however simple. What can be more
intelligible than that “Alexander conquered Asia,” or that “Veracity
is a duty”? but what a multitude of propositions is included under
either of these theses! still, if we profess either, we profess all
that it includes. Thus, as regards the Catholic Creed, if we really
believe that our Lord is God, we believe all that is meant by such a
belief; or, else, we are not in earnest, when we profess to believe the
proposition. In the act of believing it at all, we forthwith commit
ourselves by anticipation to believe truths which at present we do not
believe, because they have never come before us;—we limit henceforth
the range of our private judgment in prospect by the conditions,
whatever they are, of that dogma. Thus the Arians said that they
believed in our Lord’s divinity, but when they were pressed to confess
His eternity, they denied it: thereby showing in fact that they never
had believed in His divinity at all. In other words, a man who really
believes in our Lord’s proper divinity, believes _implicitè_ in His
eternity.

And so, in like manner, of the whole _depositum_ of faith, or the
revealed word:—if we believe in the revelation, we believe in what is
revealed, in all that is revealed, however it may be brought home to
us, by reasoning or in any other way. He who believes that Christ is
the Truth, and that the Evangelists are truthful, believes all that
He has said through them, though he has only read St. Matthew and has
not read St. John. He who believes in the _depositum_ of Revelation,
believes in all the doctrines of the _depositum_; and since he cannot
know them all at once, he knows some doctrines, and does not know
others; he may know only the Creed, nay, perhaps only the chief
portions of the Creed; but, whether he knows little or much, he has
the intention of believing all that there is to believe, whenever and
as soon as it is brought home to him, if he believes in Revelation at
all. All that he knows now as revealed, and all that he shall know, and
all that there is to know, he embraces it all in his intention by one
act of faith; otherwise, it is but an accident that he believes this or
that, not because it is a revelation. This virtual, interpretative, or
prospective belief is called a believing _implicitè_; and it follows
from this, that, granting that the Canons of Councils and the other
ecclesiastical documents and confessions, to which I have referred, are
really involved in the _depositum_ or revealed word, every Catholic,
in accepting the _depositum_, does _implicitè_ accept those dogmatic
decisions.

I say, “granting these various propositions are virtually contained in
the revealed word,” for this is the only question left; and that it is
to be answered in the affirmative, is clear at once to the Catholic,
from the fact that the Church declares that they really belong to it.
To her is committed the care and the interpretation of the revelation.
The word of the Church is the word of the revelation. That the Church
is the infallible oracle of truth is the fundamental dogma of the
Catholic religion; and “I believe what the Church proposes to be
believed” is an act of real assent, including all particular assents,
notional and real; and, while it is possible for unlearned as well as
learned, it is imperative on learned as well as unlearned. And thus it
is, that by believing the word of the Church _implicitè_, that is, by
believing all that that word does or shall declare itself to contain,
every Catholic, according to his intellectual capacity, supplements
the shortcomings of his knowledge without blunting his real assent to
what is elementary, and takes upon himself from the first the whole
truth of revelation, progressing from one apprehension of it to another
according to his opportunities of doing so.




PART II. ASSENT AND INFERENCE.




Chapter VI. Assent Considered As Unconditional.


I have now said as much as need be said about the relation of Assent
to Apprehension, and shall turn to the consideration of the relation
existing between Assent and Inference.

As apprehension is a concomitant, so inference is ordinarily the
antecedent of assent;—on this surely I need not enlarge;—but neither
apprehension nor inference interferes with the unconditional character
of the assent, viewed in itself. The circumstances of an act, however
necessary to it, do not enter into the act; assent is in its nature
absolute and unconditional, though it cannot be given except under
certain conditions.

This is obvious; but what presents some difficulty is this, how it is
that a conditional acceptance of a proposition,—such as is an act of
inference,—is able to lead, as it does, to an unconditional acceptance
of it,—such as is assent; how it is that a proposition which is not,
and cannot be, demonstrated, which at the highest can only be proved
to be truth-like, not true, such as “I shall die,” nevertheless
claims and receives our unqualified adhesion. To the consideration
of this paradox, as it may be called, I shall now proceed; that is,
to the consideration, first, of the act of assent to a proposition,
which act is unconditional; next, of the act of inference, which goes
before the assent and is conditional; and, thirdly, of the solution
of the apparent inconsistency which is involved in holding that an
unconditional acceptance of a proposition can be the result of its
conditional verification.


§ 1. Simple Assent.


The doctrine which I have been enunciating requires such careful
explanation, that it is not wonderful that writers of great ability
and name are to be found who have put it aside for a doctrine of their
own; but no doctrine on the subject is without its difficulties, and
certainly not theirs, though it carries with it a show of common sense.
The authors to whom I refer wish to maintain that there are degrees
of assent, and that, as the reasons for a proposition are strong or
weak, so is the assent. It follows from this that absolute assent
has no legitimate exercise, except as ratifying acts of intuition or
demonstration. What is thus brought home to us is indeed to be accepted
unconditionally; but, as to reasonings in concrete matters, they are
never more than probabilities, and the probability in each conclusion
which we draw is the measure of our assent to that conclusion. Thus
assent becomes a sort of necessary shadow, following upon inference,
which is the substance; and is never without some alloy of doubt,
because inference in the concrete never reaches more than probability.

Such is what may be called the _à priori_ method of regarding assent
in its relation to inference. It condemns an unconditional assent in
concrete matters on what may be called the nature of the case. Assent
cannot rise higher than its source; inference in such matters is at
best conditional, therefore assent is conditional also.

Abstract argument is always dangerous, and this instance is no
exception to the rule; I prefer to go by facts. The theory to which
I have referred cannot be carried out in practice. It may be rightly
said to prove too much; for it debars us from unconditional assent
in cases in which the common voice of mankind, the advocates of this
theory included, would protest against the prohibition. There are many
truths in concrete matter, which no one can demonstrate, yet every one
unconditionally accepts; and though of course there are innumerable
propositions to which it would be absurd to give an absolute assent,
still the absurdity lies in the circumstances of each particular
case, as it is taken by itself, not in their common violation of the
pretentious axiom that probable reasoning can never lead to certitude.

Locke’s remarks on the subject are an illustration of what I have been
saying. This celebrated writer, after the manner of his school, speaks
freely of degrees of assent, and considers that the strength of assent
given to each proposition varies with the strength of the inference on
which the assent follows; yet he is obliged to make exceptions to his
general principle,—exceptions, unintelligible on his abstract doctrine,
but demanded by the logic of facts. The practice of mankind is too
strong for the antecedent theorem, to which he is desirous to subject
it.

First he says, in his chapter “On Probability,” “Most of the
propositions we think, reason, discourse, nay, act upon, are such as
we cannot have undoubted knowledge of their truth; yet some of them
_border so near_ upon certainty, that we _make no doubt at all_ about
them, but _assent_ to them _as firmly_, and act according to that
assent as resolutely, _as if they were infallibly demonstrated_, and
that our knowledge of them was perfect and certain.” Here he allows
that inferences, which are only “near upon certainty,” are so near,
that we legitimately accept them with “no doubt at all,” and “assent to
them as firmly as if they were infallibly demonstrated.” That is, he
affirms and sanctions the very paradox to which I am committed myself.

Again; he says, in his chapter on “The Degrees of Assent,” that
“when any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of
ourselves and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent
reports of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as
firmly upon it, as if it were certain knowledge, and we reason and act
thereupon, _with as little doubt as if it were perfect demonstration_.”
And he repeats, “These _probabilities_ rise so near to certainty,
that they _govern our thoughts as absolutely_, and influence all our
actions as fully, as _the most evident demonstration_; and in what
concerns us, we make little or no difference between them and certain
knowledge. _Our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance._” Here
again, “probabilities” may be so strong as to “govern our thoughts as
absolutely” as sheer demonstration, so strong that belief, grounded on
them, “rises to assurance,” that is, certitude.

I have so high a respect both for the character and the ability of
Locke, for his manly simplicity of mind and his outspoken candour, and
there is so much in his remarks upon reasoning and proof in which I
fully concur, that I feel no pleasure in considering him in the light
of an opponent to views, which I myself have ever cherished as true
with an obstinate devotion; and I would willingly think that in the
passage which follows in his chapter on “Enthusiasm,” he is aiming at
superstitious extravagances which I should repudiate myself as much as
he can do; but, if so, his words go beyond the occasion, and contradict
what I have quoted from him above.

“He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought, in the
first place, to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves
it not will not take much pains to get it, nor be much concerned when
he misses it. There is nobody, in the commonwealth of learning, who
does not profess himself a lover of truth,—and there is not a rational
creature, that would not take it amiss, to be thought otherwise of.
And yet, for all this, one may truly say, there are very few lovers
of truth, for truth-sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves
that they are so. How a man may know, whether he be so, in earnest, is
worth inquiry; and I think, there is this one unerring mark of it, viz.
_the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the
proofs it is built on will warrant_. Whoever goes beyond this measure
of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves
not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. For the evidence
that any proposition is true (_except such as are self-evident_) lying
only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he
affords it _beyond the degrees of that_ evidence, it is plain _all
that surplusage of assurance_ is owing to some other affection, and
not to the love of truth; it being as _impossible_ that the love of
truth should carry _my assent above the evidence_ there is to me that
it is true, as that the love of truth should make me assent to any
proposition for the sake of that evidence which it has not that it is
true; which is in effect to love it as a truth, because it is possible
or probable that it may not be true.(5)”

Here he says that it is not only illogical, but immoral to “carry our
_assent above_ the _evidence_ that a proposition is true,” to have “a
surplusage of _assurance beyond_ the degrees of that evidence.” And
he excepts from this rule only self-evident propositions. How then
is it not inconsistent with right reason, with the love of truth for
its own sake, to allow, in his words quoted above, certain strong
“probabilities” to “govern our thoughts as absolutely as the most
evident demonstration”? how is there no “surplusage of assurance
beyond the degrees of evidence” when in the case of those strong
probabilities, we permit “our belief, thus grounded, to rise to
assurance,” as he pronounces we are rational in doing? Of course he
had in view one set of instances, when he implied that demonstration
was the condition of absolute assent, and another set when he said
that it was no such condition; but he surely cannot be acquitted of
slovenly thinking in thus treating a cardinal subject. A philosopher
should so anticipate the application, and guard the enunciation of his
principles, as to secure them against the risk of their being made to
change places with each other, to defend what he is eager to denounce,
and to condemn what he finds it necessary to sanction. However,
whatever is to be thought of his _à priori_ method and his logical
consistency, his _animus_, I fear, must be understood as hostile to
the doctrine which I am going to maintain. He takes a view of the
human mind, in relation to inference and assent, which to me seems
theoretical and unreal. Reasonings and convictions which I deem natural
and legitimate, he apparently would call irrational, enthusiastic,
perverse, and immoral; and that, as I think, because he consults his
own ideal of how the mind ought to act, instead of interrogating human
nature, as an existing thing, as it is found in the world. Instead of
going by the testimony of psychological facts, and thereby determining
our constitutive faculties and our proper condition, and being content
with the mind as God has made it, he would form men as he thinks they
ought to be formed, into something better and higher, and calls them
irrational and immoral, if (so to speak) they take to the water,
instead of remaining under the narrow wings of his own arbitrary theory.

1. Now the first question which this theory leads me to consider is,
whether there is such an act of the mind as assent at all. If there
is, it is plain it ought to show itself unequivocally as such, as
distinct from other acts. For if a professed act can only be viewed
as the recessary and immediate repetition of another act, if assent
is a sort of reproduction and double of an act of inference, if when
inference determines that a proposition is somewhat, or not a little,
or a good deal, or very like truth, assent as its natural and normal
counterpart says that it is somewhat, or not a little, or a good deal,
or very like truth, then I do not see what we mean by saying, or why
we say at all, that there is any such act. It is simply superfluous,
in a psychological point of view, and a curiosity of subtle minds,
and the sooner it is got out of the way the better. When I assent,
I am supposed, it seems, to do precisely what I do when I infer, or
rather not quite so much, but something which is included in inferring;
for, while the disposition of my mind towards a given proposition is
identical in assent and in inference, I merely drop the thought of
the premisses when I assent, though not of their influence on the
proposition inferred. This, then, and no more after all, is what nature
prescribes; and this, and no more than this, is the conscientious use
of our faculties, so to assent forsooth as to do nothing else than
infer. Then, I say, if this be really the state of the case, if assent
in no real way differs from inference, it is one and the same thing
with it. It is another name for inference, and to speak of it at all
does but mislead. Nor can it fairly be urged as a parallel case that an
act of conscious recognition, though distinct from an act of knowledge,
is after all only its repetition. On the contrary, such a recognition
is a reflex act with its own object, viz. the act of knowledge itself.
As well might it be said that the hearing of the notes of my voice is a
repetition of the act of singing:—it gives no plausibility then to the
anomaly I am combating.

I lay it down, then, as a principle that either assent is intrinsically
distinct from inference, or the sooner we get rid of the word in
philosophy the better. If it be only the echo of an inference, do not
treat it as a substantive act; but on the other hand, supposing it be
not such an idle repetition, as I am sure it is not, supposing the word
“assent” does hold a necessary place in language and in thought, if it
does not admit of being confused with concluding and inferring, if the
two words are used for two operations of the intellect which cannot
change their character, if in matter of fact they are not always found
together, if they do not vary with each other, if one is sometimes
found without the other, if one is strong when the other is weak, if
sometimes they seem even in conflict with each other, then, since we
know perfectly well what an inference is, it comes upon us to consider
what, as distinct from inference, an assent is, and we are, by the very
fact of its being distinct, advanced one step towards that account of
it which I think is the true one. The first step then towards deciding
the point, will be to inquire what the experience of human life, as it
is daily brought before us, teaches us of the relation to each other of
inference and assent.

(1.) First, we know from experience that assents may endure without
the presence of the inferential acts upon which they were originally
elicited. It is plain, that, as life goes on, we are not only inwardly
formed and changed by the accession of habits, but we are also enriched
by a great multitude of beliefs and opinions, and that on a variety
of subjects. These beliefs and opinions, held, as some of them are,
almost as first principles, are assents, and they constitute, as it
were, the clothing and furniture of the mind. I have already spoken of
them under the head of “Credence” and “Opinion.” Sometimes we are fully
conscious of them; sometimes they are implicit, or only now and then
come directly before our reflective faculty. Still they are assents;
and, when we first admitted them, we had some kind of reason, slight
or strong, recognized or not, for doing so. However, whatever those
reasons were, even if we ever realized them, we have long forgotten
them. Whether it was the authority of others, or our own observation,
or our reading, or our reflections, which became the warrant of our
assent, any how we received the matters in question into our minds as
true, and gave them a place there. We assented to them, and we still
assent, though we have forgotten what the warrant was. At present they
are self-sustained in our minds, and have been so for long years; they
are in no sense conclusions; they imply no process of thought. Here
then is a case in which assent stands out as distinct from inference.

(2.) Again; sometimes assent fails, while the reasons for it and the
inferential act which is the recognition of those reasons, are still
present, and in force. Our reasons may seem to us as strong as ever,
yet they do not secure our assent. Our beliefs, founded on them, were
and are not; we cannot perhaps tell when they went; we may have thought
that we still held them, till something happened to call our attention
to the state of our minds, and then we found that our assent had become
an assertion. Sometimes, of course, a cause may be found why they
went; there may have been some vague feeling that a fault lay at the
ultimate basis, or in the underlying conditions, of our reasonings; or
some misgiving that the subject-matter of them was beyond the reach
of the human mind; or a consciousness that we had gained a broader
view of things in general than when we first gave our assent; or that
there were strong objections to our first convictions, which we had
never taken into account. But this is not always so; sometimes our mind
changes so quickly, so unaccountably, so disproportionately to any
tangible arguments to which the change can be referred, and with such
abiding recognition of the force of the old arguments, as to suggest
the suspicion that moral causes, arising out of our condition, age,
company, occupations, fortunes, are at the bottom. However, what once
was assent is gone; yet the perception of the old arguments remains,
showing that inference is one thing, and assent another.

(3.) And as assent sometimes dies out without tangible reasons,
sufficient to account for its failure, so sometimes, in spite of strong
and convincing arguments, it is never given. We sometimes find men loud
in their admiration of truths which they never profess. As, by the law
of our mental constitution, obedience is quite distinct from faith,
and men may believe without practising, so is assent also independent
of our acts of inference. Again, prejudice hinders assent to the most
incontrovertible proofs. Again, it not unfrequently happens, that while
the keenness of the ratiocinative faculty enables a man to see the
ultimate result of a complicated problem in a moment, it takes years
for him to embrace it as a truth, and to recognize it as an item in the
circle of his knowledge. Yet he does at last so accept it, and then we
say that he assents.

(4.) Again; very numerous are the cases, in which good arguments,
and really good as far as they go, and confessed by us to be good,
nevertheless are not strong enough to incline our minds ever so little
to the conclusion at which they point. But why is it that we do not
assent a little, in proportion to those arguments? On the contrary, we
throw the full _onus probandi_ on the side of the conclusion, and we
refuse to assent to it at all, until we can assent to it altogether.
The proof is capable of growth; but the assent either exists or does
not exist.

(5.) I have already alluded to the influence of moral motives in
hindering assent to conclusions which are logically unimpeachable.
According to the couplet,—


    “A man convinced against his will
    Is of the same opinion still;”—


assent then is not the same as inference.

(6.) Strange as it may seem, this contrast between inference and assent
is exemplified even in the province of mathematics. Argument is not
always able to command our assent, even though it be demonstrative.
Sometimes of course it forces its way, that is, when the steps of the
reasoning are few, and admit of being viewed by the mind altogether.
Certainly, one cannot conceive a man having before him the series of
conditions and truths on which it depends that the three angles of a
triangle are together equal to two right angles, and yet not assenting
to that proposition. Were all propositions as plain, though assent
would not in consequence be the same act as inference, yet it would
certainly follow immediately upon it. I allow then as much as this,
that, when an argument is in itself and by itself conclusive of a
truth, it has by a law of our nature the same command over our assent,
or rather the truth which it has reached has the same command, as our
senses have. Certainly our intellectual nature is under laws, and the
correlative of ascertained truth is unreserved assent.

But I am not speaking of short and lucid demonstrations; but of long
and intricate mathematical investigations; and in that case, though
every step may be indisputable, it still requires a specially sustained
attention and an effort of memory to have in the mind all at once all
the steps of the proof, with their bearings on each other, and the
antecedents which they severally involve; and these conditions of the
inference may interfere with the promptness of our assent.

Hence it is that party spirit or national feeling or religious
prepossessions have before now had power to retard the reception of
truths of a mathematical character; which never could have been,
if demonstrations were _ipso facto_ assents. Nor indeed would any
mathematician, even in questions of pure science, assent to his own
conclusions, on new and difficult ground, and in the case of abstruse
calculations, however often he went over his work, till he had the
corroboration of other judgments besides his own. He would have
carefully revised his inference, and would assent to the probability of
his accuracy in inferring, but still he would abstain from an immediate
assent to the truth of his conclusion. Yet the corroboration of others
cannot add to his perception of the proof; he would still perceive the
proof, even though he failed in gaining their corroboration. And yet
again he might arbitrarily make it his rule, never to assent to his
conclusions without such corroboration, or at least before the lapse of
a sufficient interval. Here again inference is distinct from assent.

I have been showing that inference and assent are distinct acts of the
mind, and that they may be made apart from each other. Of course I
cannot be taken to mean that there is no legitimate or actual connexion
between them, as if arguments adverse to a conclusion did not naturally
hinder assent; or as if the inclination to give assent were not greater
or less according as the particular act of inference expressed a
stronger or weaker probability; or as if assent did not always imply
grounds in reason, implicit, if not explicit, or could be rightly given
without sufficient grounds. So much is it commonly felt that assent
must be preceded by inferential acts, that obstinate men give their own
will as their very reason for assenting, if they can think of nothing
better; “stat pro ratione voluntas.” Indeed, I doubt whether assent is
ever given without some preliminary, which stands for a reason; but it
does not follow from this, that it may not be withheld in cases when
there are good reasons for giving it to a proposition, or may not be
withdrawn after it has been given, the reasons remaining, or may not
remain when the reasons are forgotten; or must always vary in strength,
as the reasons vary; and this substantiveness, as I may call it, of the
act of assent is the very point which I have wished to establish.

2. And in showing that assent is distinct from an act of inference, I
have gone a good way towards showing in what it differs from it. If
assent and inference are each of them the acceptance of a proposition,
but the special characteristic of inference is that it is conditional,
it is natural to suppose that assent is unconditional. Again, if
assent is the acceptance of truth, and truth is the proper object of
the intellect, and no one can hold conditionally what by the same
act he holds to be true, here too is a reason for saying that assent
is an adhesion without reserve or doubt to the proposition to which
it is given. And again, it is to be presumed that the word has not
two meanings: what it has at one time, it has at another. Inference
is always inference; even if demonstrative, it is still conditional;
it establishes an incontrovertible conclusion on the condition of
incontrovertible premisses. To the conclusion thus drawn, assent gives
its absolute recognition. In the case of all demonstrations, assent,
when given, is unconditionally given. In one class of subjects, then,
assent certainly is always unconditional; but if the word stands for
an undoubting and unhesitating act of the mind once, why does it not
denote the same always? what evidence is there that it ever means any
thing else than that which the whole world will unite in witnessing
that it means in certain cases? why are we not to interpret what is
controverted by what is known? This is what is suggested on the first
view of the question; but to continue:—

In demonstrative matters assent excludes the presence of doubt: now
are instances producible, on the other hand, of its ever co-existing
with doubt in cases of the concrete? As the above instances have shown,
on very many questions we do not give an assent at all. What commonly
happens is this, that, after hearing and entering into what may be
said for a proposition, we pronounce neither for nor against it. We
may accept the conclusion as a conclusion, dependent on premisses,
abstract, and tending to the concrete; but we do not follow up our
inference of a proposition by giving an assent to it. That there are
concrete propositions to which we give unconditional assents, I shall
presently show; but I am now asking for instances of conditional, for
instances in which we assent a little and not much. Usually, we do not
assent at all. Every day, as it comes, brings with it opportunities for
us to enlarge our circle of assents. We read the newspapers; we look
through debates in Parliament, pleadings in the law courts, leading
articles, letters of correspondents, reviews of books, criticisms in
the fine arts, and we either form no opinion at all upon the subjects
discussed, as lying out of our line, or at most we have only an opinion
about them. At the utmost we say that we are inclined to believe this
proposition or that, that we are not sure it is not true, that much may
be said for it, that we have been much struck by it; but we never say
that we give it a degree of assent. We might as well talk of degrees of
truth as of degrees of assent.

Yet Locke heads one of his chapters with the title “Degrees of Assent;”
and a writer, of this century, who claims our respect from the tone and
drift of his work, thus expresses himself after Locke’s manner: “Moral
evidence,” he says, “may produce a variety of degrees of assents, from
suspicion to moral certainty. For, here, the degree of assent depends
upon the degree in which the evidence on one side preponderates, or
exceeds that on the other. And as this preponderancy may vary almost
infinitely, so likewise may the degrees of assent. For a few of these
degrees, though but for a few, names have been invented. Thus, when the
evidence on one side preponderates a very little, there is ground for
suspicion, or conjecture. Presumption, persuasion, belief, conclusion,
conviction, moral certainty,—doubt, wavering, distrust, disbelief,—are
words which imply an increase or decrease of this preponderancy. Some
of these words also admit of epithets which denote a further increase
or diminution of the assent.(6)”

Can there be a better illustration than this passage supplies of what I
have been insisting on above, viz. that, in teaching various degrees of
assent, we tend to destroy assent, as an act of the mind, altogether?
This author makes the degrees of assent “infinite,” as the degrees
of probability are infinite. His assents are really only inferences,
and assent is a name without a meaning, the needless repetition of
an inference. But in truth “suspicion, conjecture, presumption,
persuasion, belief, conclusion, conviction, moral certainty,” are
not “assents” at all; they are simply more or less strong inferences
of a proposition; and “doubt, wavering, distrust, disbelief,”
are recognitions, more or less strong, of the probability of its
contradictory.

There is only one sense in which we are allowed to call such acts or
states of mind assents. They are opinions; and, as being such, they
are, as I have already observed, when speaking of Opinion, assents to
the plausibility, probability, doubtfulness, or untrustworthiness, of
a proposition; that is, not variations of assent to an inference, but
assents to a variation in inferences. When I assent to a doubtfulness,
or to a probability, my assent, as such, is as complete as if I
assented to a truth; it is not a certain degree of assent. And, in like
manner, I may be certain of an uncertainty; that does not destroy the
specific notion convened in the word “certain.”

I do not know then when it is that we ever deliberately profess assent
to a proposition without meaning to convey to others the impression
that we accept it unreservedly, and that because it is true. Certainly,
we familiarly use such phrases as a half-assent, as we also speak of
half-truths; but a half-assent is not a kind of assent any more than
a half-truth is a kind of truth. As the object is indivisible, so is
the act. A half-truth is a proposition which in one aspect is a truth,
and in another is not; to give a half-assent is to feel drawn towards
assent, or to assent one moment and not the next, or to be in the way
to assent to it. It means that the proposition in question deserves a
hearing, that it is probable, or attractive, that it opens important
views, that it is a key to perplexing difficulties, or the like.

3. Treating the subject then, not according to _à priori_ fitness,
but according to the facts of human nature, as they are found in the
concrete action of life, I find numberless cases in which we do not
assent at all, none in which assent is evidently conditional;—and many,
as I shall now proceed to show, in which it is unconditional, and
these in subject-matters which admit of nothing higher than probable
reasoning. If human nature is to be its own witness, there is no medium
between assenting and not assenting. Locke’s theory of the duty of
assenting more or less according to degrees of evidence, is invalidated
by the testimony of high and low, young and old, ancient and modern,
as continually given in their ordinary sayings and doings. Indeed, as
I have shown, he does not strictly maintain it himself; yet, though he
feels the claims of nature and fact to be too strong for him in certain
cases, he gives no reason why he should violate his theory in these,
and yet not in many more.

Now let us review some of those assents, which men give on evidence
short of intuition and demonstration, yet which are as unconditional as
if they had that highest evidence.

First of all, starting from intuition, of course we all believe,
without any doubt, that we exist; that we have an individuality and
identity all our own; that we think, feel, and act, in the home of our
own minds; that we have a present sense of good and evil, of a right
and a wrong, of a true and a false, of a beautiful and a hideous,
however we analyze our ideas of them. We have an absolute vision before
us of what happened yesterday or last year, so as to be able without
any chance of mistake to give evidence upon it in a court of justice,
let the consequences be ever so serious. We are sure that of many
things we are ignorant, that of many things we are in doubt, and that
of many things we are not in doubt.

Nor is the assent which we give to facts limited to the range of
self-consciousness. We are sure beyond all hazard of a mistake, that
our own self is not the only being existing; that there is an external
world; that it is a system with parts and a whole, a universe carried
on by laws; and that the future is affected by the past. We accept
and hold with an unqualified assent, that the earth, considered as a
phenomenon, is a globe; that all its regions see the sun by turns; that
there are vast tracts on it of land and water; that there are really
existing cities on definite sites, which go by the names of London,
Paris, Florence, and Madrid. We are sure that Paris or London, unless
swallowed up by an earthquake or burned to the ground, is to-day just
what it was yesterday, when we left it.

We laugh to scorn the idea that we had no parents, though we have no
memory of our birth; that we shall never depart this life, though we
can have no experience of the future; that we are able to live without
food, though we have never tried; that a world of men did not live
before our time, or that that world has had no history; that there has
been no rise and fall of states, no great men, no wars, no revolutions,
no art, no science, no literature, no religion.

We should be either indignant or amused at the report of our intimate
friend being false to us; and we are able sometimes, without any
hesitation, to accuse certain parties of hostility and injustice to us.
We may have a deep consciousness, which we never can lose, that we on
our part have been cruel to others, and that they have felt us to be
so, or that we have been, and have been felt to be, ungenerous to those
who love us. We may have an overpowering sense of our moral weakness,
of the precariousness of our life, health, wealth, position, and good
fortune. We may have a clear view of the weak points of our physical
constitution, of what food or medicine is good for us, and what does
us harm. We may be able to master, at least in part, the course of our
past history; its turning-points, our hits, and our great mistakes. We
may have a sense of the presence of a Supreme Being, which never has
been dimmed by even a passing shadow, which has inhabited us ever since
we can recollect any thing, and which we cannot imagine our losing. We
may be able, for others have been able, so to realize the precepts and
truths of Christianity, as deliberately to surrender our life, rather
than transgress the one or to deny the other.

On all these truths we have an immediate and an unhesitating hold,
nor do we think ourselves guilty of not loving truth for truth’s
sake, because we cannot reach them through a series of intuitive
propositions. Assent on reasonings not demonstrative is too widely
recognized an act to be irrational, unless man’s nature is irrational,
too familiar to the prudent and clear-minded to be an infirmity or
an extravagance. None of us can think or act without the acceptance
of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign. If our
nature has any constitution, any laws, one of them is this absolute
reception of propositions as true, which lie outside the narrow range
of conclusions to which logic, formal or virtual, is tethered; nor has
any philosophical theory the power to force on us a rule which will not
work for a day.

When, then, philosophers lay down principles, on which it follows that
our assent, except when given to objects of intuition or demonstration,
is conditional, that the assent given to propositions by well-ordered
minds necessarily varies with the proof producible for them, and that
it does not and cannot remain one and the same while the proof is
strengthened or weakened,—are they not to be considered as confusing
together two things very distinct from each other, a mental act or
state and a scientific rule, an interior assent and a set of logical
formulas? When they speak of degrees of assent, surely they have no
intention at all of defining the position of the mind itself relative
to the adoption of a given conclusion, but they mean to determine
the relation of that conclusion towards its premisses. They are
contemplating how representative symbols work, not how the intellect is
affected towards the thing which those symbols represent. In real truth
they as little mean to assert the principle of measuring our assents by
our logic, as they would fancy they could record the refreshment which
we receive from the open air by the readings of the graduated scale
of a thermometer. There is a connexion doubtless between a logical
conclusion and an assent, as there is between the variation of the
mercury and our sensations; but the mercury is not the cause of life
and health, nor is verbal argumentation the principle of inward belief.
If we feel hot or chilly, no one will convince us to the contrary
by insisting that the glass is at 60°. It is the mind that reasons
and assents, not a diagram on paper. I may have difficulty in the
management of a proof, while I remain unshaken in my adherence to the
conclusion. Supposing a boy cannot make his answer to some arithmetical
or algebraical question tally with the book, need he at once distrust
the book? Does his trust in it fall down a certain number of degrees,
according to the force of his difficulty? On the contrary, he keeps to
the principle, implicit but present to his mind, with which he took up
the book, that the book is more likely to be right than he is; and this
mere preponderance of probability is sufficient to make him faithful
to his belief in its correctness, till its incorrectness is actually
proved.

My own opinion is, that the class of writers of whom I have been
speaking, have themselves as little misgiving about the truths which
they pretend to weigh out and measure, as their unsophisticated
neighbours; but they think it a duty to remind us, that since the full
etiquette of logical requirements has not been satisfied, we must
believe those truths at our peril. They warn us, that an issue which
can never come to pass in matter of fact, is nevertheless in theory a
possible supposition. They do not, for instance, intend for a moment
to imply that there is even the shadow of a doubt that Great Britain
is an island, but they think we ought to know, if we do not know, that
there is no proof of the fact, in mode and figure, equal to the proof
of a proposition of Euclid; and that in consequence they and we are all
bound to suspend our judgment about such a fact, though it be in an
infinitesimal degree, lest we should seem not to love truth for truth’s
sake. Having made their protest, they subside without scruple into
that same absolute assurance of only partially-proved truths, which is
natural to the illogical imagination of the multitude.

4. It remains to explain some conversational expressions, at first
sight favourable to that doctrine of degrees in assent, which I have
been combating.

(1.) We often speak of giving a modified and qualified, or a
presumptive and _primâ facie_ assent, or (as I have already said) a
half-assent to opinions or facts; but these expressions admit of an
easy explanation. Assent, upon the authority of others is often, as I
have noticed, when speaking of notional assents, little more than a
profession or acquiescence or inference, not a real acceptance of a
proposition. I report, for instance, that there was a serious fire in
the town in the past night; and then perhaps I add, that at least the
morning papers say so;—that is, I have perhaps no positive doubt of
the fact; still, by referring to the newspapers I imply that I do not
take on myself the responsibility of the statement. In thus qualifying
my apparent assent, I show that it was not a genuine assent at all.
In like manner a _primâ facie_ assent is an assent to an antecedent
probability of a fact, not to the fact itself; as I might give a _primâ
facie_ assent to the Plurality of worlds or to the personality of
Homer, without pledging myself to either absolutely. “Half-assent,”
of which I spoke above, is an inclination to assent, or again, an
intention of assenting, when certain difficulties are surmounted. When
we speak without thought, assent has as vague a meaning as half-assent;
but when we deliberately say, “I assent,” we signify an act of the mind
so definite, as to admit of no change but that of its ceasing to be.

(2.) And so, too, though we sometimes use the phrase “conditional
assent,” yet we only mean thereby to say that we will assent under
certain contingencies. Of course we may, if we please, include a
condition in the proposition to which our assent is given; and then,
that condition enters into the matter of the assent, but not into the
assent itself. To assent to—“If this man is in a consumption, his
days are numbered,”—is as little a conditional assent, as to assent
to—“Of this consumptive patient the days are numbered,”—which, (though
without the conditional form,) is an equivalent proposition. In such
cases, strictly speaking, the assent is given neither to antecedent
nor consequent of the conditional proposition, but to their connexion,
that is, to the enthymematic _inferentia_. If we place the condition
external to the proposition, then the assent will be given to “That
‘his days are numbered’ is conditionally true;” and of course we
can assent to the conditionality of a proposition as well as to its
probability. Or again, if so be, we may give our assent not only to
the _inferentia_ in a complex conditional proposition, but to each of
the simple propositions, of which it is made up, besides. “There will
be a storm soon, for the mercury falls;”—here, besides assenting to
the connexion of the propositions, we may assent also to “The mercury
falls,” and to “There will be a storm.” This is assenting to the
premiss, _inferentia_, and thing inferred, all at once;—we assent to
the whole syllogism, and to its component parts.

(3.) In like manner are to be explained the phrases, “deliberate
assent,” a “rational assent;” a “sudden,” “impulsive,” or “hesitating”
assent. These expressions denote, not kinds or qualities, but the
circumstances of assenting. A deliberate assent is an assent following
upon deliberation. It is sometimes called a conviction, a word which
commonly includes in its meaning two acts, both the act of inference,
and the act of assent consequent upon the inference. This subject will
be considered in the next Section. On the other hand, a hesitating
assent is an assent to which we have been slow and intermittent in
coming; or an assent which, when given, is thwarted and obscured by
external and flitting misgivings, though not such as to enter into the
act itself, or essentially to damage it.

There is another sense in which we speak of a hesitating or uncertain
assent; viz. when we assent in act, but not in the habit of our minds.
Till assent to a doctrine or fact is my habit, I am at the mercy of
inferences contrary to it; I assent to-day, and give up my belief, or
incline to disbelief, to-morrow. I may find it my duty, for instance,
after the opportunity of careful inquiry and inference, to assent to
another’s innocence, whom I have for years considered guilty; but from
long prejudice I may be unable to carry my new assent well about me,
and may every now and then relapse into momentary thoughts injurious to
him.

(4.) A more plausible objection to the absolute absence of all doubt or
misgiving in an act of assent is found in the use of the terms firm and
weak assent, or in the growth of belief and trust. Thus, we assent to
the events of history, but not with that fulness and force of adherence
to the received account of them with which we realize a record of
occurrences which are within our own memory. And again, we assent
to the praise bestowed on a friend’s good qualities with an energy
which we do not feel, when we are speaking of virtue in the abstract:
and if we are political partisans, our assent is very cold, when we
cannot refuse it, to representations made in favour of the wisdom or
patriotism of statesmen whom we dislike. And then as to religious
subjects we speak of “strong” faith and “feeble” faith; of the faith
which would move mountains, and of the ordinary faith “without which it
is impossible to please God.” And as we can grow in graces, so surely
can we inclusively in faith. Again we rise from one work of Christian
Evidences with our faith enlivened and invigorated; from another
perhaps with the distracted father’s words in our mouth, “I believe,
help my unbelief.”

Now it is evident, first of all, that habits of mind may grow, as being
a something permanent and continuous; and by assent growing, it is
often only meant that the habit grows and has greater hold upon the
mind.

But again, when we carefully consider the matter, it will be found
that this increase or decrease of strength does not lie in the assent
itself, but in its circumstances and concomitants; for instance, in the
emotions, in the ratiocinative faculty, or in the imagination.

For instance, as to the emotions, this strength of assent may be
nothing more than the strength of love, hatred, interest, desire, or
fear, which the object of the assent elicits, and this is especially
the case when that object is of a religious nature. Such strength is
adventitious and accidental; it may come, it may go; it is found in one
man, not in another; it does not interfere with the genuineness and
perfection of the act of assent. Balaam assented to the fact of his
own intercourse with the supernatural, as well as Moses; but, to use
religious language, he had light without love; his intellect was clear,
his heart was cold. Hence his faith would popularly be considered
wanting in strength. On the other hand, prejudice implies strong
assents to the disadvantage of its object; that is, it encourages such
assents, and guards them from the chance of being lost.

Again, when a conclusion is recommended to us by the number and force
of the arguments in proof of it, our recognition of them invests it
with a luminousness, which in one sense adds strength to our assent
to it, as it certainly does protect and embolden that assent. Thus
we assent to a review of recent events, which we have studied from
original documents, with a triumphant peremptoriness which it neither
occurs to us, nor is possible for us, to exercise, when we make an act
of assent to the assassination of Julius Caesar, or to the existence of
the Abipones, though we are as securely certain of these latter facts
as of the doings and occurrences of yesterday.

And further, all that I have said about the apprehension of
propositions is in point here. We may speak of assent to our Lord’s
divinity as strong or feeble, according as it is given to the
reality as impressed upon the imagination, or to the notion of it as
entertained by the intellect.

(5.) Nor, lastly, does this doctrine of the intrinsic integrity and
indivisibility (if I may so speak) of assent interfere with the
teaching of Catholic theology as to the pre-eminence of strength in
divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all
belief which is merely human and natural. For first, that pre-eminence
consists, not in its differing from human faith, merely in degree
of assent, but in its being superior in nature and kind,(7) so that
the one does not admit of a comparison with the other; and next, its
intrinsic superiority is not a matter of experience, but is above
experience.(8) Assent is ever assent;(9) but in the assent which
follows on a divine announcement, and is vivified by a divine grace,
there is, from the nature of the case, a transcendant adhesion of mind,
intellectual and moral, and a special self-protection,(10) beyond the
operation of those ordinary laws of thought, which alone have a place
in my discussion.


§ 2. Complex Assent.


I have been considering assent as the mental assertion of an
intelligible proposition, as an act of the intellect direct, absolute,
complete in itself, unconditional, arbitrary, yet not incompatible
with an appeal to argument, and at least in many cases exercised
unconsciously. On this last characteristic of assent I have not dwelt,
as it has not come in my way; nor is it more than an accident of
acts of assent, though an ordinary accident. That it is of ordinary
occurrence cannot be doubted. A great many of our assents are merely
expressions of our personal likings, tastes, principles, motives,
and opinions, as dictated by nature, or resulting from habit; in
other words, they are acts and manifestations of self: now what is
more rare than self-knowledge? In proportion then to our ignorance
of self, is our unconsciousness of those innumerable acts of assent,
which we are incessantly making. And so again in what may be almost
called the mechanical operation of our minds, in our continual acts of
apprehension and inference, speculation, and resolve, propositions pass
before us and receive our assent without our consciousness. Hence it
is that we are so apt to confuse together acts of assent and acts of
inference. Indeed, I may fairly say, that those assents which we give
with a direct knowledge of what we are doing, are few compared with the
multitude of like acts which pass through our minds in long succession
without our observing them.

That mode of assent which is exercised thus unconsciously, I may call
simple assent, and of it I have treated in the foregoing Section; but
now I am going to speak of such assents as must be made consciously and
deliberately, and which I shall call complex or reflex assents. And I
begin by recalling what I have already stated about the relation in
which Assent and Inference stand to each other,—Inference, which holds
propositions conditionally, and Assent, which unconditionally accepts
them; the relation is this:—

Acts of inference are both the antecedents of assent before
assenting, and its usual concomitants after assenting. For instance,
I hold absolutely that the country which we call India exists, upon
trustworthy testimony; and next, I may continue to believe it on the
same testimony. In like manner, I have ever believed that Great Britain
is an island, for certain sufficient reasons; and on the same reasons I
may persist in the belief. But it may happen that I forget my reasons
for what I believe to be so absolutely true; or I may never have asked
myself about them, or formally marshalled them in order, and have been
accustomed to assent without a recognition of my assent or of its
grounds, and then perhaps something occurs which leads to my reviewing
and completing those grounds, analyzing and arranging them, yet without
on that account implying of necessity any suspense, ever so slight,
of assent, to the proposition that India is in a certain part of the
earth, and that Great Britain is an island. With no suspense of assent
at all; any more than the boy in my former illustration had any doubt
about the answer set down in his arithmetic-book, when he began working
out the question; any more than he would be doubting his eyes and his
common sense, that the two sides of a triangle are together greater
than the third, because he drew out the geometrical proof of it. He
does but repeat, after his formal demonstration, that assent which he
made before it, and assents to his previous assenting. This is what I
call a reflex or complex assent.

I say, there is no necessary incompatibility between thus assenting and
yet proving,—for the conclusiveness of a proposition is not synonymous
with its truth. A proposition may be true, yet not admit of being
concluded;—it may be a conclusion and yet not a truth. To contemplate
it under one aspect, is not to contemplate it under another; and the
two aspects may be consistent, from the very fact that they are two
_aspects_. Therefore to set about concluding a proposition is not _ipso
facto_ to doubt its truth; we may aim at inferring a proposition,
while all the time we assent to it. We have to do this as a common
occurrence, when we take on ourselves to convince another on any point
in which he differs from us. We do not deny our faith, because we
become controversialists; and in like manner we may employ ourselves in
proving what we believe to be true, simply in order to ascertain the
producible evidence in its favour, and in order to fulfil what is due
to ourselves and to the claims and responsibilities of our education
and social position.

I have been speaking of investigation, not of inquiry; it is quite true
that inquiry is inconsistent with assent, but inquiry is something more
than the mere exercise of inference. He who inquires has not found; he
is in doubt where the truth lies, and wishes his present profession
either proved or disproved. We cannot without absurdity call ourselves
at once believers and inquirers also. Thus it is sometimes spoken
of as a hardship that a Catholic is not allowed to inquire into the
truth of his Creed;—of course he cannot, if he would retain the name
of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside of the Church at
once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he is seeking,
he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting excludes
believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring, thereby declares
that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith. And this is
his best defence to himself for inquiring, viz. that he is no longer
a Catholic, and wishes to become one. They who would forbid him to
inquire, would in that case be shutting the stable-door after the steed
is stolen. What can he do better than inquire, if he is in doubt? how
else can he become a Catholic again? Not to inquire is in his case to
be satisfied with disbelief.

However, in thus speaking, I am viewing the matter in the abstract, and
without allowing for the manifold inconsistencies of individuals, as
they are found in the world, who attempt to unite incompatibilities;
who do not doubt, but who act as if they did; who, though they believe,
are weak in faith, and put themselves in the way of losing it by
unnecessarily listening to objections. Moreover, there are minds,
undoubtedly, with whom at all times to question a truth is to make
it questionable, and to investigate is equivalent to inquiring; and
again, there may be beliefs so sacred or so delicate, that, if I may
use the metaphor, they will not wash without shrinking and losing
colour. I grant all this; but here I am discussing broad principles,
not individual cases; and these principles are, that inquiry implies
doubt, and that investigation does not imply it, and that those who
assent to a doctrine or fact may without inconsistency investigate its
credibility, though they cannot literally inquire about its truth.

Next, I consider that, in the case of educated minds, investigations
into the argumentative proof of the things to which they have given
their assent, is an obligation, or rather a necessity. Such a trial of
their intellects is a law of their nature, like the growth of childhood
into manhood, and analogous to the moral ordeal which is the instrument
of their spiritual life. The lessons of right and wrong, which are
taught them at school, are to be carried out into action amid the
good and evil of the world; and so again the intellectual assents, in
which they have in like manner been instructed from the first, have
to be tested, realized, and developed by the exercise of their mature
judgment.

Certainly, such processes of investigation, whether in religious
subjects or secular, often issue in the reversal of the assents which
they were originally intended to confirm; as the boy who works out an
arithmetical problem from his book may end in detecting, or thinking
he detects, a false print in the answer. But the question before us
is whether acts of assent and of inference are compatible; and my
vague consciousness of the possibility of a reversal of my belief in
the course of my researches, as little interferes with the honesty
and firmness of that belief while those researches proceed, as the
recognition of the possibility of my train’s oversetting is an evidence
of an intention on my part of undergoing so great a calamity. My mind
is not moved by a scientific computation of chances, nor can any law of
averages affect my particular case. To incur a risk is not to expect
reverse; and if my opinions are true, I have a right to think that
they will bear examining. Nor, on the other hand, does belief, viewed
in its idea, imply a positive resolution in the party believing never
to abandon that belief. What belief, as such, does imply is, not an
intention never to change, but the utter absence of all thought, or
expectation, or fear of changing. A spontaneous resolution never to
change is inconsistent with the idea of belief; for the very force and
absoluteness of the act of assent precludes any such resolution. We do
not commonly determine not to do what we cannot fancy ourselves ever
doing. We should readily indeed make such a formal promise if we were
called upon to do so; for, since we have the truth, and truth cannot
change, how can we possibly change in our belief, except indeed through
our own weakness or fickleness? We have no intention whatever of being
weak or fickle; so our promise is but the natural guarantee of our
sincerity. It is possible then, without disloyalty to our convictions,
to examine their grounds, even though in the event they are to fail
under the examination, for we have no suspicion of this failure.

And such examination, as I have said, does but fulfil a law of our
nature. Our first assents, right or wrong, are often little more than
prejudices. The reasonings, which precede and accompany them, though
sufficient for their purpose, do not rise up to the importance and
energy of the assents themselves. As time goes on, by degrees and
without set purpose, by reflection and experience, we begin to confirm
or to correct the notions and the images to which those assents are
given. At times it is a necessity formally to undertake a survey and
revision of this or that class of them, of those which relate to
religion, or to social duty, or to politics, or to the conduct of
life. Sometimes this review begins in doubt as to the matters which we
propose to consider, that is, in a suspension of the assents hitherto
familiar to us; sometimes those assents are too strong to allow of
being lost on the first stirring of the inquisitive intellect, and if,
as time goes on, they give way, our change of mind, be it for good
or for evil, is owing to the accumulating force of the arguments,
sound or unsound, which bear down upon the propositions which we have
hitherto received. Objections, indeed, as such, have no direct force to
weaken assent; but, when they multiply, they tell against the implicit
reasonings or the formal inferences which are its warrant, and suspend
its acts and gradually undermine its habit. Then the assent goes; but
whether slowly or suddenly, noticeably or imperceptibly, is a matter
of circumstance or accident. However, whether the original assent is
continued on or not, the new assent differs from the old in this, that
it has the strength of explicitness and deliberation, that it is not
a mere prejudice, and its strength the strength of prejudice. It is
an assent, not only to a given proposition, but to the claim of that
proposition on our assent as true; it is an assent to an assent, or
what is commonly called a conviction.

Of course these reflex acts may be repeated in a series. As I
pronounce that “Great Britain is an island,” and then pronounce “That
‘Great Britain is an island’ has a claim on my assent,” or is to
“be assented-to,” or to be “accepted as true,” or to be “believed,”
or simply “is true” (these predicates being equivalent), so I may
proceed, “The proposition ‘that _Great-Britain-is-an-island_ is to be
believed,’ is to be believed,” &c., &c., and so on to _ad infinitum_.
But this would be trifling. The mind is like a double mirror, in
which reflexions of self within self multiply themselves till they
are undistinguishable, and the first reflexion contains all the
rest. At the same time, it is worth while to notice two other reflex
propositions:—“That ‘Great Britain is an island’ is probable” is
true;—and “That ‘Great Britain is an island’ is uncertain” is true:—for
the former of these is the expression of Opinion, and the latter of
formal or theological Doubt, as I have already determined.

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I have one step farther to make:—let the proposition to which the
assent is given be as absolutely true as the reflex act pronounces it
to be, that is, objectively true as well as subjectively:—then the
assent may be called a _perception_, the conviction a _certitude_, the
proposition or truth a _certainty_, or thing known, or a matter of
_knowledge_, and to assent to it is to _know_.

Of course, in thus speaking, I open the all-important question, what
is truth, and what apparent truth? what is genuine knowledge, and what
is its counterfeit? what are the tests for discriminating certitude
from mere persuasion or delusion? Whatever a man holds to be true,
he will say he holds for certain; and for the present I must allow
him in his assumption, hoping in one way or another, as I proceed, to
lessen the difficulties which lie in the way of calling him to account
for so doing. And I have the less scruple in taking this course, as
believing that, among fairly prudent and circumspect men, there are
far fewer instances of false certitude than at first sight might be
supposed. Men are often doubtful about propositions which are really
true; they are not commonly certain of such as are simply false. What
they judge to be a certainty is in matter of fact for the most part
a truth. Not that there is not a great deal of rash talking even
among the educated portion of the community, and many a man makes
professions of certitude, for which he has no warrant; but that such
off-hand, confident language is no token how these persons will express
themselves when brought to book. No one will with justice consider
himself certain of any matter, unless he has sufficient reasons for so
considering; and it is rare that what is not true should be so free
from every circumstance and token of falsity as to create no suspicion
in his mind to its disadvantage, no reason for suspense of judgment.

However, I shall have to remark on this difficulty by and by; here
I will mention two conditions of certitude, in close connexion with
that necessary preliminary of investigation and proof of which I have
been speaking, which will throw some light upon it. The one, which is
_à priori_, or from the nature of the case, will tell us what is not
certitude; the other, which is _à posteriori_, or from experience, will
tell us in a measure what certitude is.

1. Certitude, as I have said, is the perception of a truth with the
perception that it is a truth, or the consciousness of knowing, as
expressed in the phrase, “I know that I know,” or “I know that I know
that I know,”—or simply “I know;” for one reflex assertion of the mind
about self sums up the series of self-consciousnesses without the need
of any actual evolution of them.

Certitude is the knowledge of a truth:—but what is once true is always
true, and cannot fail, whereas what is once known need not always be
known, and is capable of failing. It follows, that if I am certain
of a thing, I believe it will remain what I now hold it to be, even
though my mind should have the bad fortune to let it drop. Since mere
argument is not the measure of assent, no one can be called certain of
a proposition, whose mind does not spontaneously and promptly reject,
on their first suggestion, as idle, as impertinent, as sophistical, any
objections which are directed against its truth. No man is certain of
a truth, who can endure the thought of the fact of its contradictory
existing or occurring; and that not from any set purpose or effort to
reject that thought, but, as I have said, by the spontaneous action of
the intellect. What is contradictory to the truth, with its apparatus
of argument, fades out of the mind as fast as it enters it; and though
it be brought back to the mind ever so often by the pertinacity of an
opponent, or by a voluntary or involuntary act of imagination, still
that contradictory proposition and its arguments are mere phantoms and
dreams, in the light of our certitude, and their very entering into the
mind is the first step of their going out of it. Such is the position
of our minds towards the heathen fancy that Enceladus lies under
Etna; or, not to take so extreme a case, that Joanna Southcote was a
messenger from heaven, or the Emperor Napoleon really had a star. Equal
to this peremptory assertion of negative propositions is the revolt
of the mind from suppositions incompatible with positive statements
of which we are certain, whether abstract truths or facts; as that a
straight line is the longest possible distance between its two extreme
points, that Great Britain is in shape an exact square or circle, that
I shall escape dying, or that my intimate friend is false to me.

We may indeed say, if we please, that a man ought not to have so
supreme a conviction in a given case, or in any case whatever; and
that he is therefore wrong in treating opinions which he does not
himself hold, with this even involuntary contempt;—certainly, we
have a right to say so, if we will; but if, in matter of fact, a man
has such a conviction, if he is sure that Ireland is to the West of
England, or that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, nothing is left to
him, if he would be consistent, but to carry his conviction out into
this magisterial intolerance of any contrary assertion; and if he
were in his own mind tolerant, I do not say patient (for patience and
gentleness are moral duties, but I mean intellectually tolerant), of
objections as objections, he would virtually be giving countenance
to the views which those objections represented. I say I certainly
should be very intolerant of such a notion as that I shall one day
be Emperor of the French; I should think it too absurd even to be
ridiculous, and that I must be mad before I could entertain it. And
did a man try to persuade me that treachery, cruelty, or ingratitude
were as praiseworthy as honesty and temperance, and that a man who
lived the life of a knave and died the death of a brute had nothing to
fear from future retribution, I should think there was no call on me
to listen to his arguments, except with the hope of converting him,
though he called me a bigot and a coward for refusing to inquire into
his speculations. And if, in a matter in which my temporal interests
were concerned, he attempted to reconcile me to fraudulent acts by what
he called philosophical views, I should say to him, “Retro Satana,”
and that, not from any suspicion of his ability to reverse immutable
principles, but from a consciousness of my own moral changeableness,
and a fear, on that account, that I might not be intellectually true
to the truth. This, then, from the nature of the case, is a main
characteristic of certitude in any matter, to be confident indeed that
that certitude will last, but to be confident of this also, that, if it
did fail, nevertheless, the thing itself, whatever it is, of which we
are certain, will remain just as it is, true and irreversible. If this
be so, it is easy to instance cases of an adherence to propositions,
which does not fulfil the conditions of certitude; for instance:—

(1.) How positive and circumstantial disputants may be on both sides
of a question of fact, on which they give their evidence, till they
are called to swear to it, and then how guarded and conditional their
testimony becomes! Again, how confident are they in their rival
accounts of a transaction at which they were present, till a third
person makes his appearance, whose word will be decisive about it!
Then they suddenly drop their tone, and trim their statements, and by
provisos and explanations leave themselves loopholes for escape, in
case his testimony should turn out to their disadvantage. At first no
language could be too bold or absolute to express the distinctness of
their knowledge on this side or that; but second thoughts are best, and
their giving way shows that their belief does not come up to the mark
of certitude.

(2.) Again, can we doubt that many a confident expounder of Scripture,
who is so sure that St. Paul meant this, and that St. John and St.
James did not mean that, would be seriously disconcerted at the
presence of those Apostles, if their presence were possible, and that
they have now an especial “boldness of speech” in treating their
subject, because there is no one authoritatively to set them right, if
they are wrong?

(3.) Take another instance, in which the absence of certitude is
professed from the first. Though it is a matter of faith with Catholics
that miracles never cease in the Church, still that this or that
professed miracle really took place, is for the most part only a matter
of opinion, and when it is believed, whether on testimony or tradition,
it is not believed to the exclusion of all doubt, whether about the
fact or its miraculousness. Thus I may believe in the liquefaction of
St. Pantaleon’s blood, and believe it to the best of my judgment to
be a miracle, yet, supposing a chemist offered to produce exactly the
same phenomena under exactly similar circumstances by the materials
put at his command by his science, so as to reduce what seemed beyond
nature within natural laws, I should watch with some suspense of mind
and misgiving the course of his experiment, as having no Divine Word
to fall back upon as a ground of certainty that the liquefaction was
miraculous.

(4.) Take another virtual exhibition of fear; I mean irritation and
impatience of contradiction, vehemence of assertion, determination
to silence others,—these are the tokens of a mind which has not yet
attained the tranquil enjoyment of certitude. No one, I suppose, would
say that he was certain of the Plurality of worlds: that uncertitude
on the subject is just the explanation, and the only explanation
satisfactory to my mind, of the strange violence of language which has
before now dishonoured the philosophical controversy upon it. Those who
are certain of a fact are indolent disputants; it is enough for them
that they have the truth; and they have little disposition, except at
the call of duty, to criticize the hallucinations of others, and much
less are they angry at their positiveness or ingenuity in argument;
but to call names, to impute motives, to accuse of sophistry, to be
impetuous and overbearing, is the part of men who are alarmed for their
own position, and fear to have it approached too nearly. And in like
manner the intemperance of language and of thought, which is sometimes
found in converts to a religious creed, is often attributed, not
without plausibility (even though erroneously in the particular case),
to some flaw in the completeness of their certitude, which interferes
with the harmony and repose of their convictions.

(5.) Again, this intellectual anxiety, which is incompatible with
certitude, shows itself in our running back in our minds to the
arguments on which we came to believe, in not letting our conclusions
alone, in going over and strengthening the evidence, and, as it were,
getting it by heart, as if our highest assent were only an inference.
And such too is our unnecessarily declaring that we are certain, as if
to reassure ourselves, and our appealing to others for their suffrage
in behalf of the truths of which we are so sure; which is like our
asking another whether we are weary and hungry, or have eaten and drunk
to our satisfaction.

All laws are general; none are invariable; I am not writing as a
moralist or casuist. It must ever be recollected that these various
phenomena of mind, though signs, are not infallible signs of
uncertitude; they may proceed, in the particular case, from other
circumstances. Such anxieties and alarms may be merely emotional
and from the imagination, not intellectual; parallel to the beating
of the heart, nay, as I have been told, the trembling of the limbs,
of even the bravest men, before a battle, when standing still to
receive the first attack of the enemy. Such too is that palpitating
self-interrogation, that trouble of the mind lest it should not believe
strongly enough, which, and not doubt, underlies the sensitiveness
described in the well-known lines,—


    “With eyes too tremblingly awake,
    To bear with dimness for His sake.”


And so again, a man’s over-earnestness in argument may arise from zeal
or charity; his impatience from loyalty to the truth; his extravagance
from want of taste, from enthusiasm, or from youthful ardour; and his
restless recurrence to argument, not from personal disquiet, but from
a vivid appreciation of the controversial talent of an opponent, or
of his own, or of the mere philosophical difficulties of the subject
in dispute. These are points for the consideration of those who
are concerned in registering and explaining what may be called the
meteorological phenomena of the human mind, and do not interfere with
the broad principle which I would lay down, that to fear argument is to
doubt the conclusion, and to be certain of a truth is to be careless of
objections to it;—nor with the practical rule, that mere assent is not
certitude, and must not be confused with it.

2. Now to consider what Certitude positively is, as a matter of
experience.

It is accompanied, as a state of mind, by a specific feeling, proper to
it, and discriminating it from other states, intellectual and moral, I
do not say, as its practical test or as its _differentia_, but as its
token, and in a certain sense its form. When a man says he is certain,
he means he is conscious to himself of having this specific feeling.
It is a feeling of satisfaction and self-gratulation, of intellectual
security, arising out of a sense of success, attainment, possession,
finality, as regards the matter which has been in question. As a
conscientious deed is attended by a self-approval which nothing but
itself can create, so certitude is united to a sentiment _sui generis_
in which it lives and is manifested. These two parallel sentiments
indeed have no relationship with each other, the enjoyable self-repose
of certitude being as foreign to a good deed, as the self-approving
glow of conscience is to the perception of a truth; yet knowledge,
as well as virtue, is an end, and both knowledge and virtue, when
reflected on, carry with them respectively their own reward in the
characteristic sentiment, which, as I have said, is proper to each.
And, as the performance of what is right is distinguished by this
religious peace, so the attainment of what is true is attested by this
intellectual security.

And, as the feeling of self-approbation, which is proper to good
conduct, does not belong to the sense or to the possession of the
beautiful or of the becoming, of the pleasant or of the useful, so
neither is the special relaxation and repose of mind, which is the
token of Certitude, ever found to attend upon simple Assent, on
processes of Inference, or on Doubt; nor on investigation, conjecture,
opinion, as such, or on any other state or action of mind, besides
Certitude. On the contrary, those acts and states of mind have
gratifications proper to themselves, and unlike that of Certitude, as
will sufficiently appear on considering them separately.

(1.) Philosophers are fond of enlarging on the pleasures of Knowledge,
(that is, Knowledge as such,) nor need I here prove that such pleasures
exist; but the repose in self and in its object, as connected with
self, which I attribute to Certitude, does not attach to mere knowing,
that is, to the perception of things, but to the consciousness of
having that knowledge. The simple and direct perception of things has
its own great satisfaction; but it must recognize them as realities,
and recognize them as known, before it becomes the perception and has
the satisfaction of certitude. Indeed, as far as I see, the pleasure
of perceiving truth without reflecting on it as truth, is not very
different, except in intensity and in dignity, from the pleasure, as
such, of assent or belief given to what is not true, nay, from the
pleasure of the mere passive reception of recitals or narratives, which
neither profess to be true nor claim to be believed. Representations
of any kind are in their own nature pleasurable, whether they be true
or not, whether they come to us, or do not come, as true. We read
a history, or a biographical notice, with pleasure; and we read a
romance with pleasure; and a pleasure which is quite apart from the
question of fact or fiction. Indeed, when we would persuade young
people to read history, we tell them that it is as interesting as a
romance or a novel. The mere acquisition of new images, and those
images striking, great, various, unexpected, beautiful, with mutual
relations and bearings, as being parts of a whole, with continuity,
succession, evolution, with recurring complications and corresponding
solutions, with a crisis and a catastrophe, is highly pleasurable,
quite independently of the question whether there is any truth in them.
I am not denying that we should be baulked and disappointed to be told
they were all untrue, but this seems to arise from the reflection
that we have been taken in; not as if the fact of their truth were a
distinct element of pleasure, though it would increase the pleasure, as
investing them with a character of marvellousness, and as associating
them with known or ascertained places. But even if the pleasure of
knowledge is not thus founded on the imagination, at least it does not
consist in that triumphant repose of the mind after a struggle, which
is the characteristic of Certitude.

And so too as to such statements as gain from us a half-assent,
as superstitious tales, stories of magic, of romantic crime, of
ghosts, or such as we follow for the moment with a faint and languid
assent,—contemporary history, political occurrences, the news of the
day,—the pleasure resulting from these is that of novelty or curiosity,
and is like the pleasure arising from the excitement of chance and from
variety; it has in it no sense of possession: it is simply external to
us, and has nothing akin to the thought of a battle and a victory.

(2.) Again, the Pursuit of knowledge has its own pleasure,—as distinct
from the pleasures of knowledge, as it is distinct from that of
consciously possessing it. This will be evident at once, if we consider
what a vacuity and depression of mind sometimes comes upon us on the
termination of an inquiry, however successfully terminated, compared
with the interest and spirit with which we carried it on. The pleasure
of a search, like that of a hunt, lies in the searching, and ends at
the point at which the pleasure of Certitude begins. Its elements are
altogether foreign to those which go to compose the serene satisfaction
of Certitude. First, the successive steps of discovery, which attend
on an investigation, are continual and ever-extending informations,
and pleasurable, not only as such, but also as the evidence of past
efforts, and the earnest of success at the last. Next, there is the
interest which attaches to a mystery, not yet removed, but tending to
removal,—the complex pleasure of wonder, expectation, sudden surprises,
suspense, and hope, of advances fitful, yet sure, to the unknown. And
there is the pleasure which attaches to the toil and conflict of the
strong, the consciousness and successive evidences of power, moral and
intellectual, the pride of ingenuity and skill, of industry, patience,
vigilance, and perseverance.

Such are the pleasures of investigation and discovery; and to these
we must add, what I have suggested in the last sentence, the logical
satisfaction, as it may be called, which accompanies these efforts of
mind. There is great pleasure, as is plain, at least to certain minds,
in proceeding from particular facts to principles, in generalizing,
discriminating, reducing into order and meaning the maze of phenomena
which nature presents to us. This is the kind of pleasure attendant
on the treatment of probabilities which point at conclusions without
reaching them, or of objections which must be weighed and measured,
and adjusted for what they are worth, over and against propositions
which are antecedently evident. It is the special pleasure belonging
to Inference as contrasted with Assent, a pleasure almost poetical, as
twilight has more poetry in it than noon-day. Such is the joy of the
pleader, with a good case in hand, and expecting the separate attacks
of half a dozen acute intellects, each advancing from a point of his
own. I suppose this was the pleasure which the Academics had in mind,
when they propounded that happiness lay, not in finding the truth,
but in seeking it. To seek, indeed, with the certainty of not finding
what we seek, cannot in any serious matter, be pleasurable, any more
than the labour of Sisyphus or the Danaides; but when the result does
not concern us very much, clever arguments and rival ones have the
attraction of a game of chance or skill, whether or not they lead to
any definite conclusion.

(3.) Are there pleasures of Doubt, as well as of Inference and of
Assent? In one sense, there are. Not indeed, if doubt simply means
ignorance, uncertainty, or hopeless suspense; but there is a certain
grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotence to
solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its
own. After high aspirations, after renewed endeavours, after bootless
toil, after long wanderings, after hope, effort, weariness, failure,
painfully alternating and recurring, it is an immense relief to the
exhausted mind to be able to say, “At length I know that I can know
nothing about any thing,”—that is, while it can maintain itself in a
posture of thought which has no promise of permanence, because it is
unnatural. But here the satisfaction does not lie in not knowing, but
in knowing there is nothing to know. It is a positive act of assent
or conviction, given to what in the particular case is an untruth.
It is the assent and the false certitude which are the cause of the
tranquillity of mind. Ignorance remains the evil which it ever was, but
something of the peace of Certitude is gained in knowing the worst, and
in having reconciled the mind to the endurance of it.

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I may seem to have been needlessly diffuse in thus dwelling on the
pleasurable affections severally attending on these various conditions
of the intellect, but I have had a purpose in doing so. That Certitude
is a natural and normal state of mind, and not (as is sometimes
objected) one of its extravagances or infirmities, is proved indeed
by the remarks which I have made above on the same objection, as
directed against Assent; for Certitude is only one of its forms. But
I have thought it well in addition to suggest, even at the expense
of a digression, that as no one would refuse to Inquiry, Doubt, and
Knowledge a legitimate place among our mental constituents, so no one
can reasonably ignore a state of mind which not only is shown to be
substantive by possessing a sentiment _sui generis_ and characteristic,
but is analogical to Inquiry, Doubt, and Knowledge, in the fact of its
thus having a sentiment of its own.




Chapter VII. Certitude.


§ 1. Assent and Certitude Contrasted.


In proceeding to compare together simple assent and complex, that
is, Assent and Certitude, I begin by observing, that popularly no
distinction is made between the two; or rather, that in religious
teaching that is called Certitude to which I have given the name of
Assent. I have no difficulty in adopting such a use of the words,
though the course of my investigation has led me to another. Perhaps
religious assent may be fitly called, to use a theological term,
“material certitude;” and the first point of comparison which I shall
make between the two states of mind, will serve to set me right with
the common way of speaking.

1. It certainly follows then, from the distinctions which I have made,
that great numbers of men must be considered to pass through life with
neither doubt nor, on the other hand, certitude (as I have used the
words) on the most important propositions which can occupy their minds,
but with only a simple assent, that is, an assent which they barely
recognize, or bring home to their consciousness or reflect upon, as
being assent. Such an assent is all that religious Protestants commonly
have to show, who believe nevertheless with their whole hearts the
contents of Holy Scripture. Such too is the state of mind of multitudes
of good Catholics, perhaps the majority, who live and die in a simple,
full, firm belief in all that the Church teaches, because she teaches
it,—in the belief of the irreversible truth of whatever she defines
and declares,—but who, as being far removed from Protestant and other
dissentients, and having but little intellectual training, have never
had the temptation to doubt, and never the opportunity to be certain.
There were whole nations in the middle ages thus steeped in the
Catholic Faith, who never used its doctrines as matter for argument
or research, or changed the original belief of their childhood into
the more scientific convictions of philosophy. As there is a condition
of mind which is characterized by invincible ignorance, so there is
another which may be said to be possessed of invincible knowledge;
and it would be paradoxical in me to deny to such a mental state the
highest quality of religious faith,—I mean certitude.

I allow this, and therefore I will call simple assent _material_
certitude; or, to use a still more apposite term for it,
_interpretative_ certitude. I call it interpretative, signifying
thereby that, though the assent in the individuals contemplated is not
a reflex act, still the question only has to be started about the truth
of the objects of their assent, in order to elicit from them an act of
faith in response which will fulfil the conditions of certitude, as I
have drawn them out. As to the argumentative process necessary for such
an act, it is valid and sufficient, if it be carried out seriously, and
proportionate to their several capacities:—“The Catholic Religion is
true, because its objects, as present to my mind, control and influence
my conduct as nothing else does;” or “because it has about it an odour
of truth and sanctity _sui generis_, as perceptible to my moral nature
as flowers to my sense, such as can only come from heaven;” or “because
it has never been to me any thing but peace, joy, consolation, and
strength, all through my troubled life.” And if the particular argument
used in some instances needs strengthening, then let it be observed,
that the keenness of the real apprehension with which the assent is
made, though it cannot be the legitimate basis of the assent, may still
legitimately act, and strongly act, in confirmation. Such, I say,
would be the promptitude and effectiveness of the reasoning, and the
facility of the change from assent to certitude proper, in the case of
the multitudes in question, did the occasion for reflection occur; but
it does not occur; and accordingly, most genuine and thorough as is
the assent, it can only be called virtual, material, or interpretative
certitude, if I have above explained certitude rightly.

Of course these remarks hold good in secular subjects as well as
religious:—I believe, for instance, that I am living in an island, that
Julius Cæsar once invaded it, that it has been conquered by successive
races, that it has had great political and social changes, and that at
this time it has colonies, establishments, and imperial dominion all
over the earth. All this I am accustomed to take for granted without a
thought; but, were the need to arise, I should not find much difficulty
in drawing out from my own mental resources reasons sufficient to
justify me in these beliefs.

It is true indeed that, among the multitudes who are thus implicitly
certain, there may be those who would change their assents, did they
seek to place them upon an argumentative footing; for instance, some
believers in Christianity, did they examine into its claims, might
end in renouncing it. But this is only saying that there are genuine
assents, and assents that ultimately prove to be not genuine; and
again, that there is an assent which is not a virtual certitude, and
is lost in the attempt to make it certitude. And of course we are not
gifted with that insight into the minds of individuals, which enables
us to determine before the event, when it is that an assent is really
such, and when not, or not a deeply rooted assent. Men may assent
lightly, or from mere prejudice, or without understanding what it is
to which they assent. They may be genuine believers in Revelation up
to the time when they begin formally to examine,—nay, and really have
implicit reasons for their belief,—and then, being overcome by the
number of views which they have to confront, and swayed by the urgency
of special objections, or biassed by their imaginations, or frightened
by a deeper insight into the claims of religion upon the soul, may, in
spite of their habitual and latent grounds for believing, shrink back
and withdraw their assent. Or again, they may once have believed, but
their assent has gradually become a mere profession, without their
knowing it; then, when by accident they interrogate themselves, they
find no assent within them at all, to turn into certitude. The event,
I say, alone determines whether what is outwardly an assent is really
such an act of the mind as admits of being developed into certitude, or
is a mere self-delusion or a cloak for unbelief.

2. Next, I observe, that, of the two modes of apprehending
propositions, notional and real, assent, as I have already said, has
closer relations with real than with notional. Now a simple assent
need not be notional; but the reflex or confirmatory assent of
certitude always is given to a notional proposition, viz. to the truth,
necessity, duty, &c., of our assent to the simple assent and to its
proposition. Its predicate is a general term, and cannot stand for a
fact, whereas the original proposition, included in it, may, and often
does, express a fact. Thus, “The cholera is in the midst of us” is a
real proposition; but “That ‘the cholera is in the midst of us’ is
beyond all doubt” is a notional. Now assent to a real proposition is
assent to an imagination, and an imagination, as supplying objects to
our emotional and moral nature, is adapted to be a principle of action:
accordingly, the simple assent to “The cholera is among us,” is more
emphatic and operative, than the confirmatory assent, “It is beyond
reasonable doubt that ‘the cholera is among us.’” The confirmation
gives momentum to the complex act of the mind, but the simple assent
gives it its edge. The simple assent would still be operative in its
measure, though the reflex assent was, not “It is undeniable,” but “It
is probable” that “the cholera is among us;” whereas there would be no
operative force in the mental act at all, though the reflex assent was
to the truth, not to the probability of the fact, if the fact which
was the object of the simple assent was nothing more than “The cholera
is in China.” The reflex assent then, which is the characteristic of
certitude, does not immediately touch us; it is purely intellectual,
and, taken by itself, has scarcely more force than the recording of a
conclusion.

I have taken an instance, in which the matter which is submitted for
examination and for assent, can hardly fail of being interesting to
the minds employed upon it; but in many cases, even though the fact
assented-to has a bearing upon action, it is not directly of a nature
to influence the feelings or conduct, except of particular persons.
And in such instances of certitude, the previous labour of coming to
a conclusion, and that repose of mind which I have above described
as attendant on an assent to its truth, often counteracts whatever
of lively sensation the fact thus concluded is in itself adapted to
excite; so that what is gained in depth and exactness of belief is
lost as regards freshness and vigour. Hence it is that literary or
scientific men, who may have investigated some difficult point of
history, philosophy, or physics, and have come to their own settled
conclusion about it, having had a perfect right to form one, are far
more disposed to be silent as to their convictions, and to let others
alone, than partisans on either side of the question, who take it up
with less thought and seriousness. And so again, in the religious
world, no one seems to look for any great devotion or fervour in
controversialists, writers on Christian Evidences, theologians, and the
like, it being taken for granted, rightly or wrongly, that such men are
too intellectual to be spiritual, and are more occupied with the truth
of doctrine than with its reality. If, on the other hand, we would see
what the force of simple assent can be, viewed apart from its reflex
confirmation, we have but to look at the generous and uncalculating
energy of faith as exemplified in the primitive Martyrs, in the youths
who defied the pagan tyrant, or the maidens who were silent under his
tortures. It is assent, pure and simple, which is the motive cause of
great achievements; it is a confidence, growing out of instincts rather
than arguments, stayed upon a vivid apprehension, and animated by a
transcendent logic, more concentrated in will and in deed for the very
reason that it has not been subjected to any intellectual development.

It must be borne in mind, that, in thus speaking, I am contrasting with
each other the simple and the reflex assent, which together make up
the complex act of certitude. In its complete exhibition keenness in
believing is united with repose and persistence.

3. We must take the constitution of the human mind as we find it, and
not as we may judge it ought to be;—thus I am led on to another remark,
which is at first sight disadvantageous to Certitude. Introspection of
our intellectual operations is not the best of means for preserving us
from intellectual hesitations. To meddle with the springs of thought
and action is really to weaken them; and, as to that argumentation
which is the preliminary to Certitude, it may indeed be unavoidable,
but, as in the case of other serviceable allies, it is not so easy
to discard it, after it has done its work, as it was in the first
instance to obtain its assistance. Questioning, when encouraged on
any subject-matter, readily becomes a habit, and leads the mind to
substitute exercises of inference for assent, whether simple or
complex. Reasons for assenting suggest reasons for not assenting,
and what were realities to our imagination, while our assent was
simple, may become little more than notions, when we have attained
to certitude. Objections and difficulties tell upon the mind; it
may lose its elasticity, and be unable to throw them off. And thus,
even as regards things which it may be absurd to doubt, we may, in
consequence of some past suggestion of the possibility of error, or
of some chance association to their disadvantage, be teazed from
time to time and hampered by involuntary questionings, as if we were
not certain, when we are. Nay, there are those, who are visited with
these even permanently, as a sort of _muscæ volitantes_ of their
mental vision, ever flitting to and fro, and dimming its clearness
and completeness—visitants, for which they are not responsible, and
which they know to be unreal, still so seriously interfering with
their comfort and even with their energy, that they may be tempted to
complain that even blind prejudice has more of quiet and of durability
than certitude.

As even Saints may suffer from imaginations in which they have no part,
so the shreds and tatters of former controversies, and the litter of an
argumentative habit, may beset and obstruct the intellect,—questions
which have been solved without their solutions, chains of reasoning
with missing links, difficulties which have their roots in the nature
of things, and which are necessarily left behind in a philosophical
inquiry because they cannot be removed, and which call for the
exercise of good sense and for strength of will to put them down with
a high hand, as irrational or preposterous. Whence comes evil? why
are we created without our consent? how can the Supreme Being have
no beginning? how can He need skill, if He is omnipotent? if He is
omnipotent, why does He permit suffering? If He permits suffering,
how is He all-loving? if He is all-loving, how can He be just? if He
is infinite, what has He to do with the finite? how can the temporary
be decisive of the eternal?—these, and a host of like questions,
must arise in every thoughtful mind, and, after the best use of
reason, must be deliberately put aside, as beyond reason, as (so to
speak) no-thoroughfares, which, having no outlet themselves, have no
legitimate power to divert us from the King’s highway, and to hinder
the direct course of religious inquiry from reaching its destination. A
serious obstruction, however, they will be now and then to particular
minds, enfeebling the faith which they cannot destroy,—being parallel
to the uncomfortable, associations with which sometimes we regard one
whom we have fallen-in with, acquaintance or stranger, arising from
some chance word, look, or action of his which we have witnessed, and
which prejudices him in our imagination, though we are angry with
ourselves that it should do so.

Again, when, in confidence of our own certitude, and with a view
to philosophical fairness, we have attempted successfully to throw
ourselves out of our habits of belief into a simply dispassionate frame
of mind, then vague antecedent improbabilities, or what seem to us as
such,—merely what is strange or marvellous in certain truths, merely
the fact that things happen in one way and not in another, when they
must happen in some way,—may disturb us, as suggesting to us, “Is it
possible? who would have thought it! what a coincidence!” without
really touching the deep assent of our whole intellectual being to the
object, whatever it be, thus irrationally assailed. Thus we may wonder
at the Divine Mercy of the Incarnation, till we grow startled at it,
and ask why the earth has so special a theological history, or why we
are Christians and others not, or how God can really exert a particular
governance, since He does not punish such sinners as we are, thus
seeming to doubt His power or His equity, though in truth we are not
doubting at all.

The occasion of this intellectual waywardness may be slighter still.
I gaze on the Palatine Hill, or on the Parthenon, or on the Pyramids,
which I have read of from a boy, or upon the matter-of-fact reality of
the sacred places in the Holy Land, and I have to force my imagination
to follow the guidance of sight and of reason. It is to me so strange
that a lifelong belief should be changed into sight, and things should
be so near me, which hitherto had been visions. And so in times,
first of suspense, then of joy; “When the Lord turned the captivity
of Sion, then” (according to the Hebrew text) “we were like unto them
that dream.” Yet it was a dream which they were certain was a truth,
while they seemed to doubt it. So, too, was it in some sense with the
Apostles after our Lord’s resurrection.

Such vague thoughts, haunting or evanescent, are in no sense akin to
that struggle between faith and unbelief, which made the poor father
cry out, “I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!” Nay, even what in some
minds seems like an undercurrent of scepticism, or a faith founded on
a perilous substratum of doubt, need not be more than a temptation,
though robbing Certitude of its normal peacefulness. In such a case,
faith may still express the steady conviction of the intellect; it may
still be the grave, deep, calm, prudent assurance of mature experience,
though it is not the ready and impetuous assent of the young, the
generous, or the unreflecting.

4. There is another characteristic of Certitude, in contrast with
Assent, which it is important to insist upon, and that is, its
persistence. Assents may and do change; certitudes endure. This is
why religion demands more than an assent to its truth; it requires a
certitude, or at least an assent which is convertible into certitude
on demand. Without certitude in religious faith there may be much
decency of profession and of observance, but there can be no habit of
prayer, no directness of devotion, no intercourse with the unseen,
no generosity of self-sacrifice. Certitude then is essential to the
Christian; and if he is to persevere to the end, his certitude must
include in it a principle of persistence. This it has; as I shall
explain in the next Section.


§ 2. Indefectibility of Certitude.


It is the characteristic of certitude that its object is a truth,
a truth as such, a proposition as true. There are right and wrong
convictions, and certitude is a right conviction; if it is not right
with a consciousness of being right, it is not certitude. Now truth
cannot change; what is once truth is always truth; and the human
mind is made for truth, and so rests in truth, as it cannot rest in
falsehood. When then it once becomes possessed of a truth, what is to
dispossess it? but this is to be certain; therefore once certitude,
always certitude. If certitude in any matter be the termination of all
doubt or fear about its truth, and an unconditional conscious adherence
to it, it carries with it an inward assurance, strong though implicit,
that it shall never fail. Indefectibility almost enters into its very
idea, enters into it at least so far as this, that its failure, if
of frequent occurrence, would prove that certitude was after all and
in fact an impossible act, and that what looked like it was a mere
extravagance of the intellect. Truth would still be truth, but the
knowledge of it would be beyond us and unattainable. It is of great
importance then to show, that, as a general rule, certitude does not
fail; that failures of what was taken for certitude are the exception;
that the intellect, which is made for truth, can attain truth, and,
having attained it, can keep it, can recognize it, and preserve the
recognition.

This is on the whole reasonable; yet are the stipulations, thus
obviously necessary for an act or state of certitude, ever fulfilled?
We know what conjecture is, and what opinion, and what assent is,
can we point out any specific state or habit of thought, of which
the distinguishing mark is unchangeableness? On the contrary, any
conviction, false as well as true, may last; and any conviction, true
as well as false, may be lost. A conviction in favour of a proposition
may be exchanged for a conviction of its contradictory; and each of
them may be attended, while they last, by that sense of security and
repose, which a true object alone can legitimately impart. No line can
be drawn between such real certitudes as have truth for their object,
and apparent certitudes. No distinct test can be named, sufficient
to discriminate between what may be called the false prophet and the
true. What looks like certitude always is exposed to the chance of
turning out to be a mistake. If our intimate, deliberate conviction
may be counterfeit in the case of one proposition, why not in the
case of another? if in the case of one man, why not in the case of a
hundred? Is certitude then ever possible without the attendant gift of
infallibility? can we know what is right in one case, unless we are
secured against error in any? Further, if one man is infallible, why is
he different from his brethren? unless indeed he is distinctly marked
out for the prerogative. Must not all men be infallible by consequence,
if any man is to be considered as certain?

The difficulty, thus stated argumentatively, has only too accurate
a response in what actually goes on in the world. It is a fact of
daily occurrence that men change their certitudes, that is, what
they consider to be such, and are as confident and well-established
in their new opinions as they were once in their old. They take up
forms of religion only to leave them for their contradictories. They
risk their fortunes and their lives on impossible adventures. They
commit themselves by word and deed, in reputation and position, to
schemes which in the event they bitterly repent of and renounce; they
set out in youth with intemperate confidence in prospects which fail
them, and in friends who betray them, ere they come to middle age;
and they end their days in cynical disbelief of truth and virtue any
where;—and often, the more absurd are their means and their ends, so
much the longer do they cling to them, and then again so much the more
passionate is their eventual disgust and contempt of them. How then
can certitude be theirs, how is certitude possible at all, considering
it is so often misplaced, so often fickle and inconsistent, so
deficient in available criteria? And, as to the feeling of finality and
security, ought it ever to be indulged? Is it not a mere weakness or
extravagance, a deceit, to be eschewed by every clear and prudent mind?
With the countless instances, on all sides of us, of human fallibility,
with the constant exhibitions of antagonist certitudes, who can so
sin against modesty and sobriety of mind, as not to be content with
probability, as the true guide of life, renouncing ambitious thoughts,
which are sure either to delude him, or to disappoint?

This is what may be objected: now let us see what can be said in
answer, particularly as regards religious certitude.

1.

First, as to fallibility and infallibility. It is very common,
doubtless, especially in religious controversy, to confuse
infallibility with certitude, and to argue that, since we have not the
one, we have not the other, for that no one can claim to be certain on
any point, who is not infallible about all; but the two words stand
for things quite distinct from each other. For example, I remember for
certain what I did yesterday, but still my memory is not infallible; I
am quite clear that two and two makes four, but I often make mistakes
in long addition sums. I have no doubt whatever that John or Richard
is my true friend, but I have before now trusted those who failed me,
and I may do so again before I die. A certitude is directed to this
or that particular proposition; it is not a faculty or gift, but a
disposition of mind relatively to a definite case which is before
me. Infallibility, on the contrary, is just that which certitude is
not; it is a faculty or gift, and relates, not to some one truth in
particular, but to all possible propositions in a given subject-matter.
We ought in strict propriety, to speak, not of infallible acts, but of
acts of infallibility. A belief or opinion as little admits of being
called infallible, as a deed can correctly be called immortal. A deed
is done and over; it may be great, momentous, effective, anything but
immortal; it is its fame, it is the work which it brings to pass, which
is immortal, not the deed itself. And as a deed is good or bad, but
never immortal, so a belief, opinion, or certitude is true or false,
but never infallible. We cannot speak of things which exist or things
which once were, as if they were something _in posse_. It is persons
and rules that are infallible, not what is brought out into act, or
committed to paper. A man is infallible, whose words are always true; a
rule is infallible, if it is unerring in all its possible applications.
An infallible authority is certain in every particular case that may
arise; but a man who is certain in some one definite case, is not on
that account infallible.

I am quite certain that Victoria is our Sovereign, and not her father,
the late Duke of Kent, without laying any claim to the gift of
infallibility; as I may do a virtuous action, without being impeccable.
I may be certain that the Church is infallible, while I am myself a
fallible mortal; otherwise, I cannot be certain that the Supreme Being
is infallible, until I am infallible myself. It is a strange objection,
then, which is sometimes urged against Catholics, that they cannot
prove and assent to the Church’s infallibility, unless they first
believe in their own. Certitude, as I have said, is directed to one or
other definite concrete proposition. I am certain of proposition one,
two, three, four, or five, one by one, each by itself. I may be certain
of one of them, without being certain of the rest; that I am certain
of the first makes it neither likely nor unlikely that I am certain of
the second; but were I infallible, then I should be certain, not only
of one of them, but of all, and of many more besides, which have never
come before me as yet. Therefore we may be certain of the infallibility
of the Church, while we admit that in many things we are not, and
cannot be, certain at all.

It is wonderful that a clear-headed man, like Chillingworth, sees
this as little as the run of every-day objectors to the Catholic
religion; for in his celebrated “Religion of Protestants” he writes
as follows:—“You tell me they cannot be saved, unless they believe
in your proposals with an infallible faith. To which end they must
believe also your propounder, the Church, to be simply infallible. Now
how is it possible for them to give a rational assent to the Church’s
infallibility, _unless they have some infallible means to know that she
is infallible_? Neither can they infallibly know the infallibility of
this means, but by some other; and so on for ever, unless they can dig
so deep, as to come at length to the Rock, that is, to settle all upon
something evident of itself, which is not so much as pretended.(11)”

Now what is an “infallible means”? It is a means of coming at a fact
without the chance of mistake. It is a proof which is sufficient for
certitude in the particular case, or a proof that is certain. When
then Chillingworth says that there can be no “rational assent to the
Church’s infallibility” without “some infallible means of knowing
that she is infallible,” he means nothing else than some means which
is certain; he says that for a rational assent to infallibility there
must be an absolutely valid or certain proof. This is intelligible;
but observe how his argument will run, if worded according to this
interpretation: “The doctrine of the Church’s infallibility requires a
proof that is certain; and that certain proof requires another previous
certain proof, and that again another, and so on _ad infinitum_, unless
indeed we dig so deep as to settle all upon something evident of
itself.” What is this but to say that nothing in this world is certain
but what is self-evident? that nothing can be absolutely proved? Can
he really mean this? What then becomes of physical truth? of the
discoveries in optics, chemistry, and electricity, or of the science of
motion? Intuition by itself will carry us but a little way into that
circle of knowledge which is the boast of the present age.

I can believe then in the infallible Church without my own personal
infallibility. Certitude is at most nothing more than infallibility
_pro hac vice_, and promises nothing as to the truth of any proposition
beside its own. That I am certain of this proposition to-day, is no
ground for thinking that I shall have a right to be certain of that
proposition to-morrow; and that I am wrong in my convictions about
to-day’s proposition, does not hinder my having a true conviction, a
genuine certitude, about to-morrow’s proposition. If indeed I claimed
to be infallible, one failure would shiver my claim to pieces; but I
may claim to be certain of the truth to which I have already attained,
though I should arrive at no new truths in addition as long as I live.

2.

Let us put aside the word “infallibility;” let us understand by
certitude, as I have explained it, nothing more than a relation of the
mind towards given propositions:—still, it may be urged, it involves
a sense of security and of repose, at least as regards these in
particular. Now how can this security be mine,—without which certitude
is not,—if I know, as I know too well, that before now I have thought
myself certain, when I was certain after all of an untruth? Is not
the very possibility of certitude lost to me for ever by that one
mistake? What happened once, may happen again. All my certitudes
before and after are henceforth destroyed by the introduction of a
reasonable doubt, underlying them all. _Ipso facto_ they cease to be
certitudes,—they come short of unconditional assents by the measure of
that counterfeit assurance. They are nothing more to me than opinions
or anticipations, judgments on the verisimilitude of intellectual
views, not the possession and enjoyment of truths. And who has not
thus been balked by false certitudes a hundred times in the course of
his experience? and how can certitude have a legitimate place in our
mental constitution, when it thus manifestly ministers to error and to
scepticism?

This is what may be objected, and it is not, as I think, difficult
to answer. Certainly, the experience of mistakes in the assents
which we have made are to the prejudice of subsequent ones. There
is an antecedent difficulty in our allowing ourselves to be certain
of something to-day, if yesterday we had to give up our belief of
something else, of which we had up to that time professed ourselves to
be certain. This is true; but antecedent objections to an act are not
sufficient of themselves to prohibit its exercise; they may demand of
us an increased circumspection before committing ourselves to it, but
may be met with reasons more than sufficient to overcome them.

It must be recollected that certitude is a deliberate assent given
expressly after reasoning. If then my certitude is unfounded, it is the
reasoning that is in fault, not my assent to it. It is the law of my
mind to seal up the conclusions to which ratiocination has brought me,
by that formal assent which I have called a certitude. I could indeed
have withheld my assent, but I should have acted against my nature,
had I done so when there was what I considered a proof; and I did
only what was fitting, what was incumbent on me, upon those existing
conditions, in giving it. This is the process by which knowledge
accumulates and is stored up both in the individual and in the world.
It has sometimes been remarked, when men have boasted of the knowledge
of modern times, that no wonder we see more than the ancients, because
we are mounted upon their shoulders. The conclusions of one generation
are the truths of the next. We are able, it is our duty, deliberately
to take things for granted which our forefathers had a duty to doubt
about; and unless we summarily put down disputation on points which
have been already proved and ruled, we shall waste our time, and make
no advances. Circumstances indeed may arise, when a question may
legitimately be revived, which has already been definitely determined;
but a re-consideration of such a question need not abruptly unsettle
the existing certitude of those who engage in it, or throw them into a
scepticism about things in general, even though eventually they find
they have been wrong in a particular matter. It would have been absurd
to prohibit the controversy which has lately been held concerning the
obligations of Newton to Pascal; and supposing it had issued in their
being established, the partisans of Newton would not have thought it
necessary to renounce their certitude of the law of gravitation itself,
on the ground that they had been mistaken in their certitude that
Newton discovered it.

If we are never to be certain, after having been once certain wrongly,
then we ought never to attempt a proof because we have once made a
bad one. Errors in reasoning are lessons and warnings, not to give
up reasoning, but to reason with greater caution. It is absurd to
break up the whole structure of our knowledge, which is the glory of
the human intellect, because the intellect is not infallible in its
conclusions. If in any particular case we have been mistaken in our
inferences and the certitudes which followed upon them, we are bound
of course to take the fact of this mistake into account, in making up
our minds on any new question, before we proceed to decide upon it. But
if, while weighing the arguments on one side and the other and drawing
our conclusion, that old mistake has already been allowed for, or has
been, to use a familiar mode of speaking, discounted, then it has no
outstanding claim against our acceptance of that conclusion, after it
has actually been drawn. Whatever be the legitimate weight of the fact
of that mistake in our inquiry, justice has been done to it, before we
have allowed ourselves to be certain again. Suppose I am walking out
in the moonlight, and see dimly the outlines of some figure among the
trees;—it is a man. I draw nearer,—it is still a man; nearer still, and
all hesitation is at an end,—I am certain it is a man. But he neither
moves, nor speaks when I address him; and then I ask myself what can
be his purpose in hiding among the trees at such an hour. I come quite
close to him, and put out my arm. Then I find for certain that what I
took for a man is but a singular shadow, formed by the falling of the
moonlight on the interstices of some branches or their foliage. Am I
not to indulge my second certitude, because I was wrong in my first?
does not any objection, which lies against my second from the failure
of my first, fade away before the evidence on which my second is
founded?

Or again: I depose on my oath in a court of justice, to the best of my
knowledge and belief, that I was robbed by the prisoner at the bar.
Then, when the real offender is brought before me, I am obliged, to
my great confusion, to retract. Because I have been mistaken in my
certitude, may I not at least be certain that I have been mistaken?
And further, in spite of the shock which that mistake gives me, is it
impossible that the sight of the real culprit may give me so luminous
a conviction that at length I have got the right man, that, were it
decent towards the court, or consistent with self-respect, I may find
myself prepared to swear to the identity of the second, as I have
already solemnly committed myself to the identity of the first? It is
manifest that the two certitudes stand each on its own basis, and the
antecedent objection to the admission of a truth which was brought home
to me second, drawn from a hallucination which came first, is a mere
abstract argument, impotent when directed against good evidence lying
in the concrete.

3.

If in the criminal case which I have been supposing, the second
certitude, felt by a witness, was a legitimate state of mind, so was
the first. An act, viewed in itself, is not wrong, because it is done
wrongly. False certitudes are faults because they are false, not
because they are (so-called) certitudes. They are, or may be, the
attempts and the failures of an intellect insufficiently trained, or
off its guard. Assent is an act of the mind, congenial to its nature;
and it, as other acts, may be made both when it ought to be made, and
when it ought not. It is a free act, a personal act for which the doer
is responsible, and the actual mistakes in making it, be they ever so
numerous or serious, have no force whatever to prohibit the act itself.
We are accustomed in such cases, to appeal to the maxim, “Usum non
tollit abusus;” and it is plain that, if what may be called functional
disarrangements of the intellect are to be considered fatal to the
recognition of the functions themselves, then the mind has no laws
whatever and no normal constitution. I just now spoke of the growth
of knowledge; there is also a growth in the use of those faculties by
which knowledge is acquired. The intellect admits of an education; man
is a being of progress; he has to learn how to fulfil his end, and
to be what facts show that he is intended to be. His mind is in the
first instance in disorder, and runs wild; his faculties have their
rudimental and inchoate state, and are gradually carried on by practice
and experience to their perfection. No instances then whatever of
mistaken certitude are sufficient to constitute a proof, that certitude
itself is a perversion or extravagance of his nature.

We do not dispense with clocks, because from time to time they go
wrong, and tell untruly. A clock, organically considered, may be
perfect, yet it may require regulating. Till that needful work is
done, the moment-hand may mark the half-minute, when the minute-hand
is at the quarter-past, and the hour hand is just at noon, and the
quarter-bell strikes the three-quarters, and the hour-bell strikes
four, while the sun-dial precisely tells two o’clock. The sense of
certitude may be called the bell of the intellect; and that it strikes
when it should not is a proof that the clock is out of order, no proof
that the bell will be untrustworthy and useless, when it comes to us
adjusted and regulated from the hands of the clock-maker.

Our conscience too may be said to strike the hours, and will strike
them wrongly, unless it be duly regulated for the performance of its
proper function. It is the loud announcement of the principle of right
in the details of conduct, as the sense of certitude is the clear
witness to what is true. Both certitude and conscience have a place in
the normal condition of the mind. As a human being, I am unable, if
I were to try, to live without some kind of conscience; and I am as
little able to live without those landmarks of thought which certitude
secures for me; still, as the hammer of a clock may tell untruly, so
may my conscience and my sense of certitude be attached to mental
acts, whether of consent or of assent, which have no claim to be thus
sanctioned. Both the moral and the intellectual sanction are liable to
be biassed by personal inclinations and motives; both require and admit
of discipline; and, as it is no disproof of the authority of conscience
that false consciences abound, neither does it destroy the importance
and the uses of certitude, because even educated minds, who are earnest
in their inquiries after the truth, in many cases remain under the
power of prejudice or delusion.

To this deficiency in mental training a wider error is to be
attributed,—the mistaking for conviction and certitude states and
frames of mind which make no pretence to the fundamental condition on
which conviction rests as distinct from assent. The multitude of men
confuse together the probable, the possible, and the certain, and apply
these terms to doctrines and statements almost at random. They have no
clear view what it is they know, what they presume, what they suppose,
and what they only assert. They make little distinction between
credence, opinion, and profession; at various times they give them all
perhaps the name of certitude, and accordingly, when they change their
minds, they fancy they have given up points of which they had a true
conviction. Or at least bystanders thus speak of them, and the very
idea of certitude falls into disrepute.

In this day the subject-matter of thought and belief has so increased
upon us, that a far higher mental formation is required than was
necessary in times past, and higher than we have actually reached. The
whole world is brought to our doors every morning, and our judgment
is required upon social concerns, books, persons, parties, creeds,
national acts, political principles and measures. We have to form our
opinion, make our profession, take our side on a hundred matters on
which we have but little right to speak at all. But we do speak, and
must speak, upon them, though neither we nor those who hear us are well
able to determine what is the real position of our intellect relatively
to those many questions, one by one, on which we commit ourselves; and
then, since many of these questions change their complexion with the
passing hour, and many require elaborate consideration, and many are
simply beyond us, it is not wonderful, if, at the end of a few years,
we have to revise or to repudiate our conclusions; and then we shall
be unfairly said to have changed our certitudes, and shall confirm the
doctrine, that, except in abstract truth, no judgment rises higher than
probability.

Such are the mistakes about certitude among educated men; and after
referring to them, it is scarcely worth while to dwell upon the
absurdities and excesses of the rude intellect, as seen in the world
at large; as if any one could dream of treating as deliberate assents,
as assents upon assents, as convictions or certitudes, the prejudices,
credulities, infatuations, superstitions, fanaticisms, the whims and
fancies, the sudden irrevocable plunges into the unknown, the obstinate
determinations,—the offspring, as they are, of ignorance, wilfulness,
cupidity, and pride,—which go so far to make up the history of mankind;
yet these are often set down as instances of certitude and of its
failure.

4.

I have spoken of certitude as being assigned a definite and fixed
place among our mental acts;—it follows upon examination and proof, as
the bell sounds the hour, when the hands reach it,—so that no act or
state of the intellect is certitude, however it may resemble it, which
does not observe this appointed law. This proviso greatly diminishes
the catalogue of genuine certitudes. Another restriction is this:—the
occasions or subject-matters of certitude are under law also. Putting
aside the daily exercise of the senses, the principal subjects in
secular knowledge, about which we can be certain, are the truths or
facts which are its basis. As to this world, we are certain of the
elements of knowledge, whether general, scientific, historical, or
such as bear on our daily needs and habits, and relate to ourselves,
our homes and families, our friends, neighbourhood, country, and
civil state. Beyond these elementary points of knowledge, lies a vast
subject-matter of opinion, credence, and belief, viz. the field of
public affairs, of social and professional life, of business, of duty,
of literature, of taste, nay, of the experimental sciences. On subjects
such as these the reasonings and conclusions of mankind vary,—“mundum
tradidit disputationi eorum;”—and prudent men in consequence seldom
speak confidently, unless they are warranted to do so by genius,
great experience, or some special qualification. They determine their
judgments by what is probable, what is safe, what promises best, what
has verisimilitude, what impresses and sways them. They neither can
possess, nor need certitude, nor do they look out for it.

Hence it is that—the province of certitude being so contracted, and
that of opinion so large—it is common to call probability the guide of
life. This saying, when properly explained, is true; however, we must
not suffer ourselves to carry a true maxim to an extreme; it is far
from true, if we so hold it as to forget that without first principles
there can be no conclusions at all, and that thus probability does
in some sense presuppose and require the existence of truths which
are certain. Especially is the maxim untrue, in respect to the other
great department of knowledge, if taken to support the doctrine, that
the first principles and elements of religion, which are universally
received, are mere matter of opinion; though in this day, it is too
often taken for granted that religion is one of those subjects on which
truth cannot be discovered, and on which one conclusion is pretty
much on a level with another. But on the contrary, the initial truths
of divine knowledge ought to be viewed as parallel to the initial
truths of secular: as the latter are certain, so too are the former.
I cannot indeed deny that a decent reverence for the Supreme Being,
an acquiescence in the claims of Revelation, a general profession of
Christian doctrine, and some sort of attendance on sacred ordinances,
is in fact all the religion that is usual with even the better sort of
men, and that for all this a sufficient basis may certainly be found in
probabilities; but if religion is to be devotion, and not a mere matter
of sentiment, if it is to be made the ruling principle of our lives, if
our actions, one by one, and our daily conduct, are to be consistently
directed towards an Invisible Being, we need something higher than a
mere balance of arguments to fix and to control our minds. Sacrifice
of wealth, name, or position, faith and hope, self-conquest, communion
with the spiritual world, presuppose a real hold and habitual intuition
of the objects of Revelation, which is certitude under another name.

To this issue indeed we may bring the main difference, viewed
philosophically, between nominal Christianity on the one hand, and
vital Christianity on the other. Rational, sensible men, as they
consider themselves, men who do not comprehend the very notion of
loving God above all things, are content with such a measure of
probability for the truths of religion, as serves them in their secular
transactions; but those who are deliberately staking their all upon the
hopes of the next world, think it reasonable, and find it necessary,
before starting on their new course, to have some points, clear and
immutable, to start from; otherwise, they will not start at all. They
ask, as a preliminary condition, to have the ground sure under their
feet; they look for more than human reasonings and inferences, for
nothing less than the “strong consolation,” as the Apostle speaks, of
those “immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie,” His
counsel and His oath. Christian earnestness may be ruled by the world
to be a perverseness or a delusion; but, as long as it exists, it will
presuppose certitude as the very life which is to animate it.

This is the true parallel between human and divine knowledge; each of
them opens into a large field of mere opinion, but in both the one and
the other the primary principles, the general, fundamental, cardinal
truths are immutable. In human matters we are guided by probabilities,
but, I repeat, they are probabilities founded on certainties. It is
on no probability that we are constantly receiving the informations
and dictates of sense and memory, of our intellectual instincts, of
the moral sense, and of the logical faculty. It is on no probability
that we receive the generalizations of science, and the great outlines
of history. These are certain truths; and from them each of us forms
his own judgments and directs his own course, according to the
probabilities which they suggest to him, as the navigator applies his
observations and his charts for the determination of his course. Such
is the main view to be taken of the separate provinces of probability
and certainty in matters of this world; and so, as regards the world
invisible and future, we have a direct and conscious knowledge of our
Maker, His attributes, His providences, acts, works, and will; and,
beyond this knowledge lies the large domain of theology, metaphysics,
and ethics, on which it is not allowed to us to advance beyond
probabilities, or to attain to more than an opinion.

Such on the whole is the analogy between our knowledge of matters of
this world and matters of the world unseen;—indefectible certitude in
primary truths, manifold variations of opinion in their application and
disposition.

5.

I have said that Certitude, whether in human or divine knowledge, is
attainable as regards general and cardinal truths; and that in neither
department of knowledge, on the whole, is certitude discredited, lost,
or reversed; for, in matter of fact, whether in human or divine, those
primary truths have ever kept their place from the time when they first
took possession of it. However, there is one obvious objection which
may be made to this representation, and I proceed to take notice of it.

It may be urged then, that time was when the primary truths of science
were unknown, and when in consequence various theories were held,
contrary to each other. The first element of all things was said to
be water, to be air, to be fire; the framework of the universe was
eternal; or it was the ever-new combination of innumerable atoms: the
planets were fixed in solid crystal revolving spheres; or they moved
round the earth in epicycles mounted upon circular orbits; or they were
carried whirling round about the sun, while the sun was whirling round
the earth. About such doctrines there was no certitude, no more than
there is now certitude about the origin of languages, the age of man,
or the evolution of species, considered as philosophical questions. Now
theology is at present in the very same state in which natural science
was five hundred years ago; and this is the proof of it,—that, instead
of there being one received theological science in the world, there
are a multitude of hypotheses. We have a professed science of Atheism,
another of Deism, a Pantheistic, ever so many Christian theologies, to
say nothing of Judaism, Islamism, and the Oriental religions. Each of
these creeds has its own upholders, and these upholders all certain
that it is the very and the only truth, and these same upholders, it
may happen, presently giving it up, and then taking up some other
creed, and being certain again, as they profess, that it and it only is
the truth, these various so-called truths being incompatible with each
other. Are not Jews certain about their interpretation of their law?
yet they become Christians: are not Catholics certain about the new
law? yet they become Protestants. At present then, and as yet, there is
no clear certainty anywhere about religious truth at all; it has still
to be discovered; and therefore for Catholics to claim the right to
lay down the first principles of theological science in their own way,
is to assume the very matter in dispute. First let their doctrines be
universally received, and then they will have a right to place them on
a level with the certainty which belongs to the laws of motion or of
refraction. This is the objection which I propose to consider.

Now first as to the want of universal reception which is urged against
the Catholic dogmas, this part of the objection will not require
many words. Surely a truth or a fact may be certain, though it is
not generally received;—we are each of us ever gaining through our
senses various certainties, which no one shares with us; again, the
certainties of the sciences are in the possession of a few countries
only, and for the most part only of the educated classes in those
countries; yet the philosophers of Europe and America would feel
certain that the earth rolled round the sun, in spite of the Indian
belief of its being supported by an elephant with a tortoise under it.
The Catholic Church then, though not universally acknowledged, may
without inconsistency claim to teach the primary truths of religion,
just as modern science, though but partially received, claims to teach
the great principles and laws which are the foundation of secular
knowledge, and that with a significance to which no other religious
system can pretend, because it is its very profession to speak to all
mankind, and its very badge to be ever making converts all over the
earth, whereas other religions are more or less variable in their
teaching, tolerant of each other, and local, and professedly local, in
their _habitat_ and character.

This, however, is not the main point of the objection; the real
difficulty lies not in the variety of religions, but in the
contradiction, conflict, and change of religious certitudes. Truth need
not be universal, but it must of necessity be certain; and certainty,
in order to be certainty, must endure; yet how is this reasonable
expectation fulfilled in the case of religion? On the contrary, those
who have been the most certain in their beliefs are sometimes found
to lose them, Catholics as well as others; and then to take up new
beliefs, perhaps contrary ones, of which they become as certain as if
they had never been certain of the old.

In answering this representation, I begin with recurring to the remark
which I have already made, that assent and certitude have reference
to propositions, one by one. We may of course assent to a number of
propositions all together, that is, we may make a number of assents all
at once; but in doing so we run the risk of putting upon one level,
and treating as if of the same value, acts of the mind which are very
different from each other in character and circumstance. An assent,
indeed, is ever an assent; but given assents may be strong or weak,
deliberate or impulsive, lasting or ephemeral. Now a religion is not
a proposition, but a system; it is a rite, a creed, a philosophy, a
rule of duty, all at once; and to accept a religion is neither a simple
assent to it nor a complex, neither a conviction nor a prejudice,
neither a notional assent nor a real, not a mere act of profession, nor
of credence, nor of opinion, nor of speculation, but it is a collection
of all these various kinds of assents, some of one description, some of
another; but, out of all these different assents, how many are of that
kind which I have called certitude? Certitudes indeed do not change,
but who shall pretend that assents are indefectible?

For instance: the fundamental dogma of Protestantism is the exclusive
authority of Holy Scripture; but in holding this a Protestant holds a
host of propositions, explicitly or implicitly, and holds them with
assents of various character. Among these propositions, he holds that
Scripture is the Divine Revelation itself, that it is inspired, that
nothing is known in doctrine but what is there, that the Church has no
authority in matters of doctrine, that, as claiming it, it condemned
long ago in the Apocalypse, that St. John wrote the Apocalypse, that
justification is by faith only, that our Lord is God, that there are
seventy-two generations between Adam and our Lord. Now of which, out
of all these propositions, is he certain? and to how many of them is
his assent of one and the same description? His belief, that Scripture
is commensurate with the Divine Revelation, is perhaps implicit, not
conscious; as to inspiration, he does not well know what the word
means, and his assent is scarcely more than a profession; that no
doctrine is true but what can be proved from Scripture he understands,
and his assent to it is what I have called speculative; that the Church
has no authority he holds with a real assent or belief; that the Church
is condemned in the Apocalypse is a standing prejudice; that St. John
wrote the Apocalypse is his opinion; that justification is by faith
only, he accepts, but scarcely can be said to apprehend; that our Lord
is God perhaps he is certain; that there are seventy-two generations
between Adam and Christ he accepts on credence. Yet, if he were asked
the question, he would most probably answer that he was certain of the
truth of “Protestantism,” though “Protestantism” means these things
and a hundred more all at once, and though he believes with actual
certitude only one of them all,—that indeed a dogma of most sacred
importance, but not the discovery of Luther or Calvin. He would think
it enough to say that he was a foe to “Romanism” and “Socinianism,” and
to avow that he gloried in the Reformation. He looks upon each of these
religious professions, Protestantism, Romanism, Socinianism and Theism,
merely as units, as if they were not each made up of many elements,
as if they had nothing in common, as if a transition from the one to
the other involved a simple obliteration of all that had been as yet
written on his mind, and would be the reception of a new faith.

When, then, we are told that a man has changed from one religion to
another, the first question which we have to ask, is, have the first
and the second religions nothing in common? If they have common
doctrines, he has changed only a portion of his creed, not the whole:
and the next question is, has he ever made much of those doctrines
which are common to his new creed and his old? and then again, what
doctrines was he certain of among the old, and what among the new?

Thus, of three Protestants, one becomes a Catholic, a second a
Unitarian, and a third an unbeliever: how is this? The first becomes
a Catholic, because he assented, as a Protestant, to the doctrine of
our Lord’s divinity, with a real assent and a genuine conviction,
and because this certitude, taking possession of his mind, led him
on to welcome the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence and of the
Theotocos, till his Protestantism fell off from him, and he submitted
himself to the Church. The second became a Unitarian, because,
proceeding on the principle that Scripture was the rule of faith and
that a man’s private judgment was its rule of interpretation, and
finding that the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds did
not follow by logical necessity from the text of Scripture, he said
to himself, “The word of God has been made of none effect by the
traditions of men,” and therefore nothing was left for him but to
profess what he considered primitive Christianity, and to become a
Humanitarian. The third gradually subsided into infidelity, because
he started with the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his
nature, that a priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the
Gospel. First, then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the
Mass; next he gave up baptismal regeneration, and the sacramental
principle; then he asked himself whether dogmas were not a restraint
on Christian liberty as well as sacraments; then came the question,
what after all was the use of teachers of religion? why should any one
stand between him and his Maker? After a time it struck him, that this
obvious question had to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the
Anglican clergy; so he came to the conclusion that the true and only
revelation of God to man is that which is written on the heart. This
did for a time, and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him,
that this inward moral law was there within the breast, whether there
was a God or not, and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that
law, to say that it came from God, and simply unnecessary, considering
it carried with it its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our
feelings instinctively testified; and when he turned to look at the
physical world around him, he really did not see what scientific proof
there was there of the Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as
if all things would go on quite as well as at present, without that
hypothesis as with it; so he dropped it, and became a _purus_, _putus_
Atheist.

Now the world will say, that in these three cases old certitudes were
lost, and new were gained; but it is not so: each of the three men
started with just one certitude, as he would have himself professed,
had he examined himself narrowly; and he carried it out and carried
it with him into a new system of belief. He was true to that one
conviction from first to last; and on looking back on the past, would
perhaps insist upon this, and say he had really been consistent all
through, when others made much of his great changes in religious
opinion. He has indeed made serious additions to his initial ruling
principle, but he has lost no conviction of which he was originally
possessed.

I will take one more instance. A man is converted to the Catholic
Church from his admiration of its religious system, and his disgust
with Protestantism. That admiration remains; but, after a time, he
leaves his new faith, perhaps returns to his old. The reason, if we
may conjecture, may sometimes be this: he has never believed in the
Church’s infallibility; in her doctrinal truth he has believed, but in
her infallibility, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he
held all that the Church taught, he replied he did; but he understood
the question to mean, whether he held those particular doctrines “which
at that time the Church in matter of fact formally taught,” whereas it
really meant “whatever the Church then or at any future time should
teach.” Thus, he never had the indispensable and elementary faith of a
Catholic, and was simply no subject for reception into the fold of the
Church. This being the case, when the Immaculate Conception is defined,
he feels that it is something more than he bargained for when he became
a Catholic, and accordingly he gives up his religious profession. The
world will say that he has lost his certitude of the divinity of the
Catholic Faith, but he never had it.

The first point to be ascertained, then, when we hear of a change of
religious certitude in another, is, what the doctrines are on which his
so-called certitude before now and at present has respectively fallen.
All doctrines besides these were the accidents of his profession, and
the indefectibility of certitude would not be disproved, though he
changed them every year. There are few religions which have no points
in common; and these, whether true or false, when embraced with an
absolute conviction, are the pivots on which changes take place in
that collection of credences, opinions, prejudices, and other assents,
which make up what is called a man’s selection and adoption of a form
of religion, a denomination, or a Church. There have been Protestants
whose idea of enlightened Christianity has been a strenuous antagonism
to what they consider the unmanliness and unreasonableness of Catholic
morality, an antipathy to the precepts of patience, meekness,
forgiveness of injuries, and chastity. All this they have considered
a woman’s religion, the ornament of monks, of the sick, the feeble,
and the old. Lust, revenge, ambition, courage, pride, these, they have
fancied, made the man, and want of them the slave. No one could fairly
accuse such men of any great change of their convictions, or refer to
them in proof of the defectibility of certitude, if they were one day
found to have taken up the profession of Islam.

And if this intercommunion of religions holds good, even when the
common points between them are but errors held in common, much more
natural will be the transition from one religion to another, without
injury to existing certitudes, when the common points, the objects of
those certitudes, are truths; and still stronger in that case and more
constraining will be the sympathy, with which minds that love truth,
even when they have surrounded it with error, will yearn towards the
Catholic faith, which contains within itself, and claims as its own,
all truth that is elsewhere to be found, and more than all, and nothing
but truth. This is the secret of the influence, by which the Church
draws to herself converts from such various and conflicting religions.
They come, not to lose what they have, but to gain what they have not;
and in order that, by means of what they have, more may be given to
them. St. Augustine tells us that there is no false teaching without
an intermixture of truth; and it is by the light of those particular
truths, contained respectively in the various religions of men, and by
our certitudes about them, which are possible wherever those truths are
found, that we pick our way, slowly perhaps, but surely, into the One
Religion which God has given, taking our certitudes with us, not to
lose, but to keep them more securely, and to understand and love their
objects more perfectly.

Not even are idolaters and heathen out of the range of some of these
religious truths and their correlative certitudes. The old Greek and
Roman polytheists had, as they show in their literature, clear and
strong notions, nay, vivid mental images, of a Particular Providence,
of the power of prayer, of the rule of Divine Governance, of the law of
conscience, of sin and guilt, of expiation by means of sacrifices, and
of future retribution: I will even add, of the Unity and Personality
of the Supreme Being. This it is that throws such a magnificent light
over the Homeric poems, the tragic choruses, and the Odes of Pindar;
and it has its counterpart in the philosophy of Socrates and of the
Stoics, and in such historians as Herodotus. It would be out of place
to speak confidently of a state of society which has passed away,
but at first sight it does not appear why the truths which I have
enumerated should not have received as genuine and deliberate an assent
on the part of Socrates or Cleanthes, (of course with divine aids,
but they do not enter into this discussion,) as was given to them by
St. John or St. Paul, nay, an assent which rose to certitude. Much
more safely may it be pronounced of a Mahometan, that he may have a
certitude of the Divine Unity, as well as a Christian; and of a Jew,
that he may believe as truly as a Christian in the resurrection of the
body; and of a Unitarian that he can give a deliberate and real assent
to the fact of a supernatural revelation, to the Christian miracles,
to the eternal moral law, and to the immortality of the soul. And so,
again, a Protestant may, not only in words, but in mind and heart,
hold, as if he were a Catholic, with simple certitude, the doctrines
of the Holy Trinity, of the fall of man, of the need of regeneration,
of the efficacy of Divine Grace, and of the possibility and danger of
falling away. And thus it is conceivable that a man might travel in
his religious profession all the way from heathenism to Catholicity,
through Mahometanism, Judaism, Unitarianism, Protestantism, and
Anglicanism, without any one certitude lost, but with a continual
accumulation of truths, which claimed from him and elicited in his
intellect fresh and fresh certitudes.

In saying all this, I do not forget that the same doctrines, as held
in different religions, may be and often are held very differently,
as belonging to distinct wholes or _forms_, as they are called, and
exposed to the influence and the bias of the teaching, perhaps false,
with which they are associated. Thus, for instance, whatever be the
resemblance between St. Augustine’s doctrine of Predestination and the
tenet of Calvin upon it, the two really differ from each other _toto
cœlo_ in significance and effect, in consequence of the place they
hold in the systems in which they are respectively incorporated, just
as shades and tints show so differently in a painting according to the
masses of colour to which they are attached. But, in spite of this, a
man may so hold the doctrine of personal election as a Calvinist, as to
be able still to hold it as a Catholic.

However, I have been speaking of certitudes which remain unimpaired, or
rather confirmed, by a change of religion; on the contrary there are
others, whether we call them certitudes or convictions, which perish
in the change, as St. Paul’s conviction of the sufficiency of the
Jewish Law came to an end on his becoming a Christian. Now how is such
a series of facts to be reconciled with the doctrine which I have been
enforcing? What conviction could be stronger than the faith of the Jews
in the perpetuity of the Mosaic system? Those, then, it may be said,
who abandoned Judaism for the Gospel, surely, in so doing, bore the
most emphatic of testimonies to the defectibility of certitude. And,
in like manner, a Mahometan may be so deeply convinced that Mahomet
is the prophet of God, that it would be only by a quibble about the
meaning of the word “certitude” that we could maintain, that, on his
becoming a Catholic, he did not unequivocally prove that certitude is
defectible. And it may be argued, perhaps, in the case of some members
of the Church of England, that their faith in the validity of Anglican
orders, and the invisibility of the Church’s unity, is so absolute, so
deliberate, that their abandonment of it, did they become Catholics or
sceptics, would be tantamount to the abandonment of a certitude.

Now, in meeting this difficulty, I will not urge (lest I should be
accused of quibbling), that certitude is a conviction of what is true,
and that these so-called certitudes have come to nought, because, their
objects being errors, not truths, they really were not certitudes at
all; nor will I insist, as I might, that they ought to be proved first
to be something more than mere prejudices, assents without reason
and judgment, before they can fairly be taken as instances of the
defectibility of certitude; but I simply ask, as regards the zeal of
the Jews for the sufficiency of their law, (even though it implied
genuine certitude, not a prejudice, not a mere conviction,) still was
such zeal, such professed certitude, found in those who were eventually
converted, or in those who were not; for, if those who had not that
certitude became Christians and those who had it remained Jews, then
loss of certitude in the latter is not instanced in the fact of the
conversion of the former. St. Paul certainly is an exception, but
his conversion, as also his after-life, was miraculous; ordinarily
speaking, it was not the zealots who supplied members to the Catholic
Church, but those “men of good will,” who, instead of considering the
law as perfect and eternal, “looked for the redemption of Israel,” and
for “the knowledge of salvation in the remission of sins.” And, in
like manner, as to those learned and devout men among the Anglicans at
the present day, who come so near the Church without acknowledging her
claims, I ask whether there are not two classes among them also,—those
who are looking out beyond their own body for the perfect way, and
those on the other hand who teach that the Anglican communion is the
golden mean between men who believe too much and men who believe too
little, the centre of unity to which East and West are destined to
gravitate, the instrument and the mould, as the Jews might think of
their own moribund institutions, through which the kingdom of Christ
is to be established all over the earth. And next I would ask, which
of these two classes supplies converts to the Church; for if they
come from among those who never professed to be quite certain of the
special strength of the Anglican position, such men cannot be quoted as
instances of the defectibility of certitude.

There is indeed another class of beliefs, of which I must take notice,
the failure of which may be taken at first sight as a proof that
certitude may be lost. Yet they clearly deserve no other name than
prejudices, as being founded upon reports of facts, or on arguments,
which will not bear careful examination. Such was the disgust felt
towards our predecessors in primitive times, the Christians of the
first centuries, as a secret society, as a conspiracy against the civil
power, as a set of mean, sordid, despicable fanatics, as monsters
revelling in blood and impurity. Such also is the deep prejudice now
existing against the Church among Protestants, who dress her up in
the most hideous and loathsome images, which rightly attach, in the
prophetic descriptions, to the evil spirit, his agents and instruments.
And so of the numberless calumnies directed against individual
Catholics, against our religious bodies, and men in authority, which
serve to feed and sustain the suspicion and dislike with which
everything Catholic is regarded in this country. But as a persistence
in such prejudices is no evidence of their truth, so an abandonment of
them is no evidence that certitude can fail.

There is yet another class of prejudices against the Catholic Religion,
which is far more tolerable and intelligible than those on which I
have been dwelling, but still in no sense certitudes. Indeed, I doubt
whether they would be considered more than presumptive opinions by
the persons who entertain them. Such is the idea which has possessed
certain philosophers, ancient and modern, that miracles are an
infringement and disfigurement of the beautiful order of nature. Such,
too, is the persuasion, common among political and literary men, that
the Catholic Church is inconsistent with the true interests of the
human race, with social progress, with rational freedom, with good
government. A renunciation of these imaginations is not a change in
certitudes.

So much on this subject. All concrete laws are general, and persons,
as such, do not fall under laws. Still, I have gone a good way, as I
think, to remove the objections to the doctrine of the indefectibility
of certitude in matters of religion.

6.

One further remark may be made. Certitude does not admit of an
interior, immediate test, sufficient to discriminate it from false
certitude. Such a test is rendered impossible from the circumstance
that, when we make the mental act expressed by “I know,” we sum up
the whole series of reflex judgments which might, each in turn,
successively exercise a critical function towards those of the series
which precede it. But still, if it is the general rule that certitude
is indefectible, will not that indefectibility itself become at least
in the event a criterion of the genuineness of the certitude? or is
there any rival state or habit of the intellect, which claims to be
indefectible also? A few words will suffice to answer these questions.

Premising that all rules are but general, especially those which
relate to the mind, I observe that indefectibility may at least serve
as a negative test of certitude, or _sine quâ non_ condition, so that
whoever loses his conviction on a given point is thereby proved not to
have been certain of it. Certitude ought to stand all trials, or it is
not certitude. Its very office is to cherish and maintain its object,
and its very lot and duty is to sustain rude shocks in maintenance of
it without being damaged by them.

I will take an example. Let us suppose we are told on an unimpeachable
authority, that a man whom we saw die is now alive again and at his
work, as it was his wont to be; let us suppose we actually see him and
converse with him; what will become of our certitude of his death? I
do not think we should give it up; how could we, when we actually saw
him die? At first, indeed, we should be thrown into an astonishment
and confusion so great, that the world would seem to reel round us,
and we should be ready to give up the use of our senses and of our
memory, of our reflective powers, and of our reason, and even to deny
our power of thinking, and our existence itself. Such confidence have
we in the doctrine that when life goes it never returns. Nor would our
bewilderment be less, when the first blow was over; but our reason
would rally, and with our reason our certitude would come back to us.
Whatever came of it, we should never cease to know and to confess to
ourselves both of the contrary facts, that we saw him die, and that
after dying we saw him alive again. The overpowering strangeness of
our experience would have no power to shake our certitude in the facts
which created it.

Again, let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that ethnologists,
philologists, anatomists, and antiquarians agreed together in separate
demonstrations that there were half a dozen races of men, and that they
were all descended from gorillas, or chimpanzees, or ourang-outangs,
or baboons; moreover, that Adam was an historical personage, with
a well-ascertained dwelling-place, surroundings and date, in a
comparatively modern world. On the other hand, let me believe that
the Word of God Himself distinctly declares that there were no men
before Adam, that he was immediately made out of the slime of the
earth, and that he is the first father of all men that are or ever have
been. Here is a contradiction of statements more direct than in the
former instance; the two cannot stand together; one or other of them
is untrue. But whatever means I might be led to take, for making, if
possible, the antagonism tolerable, I conceive I should never give up
my certitude in that truth which on sufficient grounds I determined
to come from heaven. If I so believed, I should not pretend to argue,
or to defend myself to others; I should be patient; I should look for
better days; but I should still believe. If, indeed, I had hitherto
only half believed, if I believed with an assent short of certitude, or
with an acquiescence short of assent, or hastily or on light grounds,
then the case would be altered; but if, after full consideration, and
availing myself of my best lights, I did think that beyond all question
God spoke as I thought He did, philosophers and experimentalists might
take their course for me,—I should consider that they and I thought
and reasoned in different mediums, and that my certitude was as little
in collision with them or damaged by them, as if they attempted to
counteract in some great matter chemical action by the force of
gravity, or to weigh magnetic influence against capillary attraction.
Of course, I am putting an impossible case, for philosophical
discoveries cannot really contradict divine revelation.

So much on the indefectibility of certitude; as to the question whether
any other assent is indefectible besides it, I think prejudice may
be such; but it cannot be confused with certitude, for the one is an
assent previous to rational grounds, and the other an assent given
expressly after careful examination.

It seems then that on the whole there are three conditions of
certitude: that it follows on investigation and proof, that it is
accompanied by a specific sense of intellectual satisfaction and
repose, and that it is irreversible. If the assent is made without
rational grounds, it is a rash judgment, a fancy, or a prejudice; if
without the sense of finality, it is scarcely more than an inference;
if without permanence, it is a mere conviction.




Chapter VIII. Inference.


§ 1. Formal Inference.


Inference is the conditional acceptance of a proposition, Assent is
the unconditional; the object of Assent is a truth, the object of
Inference is the truth-like or a verisimilitude. The problem which I
have undertaken is that of ascertaining how it comes to pass that a
conditional act leads to an unconditional; and, having now shown that
assent really is unconditional, I proceed to show how inferential
exercises, as such, always must be conditional.

We reason, when we hold this by virtue of that; whether we hold it as
evident or as approximating or tending to be evident, in either case we
so hold it because of holding something else to be evident or tending
to be evident. In the next place, our reasoning ordinarily presents
itself to our mind as a simple act, not a process or series of acts.
We apprehend the antecedent and then apprehend the consequent, without
explicit recognition of the medium connecting the two, as if by a sort
of direct association of the first thought with the second. We proceed
by a sort of instinctive perception, from premiss to conclusion. I call
it instinctive, not as if the faculty were one and the same to all
men in strength and quality (as we generally conceive of instinct),
but because ordinarily, or at least often, it acts by a spontaneous
impulse, as prompt and inevitable as the exercise of sense and memory.
We perceive external objects, and we remember past events, without
knowing how we do so; and in like manner we reason without effort and
intention, or any necessary consciousness of the path which the mind
takes in passing from antecedent to conclusion.

Such is ratiocination, in what may be called a state of nature, as it
is found in the uneducated,—nay, in all men, in its ordinary exercise;
nor is there any antecedent ground for determining that it will not be
as correct in its informations as it is instinctive, as trustworthy
as are sensible perception and memory, though its informations are
not so immediate and have a wider range. By means of sense we gain
knowledge directly; by means of reasoning we gain it indirectly, that
is, by virtue of a previous knowledge. And if we may justly regard
the universe, according to the meaning of the word, as one whole, we
may also believe justly that to know one part of it is necessarily to
know much more than that one part. This thought leads us to a further
view of ratiocination. The proverb says, “Ex pede Herculem;” and we
have actual experience how the practised zoologist can build up some
intricate organization from the sight of its smallest bone, evoking
the whole as if it were a remembrance; how, again, a philosophical
antiquarian, by means of an inscription, interprets the mythical
traditions of former ages, and makes the past live; and how a Columbus
is led, from considerations which are common property, and fortuitous
phenomena which are successively brought to his notice, to have such
faith in a western world, as willingly to commit himself to the terrors
of a mysterious ocean in order to arrive at it. That which the mind is
able thus variously to bring together into unity, must have some real
intrinsic connexion of part with part. But if this _summa rerum_ is
thus one whole, it must be constructed on definite principles and laws,
the knowledge of which will enlarge our capacity of reasoning about it
in particulars;—thus we are led on to aim at determining on a large
scale and on system, what even gifted or practised intellects are only
able by their own personal vigour to reach piece-meal and fitfully,
that is, at substituting scientific methods, such as all may use, for
the action of individual genius.

There is another reason for attempting to discover an instrument of
reasoning (that is, of gaining new truths by means of old), which may
be less vague and arbitrary than the talent and experience of the few
or the common-sense of the many. As memory is not always accurate, and
has on that account led to the adoption of writing, as being a _memoria
technica_, unaffected by the failure of mental impressions,—as our
senses at times deceive us, and have to be corrected by each other; so
is it also with our reasoning faculty. The conclusions of one man are
not the conclusions of another; those of the same man do not always
agree together; those of ever so many who agree together may differ
from the facts themselves, which those conclusions are intended to
ascertain. In consequence it becomes a necessity, if it be possible,
to analyze the process of reasoning, and to invent a method which may
act as a common measure between mind and mind, as a means of joint
investigation, and as a recognized intellectual standard,—a standard
such as to secure us against hopeless mistakes, and to emancipate us
from the capricious _ipse dixit_ of authority.

As the index on the dial notes down the sun’s course in the heavens,
as a key, revolving through the intricate wards of the lock, opens for
us a treasure-house, so let us, if we can, provide ourselves with some
ready expedient to serve as a true record of the system of objective
truth, and an available rule for interpreting its phenomena; or at
least let us go as far as we can in providing it. One such experimental
key is the science of geometry, which, in a certain department of
nature, substitutes a collection of true principles, fruitful and
interminable in consequences, for the guesses, _pro re natâ_, of our
intellect, and saves it both the labour and the risk of guessing.
Another far more subtle and effective instrument is algebraical
science, which acts as a spell in unlocking for us, without merit or
effort of our own individually, the _arcana_ of the concrete physical
universe. A more ambitious, because a more comprehensive contrivance
still, for interpreting the concrete world is the method of logical
inference. What we desiderate is something which may supersede the need
of personal gifts by a far-reaching and infallible rule. Now, without
external symbols to mark out and to steady its course, the intellect
runs wild; but with the aid of symbols, as in algebra, it advances with
precision and effect. Let then our symbols be words: let all thought
be arrested and embodied in words. Let language have a monopoly of
thought; and thought go for only so much as it can show itself to be
worth in language. Let every prompting of the intellect be ignored,
every _momentum_ of argument be disowned, which is unprovided with an
equivalent wording, as its ticket for sharing in the common search
after truth. Let the authority of nature, common-sense, experience,
genius, go for nothing. Ratiocination, thus restricted and put into
grooves, is what I have called Inference, and the science, which is its
regulating principle, is Logic.

The first step in the inferential method is to throw the question to be
decided into the form of a proposition; then to throw the proof itself
into propositions, the force of the proof lying in the comparison of
these propositions with each other. When the analysis is carried out
fully and put into form, it becomes the Aristotelic syllogism. However,
an inference need not be expressed thus technically; an enthymeme
fulfils the requirements of what I have called Inference. So does any
other form of words with the mere grammatical expressions, “for,”
“therefore,” “supposing,” “so that,” “similarly,” and the like. Verbal
reasoning, of whatever kind, as opposed to mental, is what I mean by
inference, which differs from logic only inasmuch as logic is its
scientific form. And it will be more convenient here to use the two
words indiscriminately, for I shall say nothing about logic which does
not in its substance also apply to inference.

Logical inference, then, being such, and its office such as I have
described, the question follows, how far it answers the purpose for
which it is used. It proposes to provide both a test and a common
measure of reasoning; and I think it will be found partly to succeed
and partly to fail; succeeding so far as words can in fact be found for
representing the countless varieties and subtleties of human thought,
failing on account of the fallacy of the original assumption, that
whatever can be thought can be adequately expressed in words.

In the first place, Inference, being conditional, is hampered with
other propositions besides that which is especially its own, that
is, with the premisses as well as the conclusion, and with the rules
connecting the latter with the former. It views its own proper
proposition in the medium of prior propositions, and measures it
by them. It does not hold a proposition for its own sake, but as
dependent upon others, and those others it entertains for the sake of
the conclusion. Thus it is practically far more concerned with the
comparison of propositions, than with the propositions themselves.
It is obliged to regard all the propositions, with which it has to
do, not so much for their own sake, as for the sake of each other,
as regards the identity or likeness, independence or dissimilarity,
which has to be mutually predicated of them. It follows from this,
that the more simple and definite are the words of a proposition,
and the narrower their meaning, and the more that meaning in each
proposition is restricted to the relation which it has to the words of
the other propositions compared with it,—in other words, the nearer
the propositions concerned in the inference approach to being mental
abstractions, and the less they have to do with the concrete reality,
and the more closely they are made to express exact, intelligible,
comprehensible, communicable notions, and the less they stand for
objective things, that is, the more they are the subjects, not of real,
but of notional apprehension,—so much the more suitable do they become
for the purposes of Inference.

Hence it is that no process of argument is so perfect, as that which is
conducted by means of symbols. In Arithmetic 1 is 1, and just 1, and
never anything else but 1; it never is 2, it has no tendency to change
its meaning, and to become 2; it has no portion, quality, admixture of
2 in its meaning. And 6 under all circumstances is 3 times 2, and the
sum of 2 and 4; nor can the whole world supply anything to throw doubt
upon these elementary positions. It is not so with language. Take, by
contrast, the word “inference,” which I have been using: it may stand
for the act of inferring, as I have used it; or for the connecting
principle, or _inferentia_, between premisses and conclusions; or
for the conclusion itself. And sometimes it will be difficult, in a
particular sentence, to say which it bears of these three senses. And
so again in Algebra, _a_ is never _x_, or anything but _a_, wherever it
is found; and _a_ and _b_ are always standard quantities, to which _x_
and _y_ are always to be referred, and by which they are always to be
measured. In Geometry again, the subjects of argument, points, lines,
and surfaces, are precise creations of the mind, suggested indeed by
external objects, but meaning nothing but what they are defined to
mean: they have no colour, no motion, no heat, no qualities which
address themselves to the ear or to the palate; so that, in whatever
combinations or relations the words denoting them occur, and to
whomsoever they come, those words never vary in their meaning, but are
just of the same measure and weight at one time and at another.

What is true of Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry, is true also of
Aristotelic argumentation in its typical modes and figures. It compares
two given words separately with a third, and then determines how they
stand towards each other, in a _bona fide_ identity of sense. In
consequence, its formal process is best conducted by means of symbols,
A, B, and C. While it keeps to these, it is safe; it has the cogency of
mathematical reasoning, and draws its conclusions by a rule as unerring
as it is blind.

Symbolical notation, then, being the perfection of the syllogistic
method, it follows that, when words are substituted for symbols, it
will be its aim to circumscribe and stint their import as much as
possible, lest perchance A should not always exactly mean A, and B mean
B; and to make them, as much as possible, the _calculi_ of notions,
which are in our absolute power, as meaning just what we choose them
to mean, and as little as possible the tokens of real things, which
are outside of us, and which mean we do not know how much, but so much
certainly as may run away with us, in proportion as we enter into them,
beyond the range of scientific management. The concrete matter of
propositions is a constant source of trouble to syllogistic reasoning,
as marring the simplicity and perfection of its process. Words, which
denote things, have innumerable implications; but in inferential
exercises it is the very triumph of that clearness and hardness of
head, which is the characteristic talent for the art, to have stripped
them of all these connatural senses, to have drained them of that
depth and breadth of associations which constitute their poetry, their
rhetoric, and their historical life, to have starved each term down
till it has become the ghost of itself, and everywhere one and the
same ghost, “omnibus umbra locis,” so that it may stand for just one
unreal aspect of the concrete thing to which it properly belongs, for a
relation, a generalization, or other abstraction, for a notion neatly
turned out of the laboratory of the mind, and sufficiently tame and
subdued, because existing only in a definition.

Thus it is that the logician for his own purposes, and most usefully
as far as those purposes are concerned, turns rivers, full, winding,
and beautiful, into navigable canals. To him dog or horse is not a
thing which he sees, but a mere name suggesting ideas; and by dog or
horse universal he means, not the aggregate of all individual dogs
or horses brought together, but a common aspect, meagre but precise,
of all existing or possible dogs or horses, which all the while does
not really correspond to any one single dog or horse out of the whole
aggregate. Such minute fidelity in the representation of individuals
is neither necessary nor possible to his art; his business is not
to ascertain facts in the concrete, but to find and dress up middle
terms; and, provided they and the extremes which they go between are
not equivocal, either in themselves or in their use, and he can enable
his pupils to show well in a _vivâ voce_ disputation, or in a popular
harangue, or in a written dissertation, he has achieved the main
purpose of his profession.

Such are the characteristics of reasoning, viewed as a science or
scientific art, or inferential process, and we might anticipate that,
narrow as by necessity is its field of view, for that reason its
pretensions to be demonstrative were incontrovertible. In a certain
sense they really are so; while we talk logic, we are unanswerable;
but then, on the other hand, this universal living scene of things is
after all as little a logical world as it is a poetical; and, as it
cannot without violence be exalted into poetical perfection, neither
can it be attenuated into a logical formula. Abstract can only conduct
to abstract; but we have need to attain by our reasonings to what
is concrete; and the margin between the abstract conclusions of the
science, and the concrete facts which we wish to ascertain, will be
found to reduce the force of the inferential method from demonstration
to the mere determination of the probable. Thus, whereas (as I have
already said) Inference starts with conditions, as starting with
premisses, here are two reasons why, when employed upon matters of
fact, it can only conclude probabilities: first, because its premisses
are assumed, not proved; and secondly, because its conclusions are
abstract, and not concrete. I will now consider these two points
separately.

1.

Inference comes short of proof in concrete matters, because it has
not a full command over the objects to which it relates, but merely
assumes its premisses. In order to complete the proof, we are thrown
upon some previous syllogism or syllogisms, in which the assumptions
may be proved; and then, still farther back, we are thrown upon others
again, to prove the new assumptions of that second order of syllogisms.
Where is this process to stop? especially since it must run upon
separated, divergent, and multiplied lines of argument, the farther
the investigation is carried back. At length a score of propositions
present themselves, all to be proved by propositions more evident than
themselves, in order to enable them respectively to become premisses to
that series of inferences which terminates in the conclusion which we
originally drew. But even now the difficulty is not at an end; it would
be something to arrive at length at premisses which are undeniable,
however long we might be in arriving at them; but in this case the long
retrospection lodges us at length at what are called first principles,
the recondite sources of all knowledge, as to which logic provides
no common measure of minds,—which are accepted by some, rejected by
others,—in which, and not in the syllogistic exhibitions, lies the
whole problem of attaining to truth,—and which are called self-evident
by their respective advocates because they are evident in no other way.
One of the two uses contemplated in reasoning by rule, or in verbal
argumentation, was, as I have said, to establish a standard of truth
and to supersede the _ipse dixit_ of authority: how does it fulfil this
end, if it only leads us back to first principles, about which there is
interminable controversy? We are not able to prove by syllogism that
there are any self-evident propositions at all; but supposing there
are (as of course I hold there are), still who can determine these by
logic? Syllogism, then, though of course it has its use, still does
only the minutest and easiest part of the work, in the investigation of
truth, for when there is any difficulty, that difficulty commonly lies
in determining first principles, not in the arrangement of proofs.

Even when argument is the most direct and severe of its kind, there
must be those assumptions in the process which resolve themselves into
the conditions of human nature; but how many more assumptions does that
process in ordinary concrete matters involve, subtle assumptions not
directly arising out of these primary conditions, but accompanying the
course of reasoning, step by step, and traceable to the sentiments of
the age, country, religion, social habits and ideas, of the particular
inquirers or disputants, and passing current without detection,
because admitted equally on all hands! And to these must be added
the assumptions which are made from the necessity of the case, in
consequence of the prolixity and elaborateness of any argument which
should faithfully note down all the propositions which go to make it
up. We recognize this tediousness even in the case of the theorems of
Euclid, though mathematical proof is comparatively simple.

Logic then does not really prove; it enables us to join issue with
others; it suggests ideas; it opens views; it maps out for us the lines
of thought; it verifies negatively; it determines when differences of
opinion are hopeless; and when and how far conclusions are probable;
but for genuine proof in concrete matter we require an _organon_ more
delicate, versatile, and elastic than verbal argumentation.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I ought to give an illustration of what I have been stating in general
terms; but it is difficult to do so without a digression. However, if
it must be, I look round the room in which I happen to be writing, and
take down the first book which catches my eye. It is an old volume
of a Magazine of great name; I open it at random and fall upon a
discussion about the then lately discovered emendations of the text of
Shakespeare. It will do for my purpose.

In the account of Falstaff’s death in “Henry V.” (act ii. scene 3) we
read, according to the received text, the well-known words, “His nose
was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields.” In the first
authentic edition, published in 1623, some years after Shakespeare’s
death, the words, I believe, ran, “and a table of green fields,” which
has no sense. Accordingly, an anonymous critic, reported by Theobald in
the last century, corrected them to “and ’a talked of green fields,”
Theobald himself improved the reading into “and ’a babbled of green
fields,” which since his time has been the received text. But just
twenty years ago an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
annotated perhaps by a contemporary, which, among as many as 20,000
corrections of the text, substituted for the corrupt reading of
1623, the words “on a table of green frieze,” which has a sufficient
sense, though far less acceptable to an admirer of Shakespeare, than
Theobald’s. The genuineness of this copy with its annotations, as it is
presented to us, I shall here take for granted.

Now I understand, or at least will suppose, the argument, maintained
in the article of the Magazine in question, to run thus:—“Theobald’s
reading, as at present received, is to be retained, to the exclusion
of the text of 1623 and of the emendation made on the copy of the
edition of 1632;—to the exclusion of the text of 1623 because that
text is corrupt; to the exclusion of the annotation of 1632 because
it is anonymous.” I wish it then observed how many large questions
are opened in the discussion which ensues, how many recondite and
untractable principles have to be settled, and how impotent is logic,
or any reasonings which can be thrown into language, to deal with these
indispensable first principles.

The first position is, “The authoritative reading of 1623 is not to
be restored to the received text, because it is corrupt.” Now are we
to take it for granted, as a first principle, which needs no proof,
that a text may be tampered with, because it is corrupt? However the
corrupt reading arose, it is authoritative. It is found in an edition,
published by known persons, only six years after Shakespeare’s death,
from his own manuscript, as it appears, and with his corrections of
earlier faulty impressions. Authority cannot sanction nonsense, but
it can forbid critics from experimentalizing upon it. If the text of
Shakespeare is corrupt, it should be published as corrupt.

I believe the best editors of the Greek tragedians have given up the
impertinence of introducing their conjectures into the text; and a
classic like Shakespeare has a right to be treated with the same
respect as Æschylus. To this it will be replied, that Shakespeare is
for the general public and Æschylus for students of a dead language;
that the run of men read for amusement or as a recreation, and that,
if the editions of Shakespeare were made on critical principles, they
would remain unsold. Here, then, we are brought to the question whether
it is any advantage to read Shakespeare except with the care and pains
which a classic demands, and whether he is in fact read at all by those
whom such critical exactness would offend; and thus we are led on to
further questions about cultivation of mind and the education of the
masses. Further, the question presents itself, whether the general
admiration of Shakespeare is genuine, whether it is not a mere fashion,
whether the multitude of men understand him at all, whether it is not
true that every one makes much of him, because every one else makes
much of him. Can we possibly make Shakespeare light reading, especially
in this day of cheap novels, by ever so much correction of his text?

Now supposing this point settled, and the text of 1623 put out of
court, then comes the claim of the Annotator to introduce into
Shakespeare’s text the emendation made upon his copy of the edition of
1632; why is he not of greater authority than Theobald, the inventor
of the received reading, and his emendation of more authority than
Theobald’s? If the corrupt reading must any how be got out of the
way, why should not the Annotator, rather than Theobald, determine
its substitute? For what we know, the authority of the anonymous
Annotator may be very great. There is nothing to show that he was
not a contemporary of the poet; and if so, the question arises, what
is the character of his emendations? are they his own private and
arbitrary conjectures, or are they informations from those who knew
Shakespeare, traditions of the theatre, of the actors or spectators of
his plays? Here, then, we are involved in intricate questions which
can only be decided by a minute examination of the 20,000 emendations
so industriously brought together by this anonymous critic. But
it is obvious that a verbal argumentation upon 20,000 corrections
is impossible: there must be first careful processes of perusal,
classification, discrimination, selection, which mainly are acts of the
mind without the intervention of language. There must be a cumulation
of arguments on one side and on the other, of which only the heads or
the results can be put upon paper. Next come in questions of criticism
and taste, with their recondite and disputable premisses, and the
usual deductions from them, so subtle and difficult to follow. All
this being considered, am I wrong in saying that, though controversy
is both possible and useful at all times, yet it is not adequate
to this occasion; rather that that sum-total of argument (whether
for or against the Annotator) which is furnished by his numerous
emendations,—or what may be called the multiform, evidential fact, in
which the examination of these emendations results,—requires rather
to be photographed on the individual mind as by one impression, than
admits of delineation for the satisfaction of the many in any known or
possible language, however rich in vocabulary and flexible in structure?

And now as to the third point which presents itself for consideration,
the claim of Theobald’s emendation to retain its place in the _textus
receptus_. It strikes me with wonder that an argument in its defence
could have been put forward to the following effect, viz. that true
though it be, that the Editors of 1623 are of much more authority than
Theobald, and that the Annotator’s reading in the passage in question
is more likely to be correct than Theobald’s, nevertheless Theobald’s
has by this time acquired a prescriptive right to its place there,
the prescription of more than a hundred years;—that usurpation has
become legitimacy; that Theobald’s words have sunk into the hearts of
thousands; that in fact they have become Shakespeare’s; that it would
be a dangerous innovation and an evil precedent to touch them. If we
begin an unsettlement of the popular mind, where is it to stop?

Thus it appears, in order to do justice to the question before us, we
have to betake ourselves to the consideration of myths, pious frauds,
and other grave matters, which introduce us into a _sylva_, dense and
intricate, of first principles and elementary phenomena, belonging to
the domains of archeology and theology. Nor is this all; when such
views of the duty of garbling a classic are propounded, they open upon
us a long vista of sceptical interrogations which go far to disparage
the claims upon us, the genius, the very existence of the great poet
to whose honour these views are intended to minister. For perhaps,
after all, Shakespeare is really but a collection of many Theobalds,
who have each of them a right to his own share of him. There was a
great dramatic school in his day; he was one of a number of first-rate
artists,—perhaps they wrote in common. How are we to know what is his,
or how much? Are the best parts his, or the worst? It is said that the
players put in what is vulgar and offensive in his writings; perhaps
they inserted the beauties. I have heard it urged years ago, as an
objection to Sheridan’s claim of authorship to the plays which bear
his name, that they were so unlike each other; is not this the very
peculiarity of those imputed to Shakespeare? Were ever the writings of
one man so various, so impersonal? can we form any one true idea of
what he was in history or character, by means of them? is he not in
short “_vox et præterea nihil_”? Then again, in corroboration, is there
any author’s life so deficient in biographical notices as his? We know
about Hooker, Spenser, Spelman, Raleigh, Harvey, his contemporaries:
what do we know of Shakespeare? Is he much more than a name? Is not
the traditional object of an Englishman’s idolatry after all a nebula
of genius, destined, like Homer, to be resolved into its separate and
independent luminaries, as soon as we have a criticism powerful enough
for the purpose? I must not be supposed for a moment to countenance
such scepticism myself,—though it is a subject worthy the attention
of a sceptical age: here I have introduced it simply to suggest how
many words go to make up a thoroughly valid argument; how short and
easy a way to a true conclusion is the logic of good sense; how little
syllogisms have to do with the formation of opinion; how little depends
upon the inferential proofs, and how much upon those pre-existing
beliefs and views, in which men either already agree with each other or
hopelessly differ, before they begin to dispute, and which are hidden
deep in our nature, or, it may be, in our personal peculiarities.

2.

So much on the multiplicity of assumptions, which in spite of formal
exactness, logical reasoning in concrete matters is forced to admit,
and on the consequent uncertainty which attends its conclusions. Now
I come to the second reason why its conclusions are thus wanting in
precision.

In this world of sense we have to do with things, far more than with
notions. We are not solitary, left to the contemplation of our own
thoughts and their legitimate developments. We are surrounded by
external beings, and our enunciations are directed to the concrete.
We reason in order to enlarge our knowledge of matters, which do not
depend on us for being what they are. But how is an exercise of mind,
which is for the most part occupied with notions, not things, competent
to deal with things, except partially and indirectly? This is the main
reason why an inference, however fully worded, (except perhaps in some
peculiar cases, which are out of place here,) never can reach so far
as to ascertain a fact. As I have already said, arguments about the
abstract cannot handle and determine the concrete. They may approximate
to a proof, but they only reach the probable, because they cannot reach
the particular.

Even in mathematical physics a margin is left for possible imperfection
in the investigation. When the planet Neptune was discovered, it was
deservedly considered a triumph of science, that abstract reasonings
had done so much towards determining the planet and its orbit. There
would have been no triumph in success, had there been no hazard of
failure; it is no triumph to Euclid, in pure mathematics, that the
geometrical conclusions of his second book can be worked out and
verified by algebra.

The motions of the heavenly bodies are almost mathematical in their
precision; but there is a multitude of matters, to which mathematical
science is applied, which are in their nature intricate and obscure,
and require that reasoning by rule should be completed by the living
mind. Who would be satisfied with a navigator or engineer, who had no
practice or experience whereby to carry on his scientific conclusions
out of their native abstract into the concrete and the real? What is
the meaning of the distrust, which is ordinarily felt, of speculators
and theorists but this, that they are dead to the necessity of personal
prudence and judgment to qualify and complete their logic? Science,
working by itself, reaches truth in the abstract, and probability in
the concrete; but what we aim at is truth in the concrete.

This is true of other inferences besides mathematical. They come to
no definite conclusions about matters of fact, except as they are
made effectual for their purpose by the living intelligence which
uses them. “All men have their price; Fabricius is a man; he has his
price;” but he had not his price; how is this? Because he is more
than a universal; because he falls under other universals; because
universals are ever at war with each other; because what is called a
universal is only a general; because what is only general does not lead
to a necessary conclusion. Let us judge him by another universal. “Men
have a conscience; Fabricius is a man; he has a conscience.” Until we
have actual experience of Fabricius, we can only say, that, since he is
a man, perhaps he will take a bribe, and perhaps he will not. “Latet
dolus in generalibus;” they are arbitrary and fallacious, if we take
them for more than broad views and aspects of things, serving as our
notes and indications for judging of the particular, but not absolutely
touching and determining facts.

Let units come first, and (so-called) universals second; let universals
minister to units, not units be sacrificed to universals. John,
Richard, and Robert are individual things, independent, incommunicable.
We may find some kind of common measure between them, and we may give
it the name of man, man as such, the typical man, the _auto-anthropos_.
We are justified in so doing, and in investing it with general
attributes, and bestowing on it what we consider a definition. But
we think we may go on to impose our definition on the whole race,
and to every member of it, to the thousand Johns, Richards, and
Roberts who are found in it. No; each of them is what he is, in spite
of it. Not any one of them is man, as such, or coincides with the
_auto-anthropos_. Another John is not necessarily rational, because
“all men are rational,” for he may be an idiot;—nor because “man is a
being of progress,” does the second Richard progress, for he may be a
dunce;—nor, because “man is made for society,” must we therefore go on
to deny that the second Robert is a gipsy or a bandit, as he is found
to be. There is no such thing as stereotyped humanity; it must ever
be a vague, bodiless idea, because the concrete units from which it
is formed are independent realities. General laws are not inviolable
truths; much less are they necessary causes. Since, as a rule, men are
rational, progressive, and social, there is a high probability of this
rule being true in the case of a particular person; but we must know
him to be sure of it.

Each thing has its own nature and its own history. When the nature and
the history of many things are similar, we say that they have the same
nature; but there is no such thing as one and the same nature; they are
each of them itself, not identical, but like. A law is not a fact, but
a notion. “All men die; therefore Elias has died;” but he has not died,
and did not die. He was an exception to the general law of humanity;
so far, he did not come under that law, but under the law (so to say)
of Elias. It was the peculiarity of his individuality, that he left
the world without dying: what right have we to subject the person of
Elias to the scientific notion of an abstract humanity, which we have
formed without asking his leave? Why must the tyrant majority find a
rule for his history? “But all men are mortal;” not so; what is really
meant is, that “man, as such, is mortal,” or the abstract, typical
_auto-anthropos_; therefore the minor premiss ought to be, “Elias was
the _auto-anthropos_ or abstract man;” but he was not, and could not be
the abstract man, nor could any one else, any more than the average man
of an Insurance Company is every individual man who insures his life
with it. Such a syllogism proves nothing about the veritable Elias,
except in the way of antecedent probability. If it be said that Elias
was exempted from death, not by nature, but by miracle, what is this
to the purpose, undeniable as it is? Still, to have this miraculous
exemption was the personal prerogative of Elias. We call it miracle,
because God ordinarily acts otherwise. He who causes men in general
to die, gave to Elias not to die. This miraculous gift comes into the
individuality of Elias. On this individuality we must fix our thoughts,
and not begin our notion of him by ignoring it. He was a man, and
something more than “man”; and if we do not take this into account, we
fall into an initial error in our thoughts of him.

What is true of Elias is true of every one in his own place and degree.
We call rationality the distinction of man, when compared with other
animals. This is true in logic; but in fact a man differs from a brute,
not in rationality only, but in all that he is, even in those respects
in which he is most like a brute; so that his whole self, his bones,
limbs, make, life, reason, moral feeling, immortality, and all that
he is besides, is his real _differentia_, in contrast to a horse or
a dog. And in like manner as regards John and Richard, when compared
with one another; each is himself, and nothing else, and, though,
regarded abstractedly, the two may fairly be said to have something in
common, (viz. that abstract sameness which does not exist at all,) yet,
strictly speaking, they have nothing in common, for each of them has a
vested interest in all that he himself is; and, moreover, what seems
to be common in the two, becomes in fact so uncommon, so _sui simile_,
in their respective individualities—the bodily frame of each is so
singled out from all other bodies by its special constitution, sound
or weak, by its vitality, activity, pathological history and changes,
and, again, the mind of each is so distinct from all other minds, in
disposition, powers, and habits,—that, instead of saying, as logicians
say, that the two men differ only in number, we ought, I repeat, rather
to say that they differ from each other in all that they are, in
identity, in incommunicability, in personality.

Nor does any real thing admit, by any calculus of logic, of being
dissected into all the possible general notions which it admits, nor,
in consequence, of being recomposed out of them; though the attempt
thus to treat it is more unpromising in proportion to the intricacy
and completeness of its make. We cannot see through any one of the
myriad beings which make up the universe, or give the full catalogue
of its belongings. We are accustomed, indeed, and rightly, to speak of
the Creator Himself as incomprehensible; and, indeed, He is so by an
incommunicable attribute; but in a certain sense each of His creatures
is incomprehensible to us also, in the sense that no one has a perfect
understanding of it but He. We recognize and appropriate aspects of
them, and logic is useful to us in registering these aspects and what
they imply; but it does not give us to know even one individual being.

So much on logical argumentation; and in speaking of the syllogism,
I have spoken of all inferential processes whatever, as expressed
in language, (if they are such as to be reducible to science,) for
they all require general notions, as conditions of their coming to a
conclusion.

Thus, in the deductive argument, “Europe has no security for peace,
till its large standing armies in its separate states are reduced; for
a large standing army is in its very idea provocative of war,” the
conclusion is only probable, for it may so be that in no country is
that pure idea realized, but in every country in concrete fact there
may be circumstances, political or social, which destroy the abstract
dangerousness.

So, too, as regards Induction and Analogy, as modes of Inference;
for, whether I argue, “This place will have the cholera, unless it is
drained; for there are a number of well-ascertained cases which point
to this conclusion;” or, “The sun will rise to-morrow, for it rose
to-day;” in either method of reasoning I appeal, in order to prove a
particular case, to a general principle or law, which has not force
enough to warrant more than a probable conclusion. As to the cholera,
the place in question may have certain antagonist advantages, which
anticipate or neutralize the miasma which is the principle of the
poison; and as to the sun’s rising to-morrow, there was a first day of
the sun’s rising, and therefore there may be a last.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

This is what I have to say on formal Inference, when taken to represent
Ratiocination. Science in all its departments has too much simplicity
and exactness, from the nature of the case, to be the measure of fact.
In its very perfection lies its incompetency to settle particulars
and details. As to Logic, its chain of conclusions hangs loose at
both ends; both the point from which the proof should start, and the
points at which it should arrive, are beyond its reach; it comes
short both of first principles and of concrete issues. Even its most
elaborate exhibitions fail to represent adequately the sum total
of considerations by which an individual mind is determined in its
judgment of things; even its most careful combinations made to bear
on a conclusion want that steadiness of aim which is necessary for
hitting it. As I said when I began, thought is too keen and manifold,
its sources are too remote and hidden, its path too personal, delicate,
and circuitous, its subject-matter too various and intricate, to admit
of the trammels of any language, of whatever subtlety and of whatever
compass.

Nor is it any disparagement of the proper value of formal reasonings
thus to speak of them. That they cannot proceed beyond probabilities
is most readily allowed by those who use them most. Philosophers,
experimentalists, lawyers, in their several ways, have commonly the
reputation of being, at least on moral and religious subjects, hard
of belief; because, proceeding in the necessary investigation by the
analytical method of verbal inference, they find within its limits
no sufficient resources for attaining a conclusion. Nay, they do not
always find it possible in their own special province severally; for,
even when in their hearts they have no doubt about a conclusion, still
often, from the habit of their minds, they are reluctant to own it,
and dwell upon the deficiencies of the evidence, or the possibility of
error, because they speak by rule and by book, though they judge and
determine by common-sense.

Every exercise of nature or of art is good in its place; and the uses
of this logical inference are manifold. It is the great principle of
order in our thinking; it reduces a chaos into harmony; it catalogues
the accumulations of knowledge; it maps out for us the relations of
its separate departments; it puts us in the way to correct its own
mistakes. It enables the independent intellects of many, acting and
re-acting on each other, to bring their collective force to bear upon
one and the same subject-matter, or the same question. If language
is an inestimable gift to man, the logical faculty prepares it for
our use. Though it does not go so far as to ascertain truth, still it
teaches us the direction in which truth lies, and how propositions
lie towards each other. Nor is it a slight benefit to know what is
probable, and what is not so, what is needed for the proof of a point,
what is wanting in a theory, how a theory hangs together, and what
will follow, if it be admitted. Though it does not itself discover
the unknown, it is one principal way by which discoveries are made.
Moreover, a course of argument, which is simply conditional, will
point out when and where experiment and observation should be applied,
or testimony sought for, as often happens both in physical and legal
questions. A logical hypothesis is the means of holding facts together,
explaining difficulties, and reconciling the imagination to what is
strange. And, again, processes of logic are useful as enabling us to
get over particular stages of an investigation speedily and surely, as
on a journey we now and then gain time by travelling by night, make
short cuts when the high-road winds, or adopt water-carriage to avoid
fatigue.

But reasoning by rule and in words is too natural to us, to admit
of being regarded merely in the light of utility. Our inquiries
spontaneously fall into scientific sequence, and we think in logic,
as we talk in prose, without aiming at doing so. However sure we are
of the accuracy of our instinctive conclusions, we as instinctively
put them into words, as far as we can; as preferring, if possible, to
have them in an objective shape which we can fall back upon,—first
for our own satisfaction, then for our justification with others.
Such a tangible defence of what we hold, inadequate as it necessarily
is, considered as an analysis of our ratiocination in its length and
breadth, nevertheless is in such sense associated with our holdings,
and so fortifies and illustrates them, that it acts as a vivid
apprehension acts, giving them luminousness and force. Thus inference
becomes a sort of symbol of assent, and even bears upon action.

I have enlarged on these obvious considerations, lest I should seem
paradoxical; but they do not impair the main position of this Section,
that Inference, considered in the shape of verbal argumentation,
determines neither our principles, nor our ultimate judgments,—that it
is neither the test of truth, nor the adequate basis of assent.(12)


§ 2. Informal Inference.


It is plain that formal logical sequence is not in fact the method
by which we are enabled to become certain of what is concrete; and
it is equally plain, from what has been already suggested, what the
real and necessary method is. It is the cumulation of probabilities,
independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances
of the particular case which is under review; probabilities too fine
to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into
syllogisms, too numerous and various for such conversion, even were
they convertible. As a man’s portrait differs from a sketch of him, in
having, not merely a continuous outline, but all its details filled in,
and shades and colours laid on and harmonized together, such is the
multiform and intricate process of ratiocination, necessary for our
reaching him as a concrete fact, compared with the rude operation of
syllogistic treatment.

Let us suppose I wish to convert an educated, thoughtful Protestant,
and accordingly present for his acceptance a syllogism of the following
kind:—“All Protestants are bound to join the Church; you are a
Protestant: ergo.” He answers, we will say, by denying both premisses;
and he does so by means of arguments, which branch out into other
arguments, and those into others, and all of them severally requiring
to be considered by him on their own merits, before the syllogism
reaches him, and in consequence mounting up, taken all together, into
an array of inferential exercises large and various beyond calculation.
Moreover, he is bound to submit himself to this complicated process
from the nature of the case; he would act rashly, if he did not; for
he is a concrete individual unit, and being so, is under so many laws,
and is the subject of so many predications all at once, that he cannot
determine, offhand, his position and his duty by the law and the
predication of one syllogism in particular. I mean he may fairly say,
“Distinguo,” to each of its premisses: he says, “Protestants are bound
to join the Church,—under circumstances,” and “I am a Protestant—in a
certain sense;” and therefore the syllogism, at first sight, does not
touch him at all.

Before, then, he grants the major, he asks whether all Protestants
really are bound to join the Church—are they bound in case they do
not feel themselves bound; if they are satisfied that their present
religion is a safe one; if they are sure it is true; if, on the other
hand, they have grave doubts as to the doctrinal fidelity and purity of
the Church; if they are convinced that the Church is corrupt; if their
conscience instinctively rejects certain of its doctrines; if history
convinces them that the Pope’s power is not _jure divino_, but merely
in the order of Providence? if, again, they are in a heathen country
where priests are not? or where the only priest who is to be found
exacts of them, as a condition of their reception, a profession, which
the Creed of Pope Pius IV. says nothing about; for instance, that the
Holy See is fallible even when it teaches, or that the Temporal Power
is an anti-Christian corruption? On one or other of such grounds he
thinks he need not change his religion; but presently he asks himself,
Can a Protestant be in such a state as to be really satisfied with
his religion, as he has just now been professing? Can he possibly
believe Protestantism came from above, as a whole? how much of it can
he believe came from above? and, as to that portion which he feels did
come from above, has it not all been derived to him from the Church,
when traced to its source? Is not Protestantism in itself a negation?
Did not the Church exist before it? and can he be sure, on the other
hand, that any one of the Church’s doctrines is not from above?
Further, he finds he has to make up his mind what is a corruption,
and what are the tests of it; what he means by a religion; whether
it is obligatory to profess any religion in particular; what are the
standards of truth and falsehood in religion; and what are the special
claims of the Church.

And so, again, as to the minor premiss, perhaps he will answer, that
he is not a Protestant; that he is a Catholic of the early undivided
Church; that he is a Catholic, but not a Papist. Then he has to
determine questions about division, schism, visible unity, what is
essential, what is desirable; about provisional states; as to the
adjustment of the Church’s claims with those of personal judgment and
responsibility; as to the soul of the Church contrasted with the body;
as to degrees of proof, and the degree necessary for his conversion;
as to what is called his providential position, and the responsibility
of change; as to the sincerity of his purpose to follow the Divine
Will, whithersoever it may lead him; as to his intellectual capacity of
investigating such questions at all.

None of these questions, as they come before him, admit of simple
demonstration; but each carries with it a number of independent
probable arguments, sufficient, when united, for a reasonable
conclusion about itself. And first he determines that the questions are
such as he personally, with such talents or attainments as he has, may
fairly entertain; and then he goes on, after deliberation, to form a
definite judgment upon them; and determines them, one way or another,
in their bearing on the bald syllogism which was originally offered
to his acceptance. And, we will say, he comes to the conclusion, that
he ought to accept it as true in his case; that he is a Protestant
in such a sense, of such a complexion, of such knowledge, under such
circumstances, as to be called upon by duty to join the Church; that
this is a conclusion of which he can be certain, and ought to be
certain, and that he will be incurring grave responsibility, if he
does not accept it as certain, and act upon the certainty of it. And
to this conclusion he comes, as is plain, not by any possible verbal
enumeration of all the considerations, minute but abundant, delicate
but effective, which unite to bring him to it; but by a mental
comprehension of the whole case, and a discernment of its upshot,
sometimes after much deliberation, but, it may be, by a clear and rapid
act of the intellect, always, however, by an unwritten summing-up,
something like the summation of the terms, _plus_ and _minus_ of an
algebraical series.

This I conceive to be the real method of reasoning in concrete matters;
and it has these characteristics:—First, it does not supersede the
logical form of inference, but is one and the same with it; only it is
no longer an abstraction, but carried out into the realities of life,
its premisses being instinct with the substance and the momentum of
that mass of probabilities, which, acting upon each other in correction
and confirmation, carry it home definitely to the individual case,
which is its original scope.

Next, from what has been said it is plain, that such a process of
reasoning is more or less implicit, and without the direct and full
advertence of the mind exercising it. As by the use of our eyesight we
recognize two brothers, yet without being able to express what it is by
which we distinguish them; as at first sight we perhaps confuse them
together, but, on better knowledge, we see no likeness between them at
all; as it requires an artist’s eye to determine what lines and shades
make a countenance look young or old, amiable, thoughtful, angry or
conceited, the principle of discrimination being in each case real,
but implicit;—so is the mind unequal to a complete analysis of the
motives which carry it on to a particular conclusion, and is swayed and
determined by a body of proof, which it recognizes only as a body, and
not in its constituent parts.

And thirdly, it is plain, that, in this investigation of the method of
concrete inference, we have not advanced one step towards depriving
inference of its conditional character; for it is still as dependent on
premisses, as it is in its elementary idea. On the contrary, we have
rather added to the obscurity of the problem; for a syllogism is at
least a demonstration, when the premisses are granted, but a cumulation
of probabilities, over and above their implicit character, will vary
both in their number and their separate estimated value, according to
the particular intellect which is employed upon it. It follows that
what to one intellect is a proof is not so to another, and that the
certainty of a proposition does properly consist in the certitude of
the mind which contemplates it. And this of course may be said without
prejudice to the objective truth or falsehood of propositions, since it
does not follow that these propositions on the one hand are not true,
and based on right reason, and those on the other not false, and based
on false reason, because not all men discriminate them in the same way.

Having thus explained the view which I would take of reasoning in
the concrete, viz. that, from the nature of the case, and from the
constitution of the human mind, certitude is the result of arguments
which, taken in the letter, and not in their full implicit sense,
are but probabilities, I proceed to dwell on some instances and
circumstances of a phenomenon which seems to me as undeniable as to
many it may be perplexing.

1.

Let us take three instances belonging respectively to the present, the
past, and the future.

1. We are all absolutely certain, beyond the possibility of doubt, that
Great Britain is an island. We give to that proposition our deliberate
and unconditional adhesion. There is no security on which we should
be better content to stake our interests, our property, our welfare,
than on the fact that we are living in an island. We have no fear of
any geographical discovery which may reverse our belief. We should be
amused or angry at the assertion, as a bad jest, did any one say that
we were at this time joined to the main-land in Norway or in France,
though a canal was cut across the isthmus. We are as little exposed to
the misgiving, “Perhaps we are not on an island after all,” as to the
question, “Is it quite certain that the angle in a semi-circle is a
right-angle?” It is a simple and primary truth with us, if any truth is
such; to believe it is as legitimate an exercise of assent, as there
are legitimate exercises of doubt or of opinion. This is the position
of our minds towards our insularity; yet are the arguments producible
for it (to use the common expression) in black and white commensurate
with this overpowering certitude about it?

Our reasons for believing that we are circumnavigable are such as
these:—first, we have been so taught in our childhood, and it is so in
all the maps; next, we have never heard it contradicted or questioned;
on the contrary, every one whom we have heard speak on the subject
of Great Britain, every book we have read, invariably took it for
granted; our whole national history, the routine transactions and
current events of the country, our social and commercial system, our
political relations with foreigners, imply it in one way or another.
Numberless facts, or what we consider facts, rest on the truth of it;
no received fact rests on its being otherwise. If there is anywhere a
junction between us and the continent, where is it? and how do we know
it? is it in the north or in the south? There is a manifest _reductio
ad absurdum_ attached to the notion that we can be deceived on such a
point as this.

However, negative arguments and circumstantial evidence are not all,
in such a matter, which we have a right to require. They are not the
highest kind of proof possible. Those who have circumnavigated the
island have a right to be certain: have we ever ourselves even fallen
in with any one who has? And as to the common belief, what is the proof
that we are not all of us believing it on the credit of each other?
And then, when it is said that every one believes it, and everything
implies it, how much comes home to me personally of this “every one”
and “everything”? The question is, Why do I believe it myself? A living
statesman is said to have fancied Demerara an island; his belief was
an impression; have we personally more than an impression, if we view
the matter argumentatively, a lifelong impression about Great Britain,
like the belief, so long and so widely entertained, that the earth was
immovable, and the sun careered round it? I am not at all insinuating
that we are not rational in our certitude; I only mean that we cannot
analyze a proof satisfactorily, the result of which good sense actually
guarantees to us.

2. Father Hardouin maintained that Terence’s Plays, Virgil’s “Æneid,”
Horace’s Odes, and the Histories of Livy and Tacitus, were the
forgeries of the monks of the thirteenth century. That he should be
able to argue in behalf of such a position, shows of course that the
proof in behalf of the received opinion is not overwhelming. That is,
we have no means of inferring absolutely, that Virgil’s episode of
Dido, or of the Sibyl, and Horace’s “Te quoque mensorem” and “Quem
tu Melpomene,” belong to that Augustan age, which owes its celebrity
mainly to those poets. Our common-sense, however, believes in their
genuineness without any hesitation or reserve, as if it had been
demonstrated, and not in proportion to the available evidence in its
favour, or the balance of arguments.

So much at first sight;—but what are our grounds for dismissing thus
summarily, as we are likely to do, a theory such as Hardouin’s? For
let it be observed first, that all knowledge of the Latin classics
comes to us from the medieval transcriptions of them, and they who
transcribed them had the opportunity of forging or garbling them. We
are simply at their mercy; for neither by oral transmission, nor by
monumental inscriptions, nor by contemporaneous manuscripts are the
works of Virgil, Horace, and Terence, of Livy and Tacitus, brought
to our knowledge. The existing copies, whenever made, are to us the
autographic originals. Next, it must be considered, that the numerous
religious bodies, then existing over the face of Europe, had leisure
enough, in the course of a century, to compose, not only all the
classics, but all the Fathers too. The question is, whether they had
the ability. This is the main point on which the inquiry turns, or at
least the most obvious; and it forms one of those arguments, which,
from the nature of the case, are felt rather than are convertible into
syllogisms. Hardouin allows that the Georgics, Horace’s Satires and
Epistles, and the whole of Cicero, are genuine: we have a standard
then in these undisputed compositions of the Augustan age. We have a
standard also, in the extant medieval works, of what the thirteenth
century could do; and we see at once how widely the disputed works
differ from the medieval. Now could the thirteenth century simulate
Augustan writers better than the Augustan could simulate such writers
as those of the thirteenth? No. Perhaps, when the subject is critically
examined, the question may be brought to a more simple issue; but
as to our personal reasons for receiving as genuine the whole of
Virgil, Horace, Livy, Tacitus, and Terence, they are summed up in
our conviction that the monks had not the ability to write them.
That is, we take for granted that we are sufficiently informed about
the capabilities of the human mind, and the conditions of genius, to
be quite sure that an age which was fertile in great ideas and in
momentous elements of the future, robust in thought, hopeful in its
anticipations, of singular intellectual curiosity and acumen, and of
high genius in at least one of the fine arts, could not, for the very
reason of its pre-eminence in its own line, have an equal pre-eminence
in a contrary one. We do not pretend to be able to draw the line
between what the medieval intellect could or could not do; but we feel
sure that at least it could not write the classics. An instinctive
sense of this, and a faith in testimony, are the sufficient, but the
undeveloped argument on which to ground our certitude.

I will add, that, if we deal with arguments in the mere letter, the
question of the authorship of works in any case has much difficulty.
I have noticed it in the instance of Shakespeare, and of Newton. We
are all certain that Johnson wrote the prose of Johnson, and Pope the
poetry of Pope; but what is there but prescription, at least after
contemporaries are dead, to connect together the author of the work and
the owner of the name? Our lawyers prefer the examination of present
witnesses to affidavits on paper; but the tradition of “testimonia,”
such as are prefixed to the classics and the Fathers, together with the
absence of dissentient voices, is the adequate groundwork of our belief
in the history of literature.

3. Once more: what are my grounds for thinking that I, in my own
particular case, shall die? I am as certain of it in my own innermost
mind, as I am that I now live; but what is the distinct evidence on
which I allow myself to be certain? how would it tell in a court of
justice? how should I fare under a cross-examination upon the grounds
of my certitude? Demonstration of course I cannot have of a future
event, unless by means of a Divine Voice; but what logical defence can
I make for that undoubting, obstinate anticipation of it, of which I
could not rid myself, if I tried?

First, the future cannot be proved _à posteriori_; therefore we
are compelled by the nature of the case to put up with _à priori_
arguments, that is, with antecedent probability, which is by itself no
logical proof. Men tell me that there is a law of death, meaning by law
a necessity; and I answer that they are throwing dust into my eyes,
giving me words instead of things. What is a law but a generalized
fact? and what power has the past over the future? and what power has
the case of others over my own case? and how many deaths have I seen?
how many ocular witnesses have imparted to me their experience of
deaths, sufficient to establish what is called a law?

But let there be a law of death; so there is a law, we are told, that
the planets, if let alone, would severally fall into the sun—it is the
centrifugal law which hinders it, and so the centripetal law is never
carried out. In like manner I am not under the law of death alone,
I am under a thousand laws, if I am under one; and they thwart and
counteract each other, and jointly determine the irregular line, along
which my actual history runs, divergent from the special direction
of any one of them. No law is carried out, except in cases where it
acts freely: how do I know that the law of death will be allowed its
free action in my particular case? We often are able to avert death by
medical treatment: why should death have its effect, sooner or later,
in every case conceivable?

It is true that the human frame, in all instances which come before
me, first grows, and then declines, wastes, and decays, in visible
preparation for dissolution. We see death seldom, but of this decline
we are witnesses daily; still, it is a plain fact, that most men who
die, die, not by any law of death, but by the law of disease; and some
writers have questioned whether death is ever, strictly speaking,
natural. Now, are diseases necessary? is there any law that every one,
sooner or later, must fall under the power of disease? and what would
happen on a large scale, were there no diseases? Is what we call the
law of death anything more than the chance of disease? Is the prospect
of my death, in its logical evidence,—as that evidence is brought home
to me—much more than a high probability?

The strongest proof I have for my inevitable mortality is the _reductio
ad absurdum_. Can I point to the man, in historic times, who has
lived his two hundred years? What has become of past generations of
men, unless it is true that they suffered dissolution? But this is
a circuitous argument to warrant a conclusion to which in matter
of fact I adhere so relentlessly. Anyhow, there is a considerable
“surplusage,” as Locke calls it, of belief over proof, when I determine
that I individually must die. But what logic cannot do, my own living
personal reasoning, my good sense, which is the healthy condition of
such personal reasoning, but which cannot adequately express itself in
words, does for me, and I am possessed with the most precise, absolute,
masterful certitude of my dying some day or other.

I am led on by these reflections to make another remark. If it is
difficult to explain how a man knows that he shall die, is it not more
difficult for him to satisfy himself how he knows that he was born?
His knowledge about himself does not rest on memory, nor on distinct
testimony, nor on circumstantial evidence. Can he bring into one
focus of proof the reasons which make him so sure? I am not speaking
of scientific men, who have diverse channels of knowledge, but of an
ordinary individual, as one of ourselves.

Answers doubtless may be given to some of these questions; but, on the
whole, I think it is the fact that many of our most obstinate and most
reasonable certitudes depend on proofs which are informal and personal,
which baffle our powers of analysis, and cannot be brought under
logical rule, because they cannot be submitted to logical statistics.
If we must speak of Law, this recognition of a correlation between
certitude and implicit proof seems to me a law of our minds.

2.

I said just now that an object of sense presents itself to our view as
one whole, and not in its separate details: we take it in, recognize
it, and discriminate it from other objects, all at once. Such too is
the intellectual view we take of the _momenta_ of proof for a concrete
truth; we grasp the full tale of premisses and the conclusion, _per
modum unius_,—by a sort of instinctive perception of the legitimate
conclusion in and through the premisses, not by a formal juxta-position
of propositions; though of course such a juxta-position is useful and
natural, both to direct and to verify, just as in objects of sight
our notice of bodily peculiarities, or the remarks of others may aid
us in establishing a case of disputed identity. And, as this man or
that will receive his own impression of one and the same person, and
judge differently from others about his countenance, its expression,
its moral significance, its physical contour and complexion, so an
intellectual question may strike two minds very differently, may awaken
in them distinct associations, may be invested by them in contrary
characteristics, and lead them to opposite conclusions;—and so, again,
a body of proof, or a line of argument, may produce a distinct, nay, a
dissimilar effect, as addressed to one or to the other.

Thus in concrete reasonings we are in great measure thrown back into
that condition, from which logic proposed to rescue us. We judge for
ourselves, by our own lights, and on our own principles; and our
criterion of truth is not so much the manipulation of propositions, as
the intellectual and moral character of the person maintaining them,
and the ultimate silent effect of his arguments or conclusions upon our
minds.

It is this distinction between ratiocination as the exercise of
a living faculty in the individual intellect, and mere skill in
argumentative science, which is the true interpretation of the
prejudice which exists against logic in the popular mind, and of the
animadversions which are levelled against it, as that its formulas make
a pedant and a _doctrinaire_, that it never makes converts, that it
leads to rationalism, that Englishmen are too practical to be logical,
that an ounce of common-sense goes farther than many cartloads of
logic, that Laputa is the land of logicians, and the like. Such maxims
mean, when analyzed, that the processes of reasoning which legitimately
lead to assent, to action, to certitude, are in fact too multiform,
subtle, omnigenous, too implicit, to allow of being measured by rule,
that they are after all personal,—verbal argumentation being useful
only in subordination to a higher logic. It is this which was meant
by the Judge who, when asked for his advice by a friend, on his being
called to important duties which were new to him, bade him always lay
down the law boldly, but never give his reasons, for his decision was
likely to be right, but his reasons sure to be unsatisfactory. This is
the point which I proceed to illustrate.

1. I will take a question of the present moment. “We shall have a
European war, _for_ Greece is audaciously defying Turkey.” How are we
to test the validity of the reason, implied, not expressed, in the
word “for”? Only the judgment of diplomatists, statesmen, capitalists,
and the like, founded on experience, strengthened by practical and
historical knowledge, controlled by self-interest, can decide the worth
of that “for” in relation to accepting or not accepting the conclusion
which depends on it. The argument is from concrete fact to concrete
fact. How will mere logical inferences, which cannot proceed without
general and abstract propositions, help us on to the determination
of this particular case? It is not the case of Switzerland attacking
Austria, or of Portugal attacking Spain, or of Belgium attacking
Prussia, but a case without parallels. To draw a scientific conclusion,
the argument must run somewhat in this way:—“All audacious defiances
of Turkey on the part of Greece must end in a European war; these
present acts of Greece are such: ergo;”—where the major premiss is
more difficult to accept than the conclusion, and the proof becomes an
“obscurum per obscurius.” But, in truth, I should not betake myself
to some one universal proposition to defend my view of the matter; I
should determine the particular case by its particular circumstances,
by the combination of many uncatalogued experiences floating in my
memory, of many reflections, variously produced, felt rather than
capable of statement; and if I had them not, I should go to those who
had. I assent in consequence of some such complex act of judgment,
or from faith in those who are capable of making it, and practically
syllogism has no part, even verificatory, in the action of my mind.

I take this instance at random in illustration; now let me follow it up
by more serious cases.

2. Leighton says, “What a full confession do we make of our
dissatisfaction with the objects of our bodily senses, that in our
attempts to express what we conceive of the best of beings and the
greatest of felicities to be, we describe by the exact contraries of
all that we experience here,—the one as infinite, incomprehensible,
immutable, &c.; the other as incorruptible, undefiled, and that passeth
not away. At all events, this coincidence, say rather identity of
attributes, is sufficient to apprise us that, to be inheritors of
bliss, we must become the children of God.” Coleridge quotes this
passage, and adds, “Another and more fruitful, perhaps more solid,
inference from the facts would be, that there is something in the human
mind which makes it know that in all finite quantity, there is an
infinite, in all measures of time an eternal; that the latter are the
basis, the substance, of the former; and that, as we truly are only as
far as God is with us, so neither can we truly possess, that is, enjoy
our being or any other real good, but by living in the sense of His
holy presence.(13)”

What is this an argument for? how few readers will enter into either
premiss or conclusion! and of those who understand what it means, will
not at least some confess that they understand it by fits and starts,
not at all times? Can we ascertain its force by mood and figure? Is
there any royal road by which we may indolently be carried along into
the acceptance of it? Does not the author rightly number it among his
“aids” for our “reflection,” not instruments for our compulsion? It is
plain that, if the passage is worth anything, we must secure that worth
for our own use by the personal action of our own minds, or else we
shall be only professing and asserting its doctrine, without having any
ground or right to assert it. And our preparation for understanding and
making use of it will be the general state of our mental discipline and
cultivation, our own experiences, our appreciation of religious ideas,
the perspicacity and steadiness of our intellectual vision.

3. It is argued by Hume against the actual occurrence of the Jewish
and Christian miracles, that, whereas “it is experience only which
gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experience which
assures us of the laws of nature,” therefore, “when these two kinds of
experience are contrary” to each other, “we are bound to subtract the
one from the other;” and, in consequence, since we have no experience
of a violation of natural laws, and much experience of the violation of
truth, “we may establish it as a maxim that no human testimony can have
such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any
such system of religion.”

I will accept the general proposition, but I resist its application.
Doubtless it is abstractedly more likely that men should lie than
that the order of nature should be infringed; but what is abstract
reasoning to a question of concrete fact? To arrive at the fact of any
matter, we must eschew generalities, and take things as they stand,
with all their circumstances. _À priori_, of course the acts of men
are not so trustworthy as the order of nature, and the pretence of
miracles is in fact more common than the occurrence. But the question
is not about miracles in general, or men in general, but definitely,
whether these particular miracles, ascribed to the particular Peter,
James, and John, are more likely to have been or not; whether they
are unlikely, supposing that there is a Power, external to the world,
who can bring them about; supposing they are the only means by which
He can reveal Himself to those who need a revelation; supposing He
is likely to reveal Himself; that He has a great end in doing so;
that the professed miracles in question are like His natural works,
and such as He is likely to work, in case He wrought miracles; that
great effects, otherwise unaccountable, in the event followed upon the
acts said to be miraculous; that they were from the first accepted as
true by large numbers of men against their natural interests; that
the reception of them as true has left its mark upon the world, as no
other event ever did; that, viewed in their effects, they have—that is,
the belief of them has—served to raise human nature to a high moral
standard, otherwise unattainable: these and the like considerations
are parts of a great complex argument, which so far can be put into
propositions, but which, even between, and around, and behind these,
still is implicit and secret, and cannot by any ingenuity be imprisoned
in a formula, and packed into a nut-shell. These various conditions may
be decided in the affirmative or in the negative. That is a further
point; here I only insist upon the nature of the argument, if it is to
be philosophical. It must be no smart antithesis which may look well on
paper, but the living action of the mind on a great problem of fact;
and we must summon to our aid all our powers and resources, if we would
encounter it worthily, and not as if it were a literary essay.

4. “Consider the establishment of the Christian religion,” says Pascal
in his “Thoughts.” “Here is a religion contrary to our nature, which
establishes itself in men’s minds with so much mildness, as to use no
external force; with so much energy, that no tortures could silence
its martyrs and confessors; and consider the holiness, devotion,
humility of its true disciples; its sacred books, their superhuman
grandeur, their admirable simplicity. Consider the character of its
Founder; His associates and disciples, unlettered men, yet possessed of
wisdom sufficient to confound the ablest philosopher; the astonishing
succession of prophets who heralded Him; the state at this day of the
Jewish people who rejected Him and His religion; its perpetuity and its
holiness; the light which its doctrines shed upon the contrarieties of
our nature;—after considering these things, let any man judge if it be
possible to doubt about its being the only true one.(14)”

This is an argument parallel in its character to that by which we
ascribe the classics to the Augustan age. We urge, that, though we
cannot draw the line definitely between what the monks could do in
literature, and what they could not, anyhow Virgil’s “Æneid” and the
Odes of Horace are far beyond the highest capacity of the medieval
mind, which, however great, was different in the character of its
endowments. And in like manner we maintain, that, granting that we
cannot decide how far the human mind can advance by its own unaided
powers in religious ideas and sentiments, and in religious practice,
still the facts of Christianity, as they stand, are beyond what is
possible to man, and betoken the presence of a higher intelligence,
purpose, and might.

Many have been converted and sustained in their faith by this argument,
which admits of being powerfully stated; but still such statement is
after all only intended to be a vehicle of thought, and to open the
mind to the apprehension of the facts of the case, and to trace them
and their implications in outline, not to convince by the logic of its
mere wording. Do we not think and muse as we read it, try to master
it as we proceed, put down the book in which we find it, fill out its
details from our own resources, and then resume the study of it? And,
when we have to give an account of it to others, should we make use
of its language, or even of its thoughts, and not rather of its drift
and spirit? Has it never struck us what different lights different
minds throw upon the same theory and argument, nay, how they seem to be
differing in detail when they are professing, and in reality showing,
a concurrence in it? Have we never found, that, when a friend takes
up the defence of what we have written or said, that at first we are
unable to recognize in his statement of it what we meant it to convey?
It will be our wisdom to avail ourselves of language, as far as it will
go, but to aim mainly by means of it to stimulate, in those to whom we
address ourselves, a mode of thinking and trains of thought similar to
our own, leading them on by their own independent action, not by any
syllogistic compulsion. Hence it is that an intellectual school will
always have something of an esoteric character; for it is an assemblage
of minds that think; their bond is unity of thought, and their words
become a sort of _tessera_, not expressing thought, but symbolizing it.

Recurring to Pascal’s argument, I observe that, its force depending
upon the assumption that the facts of Christianity are beyond human
nature, therefore, according as the powers of nature are placed at a
high or low standard, that force will be greater or less; and that
standard will vary according to the respective dispositions, opinions,
and experiences, of those to whom the argument is addressed. Thus its
value is a personal question; not as if there were not an objective
truth and Christianity as a whole not supernatural, but that, when we
come to consider where it is that the supernatural presence is found,
there may be fair differences of opinion, both as to the fact and the
proof of what is supernatural. There is a multitude of facts, which,
taken separately, may perhaps be natural, but, found together, must
come from a source above nature; and what these are, and how many are
necessary, will be variously determined. And while every inquirer has
a right to determine the question according to the best exercise of
his judgment, still whether he so determine it for himself, or trust
in part or altogether to the judgment of those who have the best claim
to judge, in either case he is guided by the implicit processes of the
reasoning faculty, not by any manufacture of arguments forcing their
way to an irrefragable conclusion.

5. Pascal writes in another place, “He who doubts, but seeks not
to have his doubts removed, is at once the most criminal and the
most unhappy of mortals. If, together with this, he is tranquil and
self-satisfied, if he be vain of his tranquillity, or makes his state
a topic of mirth and self-gratulation, I have not words to describe so
insane a creature. Truly it is to the honour of religion to have for
its adversaries men so bereft of reason; their opposition, far from
being formidable, bears testimony to its most distinguishing truths;
for the great object of the Christian religion is to establish the
corruption of our nature, and the redemption by Jesus Christ.(15)”
Elsewhere he says of Montaigne, “He involves everything in such
universal, unmingled scepticism, as to doubt of his very doubts. He was
a pure Pyrrhonist. He ridicules all attempts at certainty in anything.
Delighted with exhibiting in his own person the contradictions that
exist in the mind of a free-thinker, it is all one to him whether
he is successful or not in his argument. The virtue he loved was
simple, sociable, gay, sprightly, and playful; to use one of his own
expressions, ‘Ignorance and incuriousness are two charming pillows for
a sound head.’(16)”

Here are two celebrated writers in direct opposition to each other in
their fundamental view of truth and duty. Shall we say that there is
no such thing as truth and error, but that anything is truth to a man
which he troweth? and not rather, as the solution of a great mystery,
that truth there is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in
upon us through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual
being; and that in consequence that perception of its first principles
which is natural to us is enfeebled, obstructed, perverted, by
allurements of sense and the supremacy of self, and, on the other hand,
quickened by aspirations after the supernatural; so that at length two
characters of mind are brought out into shape, and two standards and
systems of thought,—each logical, when analyzed, yet contradictory
of each other, and only not antagonistic because they have no common
ground on which they can conflict?

6. Montaigne was endowed with a good estate, health, leisure, and an
easy temper, literary tastes, and a sufficiency of books: he could
afford thus to play with life, and the abysses into which it leads us.
Let us take a case in contrast.

“I think,” says the poor dying factory-girl in the tale, “if this
should be the end of all, and if all I have been born for is just to
work my heart and life away, and to sicken in this dree place, with
those mill-stones in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for
them to stop and let me have a little piece of quiet, and with the
fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep
breath of the clear air, and my mother gone, and I never able to tell
her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles,—I think, if this
life is the end, and that there is no God to wipe away all tears from
all eyes, I could go mad!(17)”

Here is an argument for the immortality of the soul. As to its force,
be it great or small, will it make a figure in a logical disputation,
carried on _secundum artem_? Can any scientific common measure compel
the intellects of Dives and Lazarus to take the same estimate of it? Is
there any test of the validity of it better than the _ipse dixit_ of
private judgment, that is, the judgment of those who have a right to
judge, and next, the agreement of many private judgments in one and the
same view of it?

7. “In order to prove plainly and intelligibly,” says Dr. Samuel
Clarke, “that God is a Being, which must of necessity be endued with
perfect knowledge, ’tis to be observed that knowledge is a perfection,
without which the foregoing attributes are no perfections at all, and
without which those which follow can have no foundation. Where there
is no Knowledge, Eternity and Immensity are as nothing, and Justice,
Goodness, Mercy, and Wisdom can have no place. The idea of eternity
and omnipresence, devoid of knowledge, is as the notion of darkness
compared with that of light. ’Tis as a notion of the world without the
sun to illuminate it; ’tis as the notion of inanimate matter (which is
the atheist’s supreme cause) compared with that of light and spirit.
And as for the following attributes of Justice, Goodness, Mercy, and
Wisdom, ’tis evident that without knowledge there could not possibly be
any such things as these at all.(18)”

The argument here used in behalf of the Divine Attribute of Knowledge
comes under the general proposition that the attributes imply each
other, for the denial of one is the denial of the rest. To some minds
this thesis is self-evident; others are utterly insensible to its
force. Will it bear bringing out into words throughout the whole
series of its argumentative links? for if it does, then either those
who maintain it or those who reject it, the one or the other, will be
compelled by logical necessity to confess that they are in error. “God
is wise, if He is eternal; He is good, if He is wise; He is just, if
He is good.” What skill can so arrange these propositions, so add to
them, so combine them, that they may be able, by the force of their
juxta-position, to follow one from the other, and become one and the
same by an inevitable correlation. That is not the method by which the
argument becomes a demonstration. Such a method, used by a Theist in
controversy against men who are unprepared personally for the question,
will but issue in his retreat along a series of major propositions,
farther and farther back, till he and they find themselves in a land of
shadows, “where the light is as darkness.”

To feel the true force of an argument like this, we must not confine
ourselves to abstractions, and merely compare notion with notion, but
we must contemplate the God of our conscience as a Living Being, as
one Object and Reality, _under_ the aspect of this or that attribute.
We must patiently rest in the thought of the Eternal, Omnipresent, and
All-knowing, rather than of Eternity, Omnipresence, and Omniscience;
and we must not hurry on and force a series of deductions, which, if
they are to be realized, must distil like dew into our minds, and form
themselves spontaneously there, by a calm contemplation and gradual
understanding of their premisses. Ordinarily speaking, such deductions
do not flow forth, except according as the Image,(19) presented to us
through conscience, on which they depend, is cherished within us with
the sentiments which, supposing it be, as we know it is, the truth, it
necessarily claims of us, and is seen reflected, by the habit of our
intellect, in the appointments and the events of the external world.
And, in their manifestation to our inward sense, they are analogous to
the knowledge which we at length attain of the details of a landscape,
after we have selected the right stand-point, and have learned to
accommodate the pupil of our eye to the varying focus necessary for
seeing them; have accustomed it to the glare of light, have mentally
grouped or discriminated lines and shadows and given them their due
meaning, and have mastered the perspective of the whole. Or they may be
compared to a landscape as drawn by the pencil (unless the illustration
seem forced), in which by the skill of the artist, amid the bold
outlines of trees and rocks, when the eye has learned to take in their
reverse aspects, the forms or faces of historical personages are
discernible, which we catch and lose again, and then recover, and which
some who look on with us are never able to catch at all.

Analogous to such an exercise of sight, must be our mode of dealing
with the verbal expositions of an argument such as Clarke’s. His words
speak to those who understand the speech. To the mere barren intellect
they are but the pale ghosts of notions; but the trained imagination
sees in them the representations of things. He who has once detected
in his conscience the outline of a Lawgiver and Judge, needs no
definition of Him, whom he dimly but surely contemplates there, and
he rejects the mechanism of logic, which cannot contain in its grasp
matters so real and so recondite. Such a one, according to the strength
and perspicacity of his mind, the force of his presentiments, and his
power of sustained attention, is able to pronounce about the great
Sight which encompasses him, as about some visible object; and, in his
investigation of the Divine Attributes, is not inferring abstraction
from abstraction, but noting down the aspects and phases of that one
thing on which he ever is gazing. Nor is it possible to limit the depth
of meaning, which at length he will attach to words, which to the many
are but definitions and ideas.

Here then again, as in the other instances, it seems clear, that
methodical processes of inference, useful as they are, as far as they
go, are only instruments of the mind, and need, in order to their due
exercise, that real ratiocination and present imagination which gives
them a sense beyond their letter, and which, while acting through them,
reaches to conclusions beyond and above them. Such a living _organon_
is a personal gift, and not a mere method or calculus.

3.

That there are cases, in which evidence, not sufficient for a
scientific proof, is nevertheless sufficient for assent and certitude,
is the doctrine of Locke, as of most men. He tells us that belief,
grounded on sufficient probabilities, “rises to assurance;” and as
to the question of sufficiency, that where propositions “border near
on certainty,” then “we assent to them as firmly as if they were
infallibly demonstrated.” The only question is, what these propositions
are: this he does not tell us, but he seems to think that they are
few in number, and will be without any trouble recognized at once by
common-sense; whereas, unless I am mistaken, they are to be found
throughout the range of concrete matter, and that supra-logical
judgment, which is the warrant for our certitude about them, is not
mere common-sense, but the true healthy action of our ratiocinative
powers, an action more subtle and more comprehensive than the mere
appreciation of a syllogistic argument. It is often called the
“judicium prudentis viri,” a standard of certitude which holds good
in all concrete matter, not only in those cases of practice and duty,
in which we are more familiar with it, but in questions of truth and
falsehood generally, or in what are called “speculative” questions,
and that, not indeed to the exclusion, but as the supplement of logic.
Thus a proof, except in abstract demonstration, has always in it,
more or less, an element of the personal, because “prudence” is not a
constituent part of our nature, but a personal endowment.

And the language in common use, when concrete conclusions are in
question, implies the presence of this personal element in the proof
of them. We are considered to feel, rather than to see, its cogency;
and we decide, not that the conclusion must be, but that it cannot be
otherwise. We say, that we do not see our way to doubt it, that it is
impossible to doubt, that we are bound to believe it, that we should
be idiots, if we did not believe. We never should say, in abstract
science, that we could not escape the conclusion that 25 was a mean
proportional between 5 and 125; or that a man had no right to say
that a tangent to a circle at the extremity of the radius makes an
acute angle with it. Yet, though our certitude of the fact is quite
as clear, we should not think it unnatural to say that the insularity
of Great Britain is as good as demonstrated, or that none but a fool
expects never to die. Phrases indeed such as these are sometimes
used to express a shade of doubt, but it is enough for my purpose if
they are also used when doubt is altogether absent. What, then, they
signify, is, what I have so much insisted on, that we have arrived at
these conclusions—not _ex opere operato_, by a scientific necessity
independent of ourselves,—but by the action of our own minds, by our
own individual perception of the truth in question, under a sense of
duty to those conclusions and with an intellectual conscientiousness.

This certitude and this evidence are often called moral; a word which
I avoid, as having a very vague meaning; but using it here for once,
I observe that moral evidence and moral certitude are all that we can
attain, not only in the case of ethical and spiritual subjects, such
as religion, but of terrestrial and cosmical questions also. So far,
physical Astronomy and Revelation stand on the same footing. Vince, in
his treatise on Astronomy, does but use the language of philosophical
sobriety, when, after speaking of the proofs of the earth’s rotatory
motion, he says, “When these reasons, all upon different principles,
are considered, they amount to a proof of the earth’s rotation about
its axis, which is as satisfactory to the mind as the most direct
demonstration could be;” or, as he had said just before, “the mind
rests equally satisfied, as if the matter was strictly proved.(20)”
That is, first there is no demonstration that the earth rotates; next
there is a cluster of “reasons on _different_ principles,” that is,
independent probabilities in cumulation; thirdly, these “_amount_ to a
proof,” and “the mind” feels “_as if_ the matter was strictly proved,”
that is, there is the equivalent of proof; lastly, “the mind rests
_satisfied_,” that is, it is certain on the point. And though evidence
of the fact is now obtained which was not known fifty years ago, that
evidence on the whole has not changed its character.

Compare with this avowal the language of Butler, when discussing the
proof of Revelation. “Probable proofs,” he says, “by being added, not
only increase the evidence, but multiply it. The truth of our religion,
like the truth of common matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence
taken together ... in like manner as, if in any common case numerous
events acknowledged were to be alleged in proof of any other event
disputed, the truth of the disputed event would be proved, not only if
any one of the acknowledged ones did of itself clearly imply it, but
though no one of them singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged
events taken together could not in reason be supposed to have happened,
unless the disputed one were true.(21)” Here, as in Astronomy, is the
same absence of demonstration of the thesis, the same cumulating and
converging indications of it, the same indirectness in the proof, as
being _per impossibile_, the same recognition nevertheless that the
conclusion is not only probable, but true. One other characteristic
of the argumentative process is given, which is unnecessary in a
subject-matter so clear and simple as astronomical science, viz. the
moral state of the parties inquiring or disputing. They must be “as
much in earnest about religion, as about their temporal affairs,
capable of being convinced, on real evidence, that there is a God who
governs the world, and feel themselves to be of a moral nature and
accountable creatures.(22)”

This being the state of the case, the question arises, whether,
granting that the personality (so to speak) of the parties reasoning
is an important element in proving propositions in concrete matter,
any account can be given of the ratiocinative method in such proofs,
over and above that analysis into syllogism which is possible in each
of its steps in detail. I think there can; though I fear, lest to some
minds it may appear far-fetched or fanciful; however, I will hazard
this imputation. I consider, then, that the principle of concrete
reasoning is parallel to the method of proof which is the foundation of
modern mathematical science, as contained in the celebrated lemma with
which Newton opens his “Principia.” We know that a regular polygon,
inscribed in a circle, its sides being continually diminished, tends
to become that circle, as its limit; but it vanishes before it has
coincided with the circle, so that its tendency to be the circle,
though ever nearer fulfilment, never in fact gets beyond a tendency. In
like manner, the conclusion in a real or concrete question is foreseen
and predicted rather than actually attained; foreseen in the number
and direction of accumulated premisses, which all converge to it, and
approach it, as the result of their combination, more nearly than any
assignable difference, yet do not touch it logically, (though only not
touching it,) on account of the nature of its subject-matter, and the
delicate and implicit character of at least part of the reasonings on
which it depends. It is by the strength, variety, or multiplicity of
premisses, which are only probable, not by invincible syllogisms,—by
objections overcome, by adverse theories neutralized, by difficulties
gradually clearing up, by exceptions proving the rule, by unlooked-for
correlations found with received truths, by suspense and delay in the
process issuing in triumphant reactions,—by all these ways, and many
others, the practised and experienced mind is able to make a sure
divination that a conclusion is inevitable, of which his lines of
reasoning do not actually put him in possession. This is what is meant
by a proposition being “as good as proved,” a conclusion as undeniable
“as if it were proved,” and by the reasons for it “amounting to a
proof,” for a proof is the limit of converging probabilities.

It may be added, that, whereas the logical form of this argument,
is, as I have already observed, indirect, viz. that “the conclusion
cannot be otherwise,” and Butler says that an event is proved, if
its antecedents “could not in reason be supposed to have happened
_unless_ it were true,” and law-books tell us that the principle of
circumstantial evidence is the _reductio ad absurdum_, so Newton
is forced to the same mode of proof for the establishment of his
lemma, about prime and ultimate ratios. “If you deny that they become
ultimately equal,” he says, “let them be ultimately unequal;” and the
consequence follows, “which is against the supposition.”

Such being the character of the mental process in concrete reasoning,
I should wish to adduce some good instances of it in illustration,
instances in which the person reasoning confesses that he is reasoning
on this very process, as I have been stating it; but these are
difficult to find, from the very circumstance that the process from
first to last is carried on as much without words as with them.
However, I will set down three such.

1. First, an instance in physics. Wood, treating of the laws of motion,
thus describes the line of reasoning by which the mind is certified of
them. “They are not indeed self-evident, nor do they admit of accurate
proof by experiment, on account of the effects of friction and the
air’s resistance, which cannot entirely be removed. They are, however,
constantly and invariably suggested to our senses, and they agree with
experiment, as far as experiment can go; and the more accurately the
experiments are made, and the greater care we take to remove all those
impediments which tend to render the conclusions erroneous, the more
nearly do the experiments coincide with these laws.

“Their truth is also established upon a different ground: from these
general principles innumerable particular conclusions have been
deducted; sometimes the deductions are simple and immediate, sometimes
they are made by tedious and intricate operations; yet they are all,
without exception, consistent with each other and with experiment. It
follows thereby, that the principles upon which the calculations are
founded are true.(23)”

The reasoning of this passage (in which the uniformity of the laws of
nature is assumed) seems to me a good illustration of what must be
considered the principle or form of an induction. The conclusion, which
is its scope, is, by its own confession, not proved; but it ought to be
proved, or is as good as proved, and a man would be irrational who did
not take it to be virtually proved; first, because the imperfections
in the proof arise out of its subject-matter and the nature of the
case, so that it _is_ proved _interpretativè_; and next, because in the
same degree in which these faults in the subject-matter are overcome
here or there, are the involved imperfections here or there of the
proof remedied; and further, because, when the conclusion is assumed
as an hypothesis, it throws light upon a multitude of collateral
facts, accounting for them, and uniting them together in one whole.
Consistency is not always the guarantee of truth; but there may be a
consistency in a theory so variously tried and exemplified as to lead
to belief in it, as reasonably as a witness in a court of law may,
after a severe cross-examination, satisfy and assure judge, jury, and
the whole court, of his simple veracity.

2. And from the courts of law shall my second illustration be taken.

A learned writer says, “In criminal prosecutions, the circumstantial
evidence should be such, as to produce nearly the same degree of
certainty as that which arises from direct testimony, and to exclude
a rational probability of innocence.(24)” By degrees of certainty he
seems to mean, together with many other writers, degrees of proof, or
approximations towards proof, and not certitude, as a state of mind;
and he says that no one should be pronounced guilty on evidence which
is not equivalent in weight to direct testimony. So far is clear;
but what is meant by the expression “_rational_ probability”? for
there can be no probability but what is rational. I consider that the
“exclusion of a rational probability” means “the exclusion of any
argument in the man’s favour which has a rational claim to be called
probable,” or rather, “the rational exclusion of any supposition
that he is innocent;” and “rational” is used in contradistinction to
argumentative, and means “resting on implicit reasons,” such as we
feel, indeed, but which for some cause or other, because they are too
subtle or too circuitous, we cannot put into words so as to satisfy
logic. If this is a correct account of his meaning, he says that the
evidence against a criminal, in order to be decisive of his guilt, to
the satisfaction of our conscience, must bear with it, along with the
palpable arguments for that guilt, such a reasonableness, or body of
implicit reasons for it in addition, as may exclude any probability,
really such, that he is not guilty,—that is, it must be an evidence
free from anything obscure, suspicious, unnatural, or defective, such
as (in the judgment of a prudent man) to hinder that summation or
coalescence of the evidence into a proof, which I have compared to the
running into a limit, in the case of mathematical ratios. Just as an
algebraical series may be of a nature never to terminate or admit of
valuation, as being the equivalent of an irrational quantity or surd,
so there may be some grave imperfections in a body of reasons, explicit
or implicit, which is directed to a proof, sufficient to interfere with
its successful issue or resolution, and to balk us with an irrational,
that is, an indeterminate, conclusion.

So much as to the principle of conclusions made upon evidence in
criminal cases; now let us turn to an instance of its application in
a particular instance. Some years ago there was a murder committed,
which unusually agitated the popular mind, and the evidence against
the culprit was necessarily circumstantial. At the trial the Judge, in
addressing the Jury, instructed them on the kind of evidence necessary
for a verdict of _guilty_. Of course he could not mean to say that they
must convict a man, of whose guilt they were not certain, especially
in a case in which two foreign countries, Germany and the American
States, were attentively looking on. If the Jury had any doubt, that
is, reasonable doubt, about the man’s guilt, of course they would
give him the benefit of that doubt. Nor could the certitude, which
would be necessary for an adverse verdict, be merely that which is
sometimes called a “practical certitude,” that is, a certitude indeed,
but a certitude that it was a “duty,” “expedient,” “safe,” to bring
in a verdict of guilty. Of course the Judge spoke of what is called
a “speculative certitude,” that is, a certitude of the fact that the
man was guilty; the only question being, what evidence was sufficient
for the proof, for the certitude of that fact. This is what the Judge
meant; and these are among the remarks which, with this drift, he made
upon the occasion:—

After observing that by circumstantial evidence he meant a case in
which “the facts do not directly prove the actual crime, but lead to
the conclusion that the prisoner committed that crime,” he went on
to disclaim the suggestion, made by counsel in the case, that the
Jury could not pronounce a verdict of _guilty_, unless they were as
much satisfied that the prisoner did the deed as if they had seen him
commit it. “That is not the certainty,” he said, “which is required
of you to discharge your duty to the prisoner, whose safety is in
your hands.” Then he stated what was the “degree of certainty,” that
is, of certainty or perfection of proof, which was necessary to the
question, “involving as it did the life of the prisoner at the bar,”—it
was such as that “with which,” he said, “you decide upon and conclude
your own most important transactions in life. Take the facts which
are proved before you, separate those you believe from those which
you do not believe, and all the conclusions that naturally and almost
necessarily result from those facts, you may confide in as much as in
the facts themselves. The case on the part of the prosecution is the
_story_ of the murder, told by the _different_ witnesses, who _unfold
the circumstances one after another_, according to their occurrence,
together with the _gradual_ discovery of some apparent connexion
between the property that was lost, and the possession of it by the
prisoner.”

Now here I observe, that whereas the conclusion which is contemplated
by the Judge, is what may be pronounced (on the whole, and considering
all things, and judging reasonably) a proved or certain conclusion,
that is, a conclusion of the truth of the allegation against the
prisoner, or of the fact of his guilt, on the other hand, the _motiva_
constituting this reasonable, rational proof, and this satisfactory
certitude, needed not, according to him, to be stronger than those on
which we prudently act on matters of important interest to ourselves,
that is, probable reasons viewed in their convergence and combination.
And whereas the certitude is viewed by the Judge as following on
converging probabilities, which constitute a real, though only a
reasonable, not an argumentative, proof, so it will be observed in this
particular instance, that, in illustration of the general doctrine
which I have laid down, the process is one of “line upon line, and
letter upon letter,” of various details accumulating and of deductions
fitting in to each other; for, in the Judge’s words, there was a
story—and that not told right out and by one witness, but taken up
and handed on from witness to witness—gradually unfolded, and tending
to a proof, which of course might have been ten times stronger than
it was, but was still a proof for all that, and sufficient for its
conclusion,—just as we see that two straight lines are meeting, and are
certain they will meet at a given distance, though we do not actually
see the junction.

3. The third instance I will take is one of a literary character,
the divination of the authorship of a certain anonymous publication,
as suggested mainly by internal evidence, as I find it in a critique
written some twenty years ago. In the extract which I make from it,
we may observe the same steady march of a proof towards a conclusion,
which is (as it were) out of sight;—a reckoning, or a reasonable
judgment, that the conclusion really is proved, and a personal
certitude upon that judgment, joined with a confession that a logical
argument could not well be made out for it, and that the various
details in which the proof consisted were in no small measure implicit
and impalpable.

“Rumour speaks uniformly and clearly enough in attributing it to the
pen of a particular individual. Nor, although a cursory reader might
well skim the book without finding in it anything to suggest, &c.,
... will it appear improbable to the more attentive student of its
internal evidence; and the improbability will decrease more and more,
in proportion as the _reader is capable_ of judging and appreciating
the _delicate, and at first invisible touches_, which limit, to _those
who understand them_, the individuals who can have written it to a very
small number indeed. The utmost scepticism as to its authorship (_which
we do not feel ourselves_) cannot remove it farther from him than to
that of some one among his most intimate friends; so that, leaving
others to discuss antecedent probabilities,” &c.

Here is a writer who professes to have no doubt at all about the
authorship of a book,—which at the same time he cannot prove by mere
argumentation set down in words. The reasons of his conviction are too
delicate, too intricate; nay, they are in part invisible; invisible,
except to those who from circumstances have an intellectual perception
of what does not appear to the many. They are personal to the
individual. This again is an instance, distinctly set before us, of the
particular mode in which the mind progresses in concrete matter, viz.
from merely probable antecedents to the sufficient proof of a fact or a
truth, and, after the proof, to an act of certitude about it.

I trust the foregoing remarks may not deserve the blame of a needless
refinement. I have thought it incumbent on me to illustrate the
intellectual process by which we pass from conditional inference to
unconditional assent; and I have had only the alternative of lying
under the imputation of a paradox or of a subtlety.


§ 3. Natural Inference.


I commenced my remarks upon Inference by saying that reasoning
ordinarily shows as a simple act, not as a process, as if there were no
medium interposed between antecedent and consequent, and the transition
from one to the other were of the nature of an instinct,—that is,
the process is altogether unconscious and implicit. It is necessary,
then, to take some notice of this natural or material Inference, as
an existing phenomenon of mind; and that the more, because I shall
thereby be illustrating and supporting what I have been saying of the
characteristics of inferential processes as carried on in concrete
matter, and especially of their being the action of the mind itself,
that is, by its ratiocinative or illative faculty, not a mere operation
as in the rules of arithmetic.

I say, then, that our most natural mode of reasoning is, not from
propositions to propositions, but from things to things, from concrete
to concrete, from wholes to wholes. Whether the consequents, at
which we arrive from the antecedents with which we start, lead us
to assent or only towards assent, those antecedents commonly are
not recognized by us as subjects for analysis; nay, often are only
indirectly recognized as antecedents at all. Not only is the inference
with its process ignored, but the antecedent also. To the mind itself
the reasoning is a simple divination or prediction; as it literally
is in the instance of enthusiasts, who mistake their own thoughts for
inspirations.

This is the mode in which we ordinarily reason, dealing with things
directly, and as they stand, one by one, in the concrete, with an
intrinsic and personal power, not a conscious adoption of an artificial
instrument or expedient; and it is especially exemplified both in
uneducated men, and in men of genius,—in those who know nothing of
intellectual aids and rules, and in those who care nothing for them,—in
those who are either without or above mental discipline. As true poetry
is a spontaneous outpouring of thought, and therefore belongs to rude
as well as to gifted minds, whereas no one becomes a poet merely by the
canons of criticism, so this unscientific reasoning, being sometimes
a natural, uncultivated faculty, sometimes approaching to a gift,
sometimes an acquired habit and second nature, has a higher source
than logical rule,—“nascitur, non fit.” When it is characterized by
precision, subtlety, promptitude, and truth, it is of course a gift and
a rarity: in ordinary minds it is biassed and degraded by prejudice,
passion, and self-interest; but still, after all, this divination comes
by nature, and belongs to all of us in a measure, to women more than
to men, hitting or missing, as the case may be, but with a success on
the whole sufficient to show that there is a method in it, though it be
implicit.

A peasant who is weather-wise may be simply unable to assign
intelligible reasons why he thinks it will be fine to-morrow; and if
he attempts to do so, he may give reasons wide of the mark; but that
will not weaken his own confidence in his prediction. His mind does not
proceed step by step, but he feels all at once the force of various
combined phenomena, though he is not conscious of them. Again, there
are physicians who excel in the _diagnosis_ of complaints; though it
does not follow from this, that they could defend their decision in a
particular case against a brother physician who disputed it. They are
guided by natural acuteness and varied experience; they have their own
idiosyncratic modes of observing, generalizing, and concluding; when
questioned, they can but rest on their own authority, or appeal to
the future event. In a popular novel,(25) a lawyer is introduced, who
“would know, almost by instinct, whether an accused person was or was
not guilty; and he had already perceived by instinct” that the heroine
was guilty. “I’ve no doubt she’s a clever woman,” he said, and at once
named an attorney practising at the Old Bailey. So, again, experts and
detectives, when employed to investigate mysteries, in cases whether
of the civil or criminal law, discern and follow out indications which
promise solution with a sagacity incomprehensible to ordinary men.
A parallel gift is the intuitive perception of character possessed
by certain men, while others are as destitute of it, as others again
are of an ear for music. What common measure is there between the
judgments of those who have this intuition, and those who have not?
What but the event can settle any difference of opinion which occurs in
their estimation of a third person? These are instances of a natural
capacity, or of nature improved by practice and habit, enabling the
mind to pass promptly from one set of facts to another, not only, I
say, without conscious media, but without conscious antecedents.

Sometimes, I say, this illative faculty is nothing short of genius.
Such seems to have been Newton’s perception of truths mathematical and
physical, though proof was absent. At least that is the impression left
on my own mind by various stories which are told of him, one of which
was stated in the public papers a few years ago. “Professor Sylvester,”
it was said, “has just discovered the proof of Sir Isaac Newton’s rule
for ascertaining the imaginary roots of equations.... This rule has
been a Gordian-knot among algebraists for the last century and a half.
The proof being wanting, authors became ashamed at length of advancing
a proposition, the evidence for which rested on no other foundation
than belief in Newton’s sagacity.(26)”

Such is the gift of the calculating boys who now and then make their
appearance, who seem to have certain short-cuts to conclusions, which
they cannot explain to themselves. Some are said to have been able to
determine off-hand what numbers are prime,—numbers, I think, up to
seven places.

In a very different subject-matter, Napoleon supplies us with an
instance of a parallel genius in reasoning, by which he was enabled
to look at things in his own province, and to interpret them truly,
apparently without any ratiocinative media. “By long experience,” says
Alison, “joined to great natural quickness and precision of eye, he
had acquired the power of judging, with extraordinary accuracy, both
of the amount of the enemy’s force opposed to him in the field, and of
the probable result of the movements, even the most complicated, going
forward in the opposite armies.... He looked around him for a little
while with his telescope, and immediately formed a clear conception of
the position, forces, and intention of the whole hostile array. In this
way he could, with surprising accuracy, calculate in a few minutes,
according to what he could see of their formation and the extent of the
ground which they occupied, the numerical force of armies of 60,000 or
80,000 men; and if their troops were at all scattered, he knew at once
how long it would require for them to concentrate, and how many hours
must elapse before they could make their attack.(27)”

It is difficult to avoid calling such clear presentiments by the name
of instinct; and I think they may so be called, if by instinct be
understood, not a natural sense, one and the same in all, and incapable
of cultivation, but a perception of facts without assignable media of
perceiving. There are those who can tell at once what is conducive or
injurious to their welfare, who are their friends, who their enemies,
what is to happen to them, and how they are to meet it. Presence of
mind, fathoming of motives, talent for repartee, are instances of
this gift. As to that divination of personal danger which is found in
the young and innocent, we find a description of it in one of Scott’s
romances, in which the heroine, “without being able to discover what
was wrong either in the scenes of unusual luxury with which she was
surrounded, or in the manner of her hostess,” is said nevertheless
to have felt “an instinctive apprehension that all was not right,—a
feeling in the human mind,” the author proceeds to say, “allied perhaps
to that sense of danger, which animals exhibit, when placed in the
vicinity of the natural enemies of their race, and which makes birds
cower when the hawk is in the air, and beasts tremble when the tiger is
abroad in the desert.(28)”

A religious biography, lately published, affords us an instance of this
spontaneous perception of truth in the province of revealed doctrine.
“Her firm faith,” says the Author of the Preface, “was so vivid in
its character, that it was almost like an intuition of the entire
prospect of revealed truth. Let an error against faith be concealed
under expressions however abstruse, and her sure instinct found it
out. I have tried this experiment repeatedly. She might not be able to
separate the heresy by analysis, but she saw, and felt, and suffered
from its presence.(29)”

And so of the great fundamental truths of religion, natural and
revealed, and as regards the mass of religious men: these truths,
doubtless, may be proved and defended by an array of invincible logical
arguments, but such is not commonly the method in which those same
logical arguments make their way into our minds. The grounds, on which
we hold the divine origin of the Church, and the previous truths which
are taught us by nature—the being of a God, and the immortality of the
soul—are felt by most men to be recondite and impalpable, in proportion
to their depth and reality. As we cannot see ourselves, so we cannot
well see intellectual motives which are so intimately ours, and which
spring up from the very constitution of our minds; and while we refuse
to admit the notion that religion has not irrefragable arguments in
its behalf, still the attempts to argue, on the part of an individual
_hic et nunc_, will sometimes only confuse his apprehension of sacred
objects, and subtracts from his devotion quite as much as it adds to
his knowledge.

This is found in the case of other perceptions besides that of faith.
It is the case of nature against art: of course, if possible, nature
and art should be combined, but sometimes they are incompatible.
Thus, in the case of calculating boys, it is said, I know not with
what truth, that to teach them the ordinary rules of arithmetic is to
endanger or to destroy the extraordinary endowment. And men who have
the gift of playing on an instrument by ear, are sometimes afraid to
learn by rule, lest they should lose it.

There is an analogy, in this respect, between Ratiocination and
Memory, though the latter may be exercised without antecedents or
media, whereas the former requires them in its very idea. At the
same time association has so much to do with memory, that we may not
unfairly consider that memory, as well as reasoning, depends on certain
previous conditions. Writing, as I have already observed, is a _memoria
technica_, or logic of memory. Now it will be found, I think, that
indispensable as is the use of letters, still, in fact, we weaken our
memory in proportion as we habituate ourselves to commit all that we
wish to remember to memorandums. Of course in proportion as our memory
is weak or over-burdened, and thereby treacherous, we cannot help
ourselves; but in the case of men of strong memory in any particular
subject-matter, as in that of dates, all artificial expedients, from
the “Thirty days has September,” &c., to the more formidable formulas
which are offered for their use, are as difficult and repulsive as
the natural exercise of memory is healthy and easy to them; just as
the clear-headed and practical reasoner, who sees conclusions at a
glance, is uncomfortable under the drill of a logician, being oppressed
and hampered, as David in Saul’s armour, by what is intended to be a
benefit.

I need not say more on this part of the subject. What is called
reasoning is often only a peculiar and personal mode of abstraction,
and so far, like memory, may be said to exist without antecedents.
It is a power of looking at things in some particular aspect, and
of determining their internal and external relations thereby. And
according to the subtlety and versatility of their gift, are men able
to read what comes before them justly, variously, and fruitfully.
Hence, too, it is, that in our intercourse with others, in business
and family matters, in social and political transactions, a word or
an act on the part of another is sometimes a sudden revelation; light
breaks in upon us, and our whole judgment of a course of events, or
of an undertaking, is changed. We determine correctly or otherwise,
as it may be; but in either case, by a sense proper to ourselves, for
another may see the objects which we are thus using, and give them
quite a different interpretation, inasmuch as he abstracts another set
of general notions from those same phenomena which present themselves
to us.

What I have been saying of Ratiocination, may be said of Taste, and
is confirmed by the obvious analogy between the two. Taste, skill,
invention in the fine arts—and so, again, discretion or judgment in
conduct—are exerted spontaneously, when once acquired, and could not
give a clear account of themselves, or of their mode of proceeding.
They do not go by rule, though to a certain point their exercise may
be analyzed, and may take the shape of an art or method. But these
parallels will come before us presently.

And now I come to a further peculiarity of this natural and spontaneous
ratiocination. This faculty, as it is actually found in us, proceeding
from concrete to concrete, belongs to a definite subject-matter,
according to the individual. In spite of Aristotle, I will not allow
that genuine reasoning is an instrumental art; and in spite of Dr.
Johnson, I will assert that genius, as far as it is manifested in
ratiocination, is not equal to all undertakings, but has its own
peculiar subject-matter, and is circumscribed in its range. No one
would for a moment expect that because Newton and Napoleon both had a
genius for ratiocination, that, in consequence, Napoleon could have
generalized the principle of gravitation, or Newton have seen how to
concentrate a hundred thousand men at Austerlitz. The ratiocinative
faculty, then, as found in individuals, is not a general instrument of
knowledge, but has its province, or is what may be called departmental.
It is not so much one faculty, as a collection of similar or analogous
faculties under one name, there being really as many faculties as there
are distinct subject-matters, though in the same person some of them
may, if it so happen, be united,—nay, though some men have a sort of
literary power in arguing in all subject-matters, _de omni scibili_, a
power extensive, but not deep or real.

This surely is the conclusion, to which we are brought by our ordinary
experience of men. It is almost proverbial that a hard-headed
mathematician may have no head at all for what is called historical
evidence. Successful experimentalists need not have talent for legal
research or pleading. A shrewd man of business may be a bad arguer
in philosophical questions. Able statesmen and politicians have been
before now eccentric or superstitious in their religious views. It is
notorious how ridiculous a clever man may make himself, who ventures
to argue with professed theologians, critics, or geologists, though
without positive defects in knowledge of his subject. Priestley, great
in electricity and chemistry, was but a poor ecclesiastical historian.
The Author of the Minute Philosopher is also the Author of the Analyst.
Newton wrote not only his “Principia,” but his comments on the
Apocalypse; Cromwell, whose actions savoured of the boldest logic, was
a confused speaker. In these, and various similar instances, the defect
lay, not so much in an ignorance of facts, as in an inability to handle
those facts suitably; in feeble or perverse modes of abstraction,
observation, comparison, analysis, inference, which nothing could have
obviated, but that which was wanting,—a specific talent, and a ready
exercise of it.

I have already referred to the faculty of memory in illustration; it
will serve me also here. We can form an abstract idea of memory, and
call it one faculty, which has for its subject-matter all past facts
of our personal experience; but this is really only an illusion; for
there is no such gift of universal memory. Of course we all remember,
in a way, as we reason, in all subject-matters; but I am speaking of
remembering rightly, as I spoke of reasoning rightly. In real fact
memory, as a talent, is not one indivisible faculty, but a power of
retaining and recalling the past in this or that department of our
experience, not in any whatever. Two memories, which are both specially
retentive, may also be incommensurate. Some men can recite the canto
of a poem, or good part of a speech, after once reading it, but have
no head for dates. Others have great capacity for the vocabulary of
languages, but recollect nothing of the small occurrences of the day
or year. Others never forget any statement which they have read, and
can give volume and page, but have no memory for faces. I have known
those who could, without effort, run through the succession of days
on which Easter fell for years back; or could say where they were,
or what they were doing, on a given day, in a given year; or could
recollect accurately the Christian names of friends and strangers; or
could enumerate in exact order the names on all the shops from Hyde
Park Corner to the Bank; or had so mastered the University Calendar as
to be able to bear an examination in the academical history of any M.
A. taken at random. And I believe in most of these cases the talent,
in its exceptional character, did not extend beyond several classes of
subjects. There are a hundred memories, as there are a hundred virtues.
Virtue is one indeed in the abstract; but, in fact, gentle and kind
natures are not therefore heroic, and prudent and self-controlled minds
need not be open-handed. At the utmost such virtue is one only _in
posse_; as developed in the concrete, it takes the shape of species
which in no sense imply each other.

So is it with Ratiocination; and as we should betake ourselves to
Newton for physical, not for theological conclusions, and to Wellington
for his military experience, not for statesmanship, so the maxim
holds good generally, “Cuique in arte suâ credendum est:” or, to
use the grand words of Aristotle, “We are bound to give heed to the
undemonstrated sayings and opinions of the experienced and aged, not
less than to demonstrations; because, from their having the eye of
experience, they behold the principles of things.(30)” Instead of
trusting logical science, we must trust persons, namely, those who by
long acquaintance with their subject have a right to judge. And if we
wish ourselves to share in their convictions and the grounds of them,
we must follow their history, and learn as they have learned. We must
take up their particular subject as they took it up, beginning at the
beginning, give ourselves to it, depend on practice and experience
more than on reasoning, and thus gain that mental insight into truth,
whatever its subject-matter may be, which our masters have gained
before us. By following this course, we may make ourselves of their
number, and then we rightly lean upon ourselves; we follow our own
moral or intellectual judgment, but not our skill in argumentation.

This doctrine, stated in substance as above by the great philosopher
of antiquity, is more fully expounded in a passage which he elsewhere
quotes from Hesiod. “Best of all is he,” says that poet, “who is
wise by his own wit; next best he who is wise by the wit of others;
but whoso is neither able to see, nor willing to hear, he is a
good-for-nothing fellow.” Judgment then in all concrete matter is the
architectonic faculty; and what may be called the Illative Sense, or
right judgment in ratiocination, is one branch of it.




Chapter IX. The Illative Sense.


My object in the foregoing pages has been, not to form a theory which
may account for those phenomena of the intellect of which they treat,
viz. those which characterize inference and assent, but to ascertain
what is the matter of fact as regards them, that is, when it is that
assent is given to propositions which are inferred, and under what
circumstances. I have never had the thought of an attempt which would
be ambitious in me, and which has failed in the hands of others, if
that attempt may not unfairly be called unsuccessful, which, though
made by the acutest minds, has not succeeded in convincing opponents.
Especially have I found myself unequal to antecedent reasonings in
the instance of a matter of fact. There are those, who, arguing _à
priori_, maintain, that, since experience leads by syllogism only to
probabilities, certitude is ever a mistake. There are others, who,
while they deny this conclusion, grant the _à priori_ principle assumed
in the argument, and in consequence are obliged, in order to vindicate
the certainty of our knowledge, to have recourse to the hypothesis of
intuitions, intellectual forms, and the like, which belong to us by
nature, and may be considered to elevate our experience into something
more than it is in itself. Earnestly maintaining, as I would, with this
latter school of philosophers, the certainty of knowledge, I think it
enough to appeal to the common voice of mankind in proof of it. That is
to be accounted a normal operation of our nature, which men in general
do actually instance. That is a law of our minds, which is exemplified
in action on a large scale, whether _à priori_ it ought to be a law or
no. Our hoping is a proof that hope, as such, is not an extravagance;
and our possession of certitude is a proof that it is not a weakness or
an absurdity to be certain. How it comes about that we can be certain
is not my business to determine; for me it is sufficient that certitude
is felt. This is what the schoolmen, I believe, call treating a subject
_in facto esse_, in contrast with _in fieri_. Had I attempted the
latter, I should have been falling into metaphysics; but my aim is of a
practical character, such as that of Butler in his _Analogy_, with this
difference, that he treats of probability, doubt, expedience, and duty,
whereas in these pages, without excluding, far from it, the question of
duty, I would confine myself to the truth of things, and to the mind’s
certitude of that truth.

Certitude is a mental state: certainty is a quality of propositions.
Those propositions I call certain, which are such that I am certain of
them. Certitude is not a passive impression made upon the mind from
without, by argumentative compulsion, but in all concrete questions
(nay, even in abstract, for though the reasoning is abstract, the
mind which judges of it is concrete) it is an active recognition of
propositions as true, such as it is the duty of each individual himself
to exercise at the bidding of reason, and, when reason forbids, to
withhold. And reason never bids us be certain except on an absolute
proof; and such a proof can never be furnished to us by the logic of
words, for as certitude is of the mind, so is the act of inference
which leads to it. Every one who reasons, is his own centre; and no
expedient for attaining a common measure of minds can reverse this
truth;—but then the question follows, is there any _criterion_ of the
accuracy of an inference, such as may be our warrant that certitude
is rightly elicited in favour of the proposition inferred, since our
warrant cannot, as I have said, be scientific? I have already said that
the sole and final judgment on the validity of an inference in concrete
matter is committed to the personal action of the ratiocinative
faculty, the perfection or virtue of which I have called the Illative
Sense, a use of the word “sense” parallel to our use of it in “good
sense,” “common sense,” a “sense of beauty,” &c.;—and I own I do not
see any way to go farther than this in answer to the question. However,
I can at least explain my meaning more fully; and therefore I will now
speak, first of the sanction of the Illative Sense, next of its nature,
and then of its range.


§ 1. The Sanction of the Illative Sense.


We are in a world of facts, and we use them; for there is nothing else
to use. We do not quarrel with them, but we take them as they are, and
avail ourselves of what they can do for us. It would be out of place
to demand of fire, water, earth, and air their credentials, so to
say, for acting upon us, or ministering to us. We call them elements,
and turn them to account, and make the most of them. We speculate on
them at our leisure. But what we are still less able to doubt about
or annul, at our leisure or not, is that which is at once their
counterpart and their witness, I mean, ourselves. We are conscious of
the objects of external nature, and we reflect and act upon them, and
this consciousness, reflection, and action we call our rationality.
And as we use the (so called) elements without first criticizing
what we have no command over, so is it much more unmeaning in us to
criticize or find fault with our own nature, which is nothing else than
we ourselves, instead of using it according to the use of which it
ordinarily admits. Our being, with its faculties, mind and body, is a
fact not admitting of question, all things being of necessity referred
to it, not it to other things.

If I may not assume that I exist, and in a particular way, that is,
with a particular mental constitution, I have nothing to speculate
about, and had better let speculation alone. Such as I am, it is my
all; this is my essential stand-point, and must be taken for granted;
otherwise, thought is but an idle amusement, not worth the trouble.
There is no medium between using my faculties, as I have them, and
flinging myself upon the external world according to the random impulse
of the moment, as spray upon the surface of the waves, and simply
forgetting that I am.

I am what I am, or I am nothing. I cannot think, reflect, or judge
about my being, without starting from the very point which I aim at
concluding. My ideas are all assumptions, and I am ever moving in
a circle. I cannot avoid being sufficient for myself, for I cannot
make myself anything else, and to change me is to destroy me. If I do
not use myself, I have no other self to use. My only business is to
ascertain what I am, in order to put it to use. It is enough for the
proof of the value and authority of any function which I possess, to
be able to pronounce that it is natural. What I have to ascertain is
the laws under which I live. My first elementary lesson of duty is
that of resignation to the laws of my nature, whatever they are; my
first disobedience is to be impatient at what I am, and to indulge an
ambitious aspiration after what I cannot be, to cherish a distrust of
my powers, and to desire to change laws which are identical with myself.

Truths such as these, which are too obvious to be called irresistible,
are illustrated by what we see in universal nature. Every being is
in a true sense sufficient for itself, so as to be able to fulfil
its particular needs. It is a general law that, whatever is found as
a function or an attribute of any class of beings, or is natural to
it, is in its substance suitable to it, and subserves its existence,
and cannot be rightly regarded as a fault or enormity. No being could
endure, of which the constituent parts were at war with each other. And
more than this; there is that principle of vitality in every being,
which is of a sanative and restorative character, and which brings
all its parts and functions together into one whole, and is ever
repelling and correcting the mischiefs which befall it, whether from
within or without, while showing no tendency to cast off its belongings
as if foreign to its nature. The brute animals are found severally
with limbs and organs, habits, instincts, appetites, surroundings,
which play together for the safety and welfare of the whole; and,
after all exceptions, may be said each of them to have, after its
own kind, a perfection of nature. Man is the highest of the animals,
and more indeed than an animal, as having a mind; that is, he has a
complex nature different from theirs, with a higher aim and a specific
perfection; but still the fact that other beings find their good in the
use of their particular nature, is a reason for anticipating that to
use duly our own is our interest as well as our necessity.

What is the peculiarity of our nature, in contrast with the inferior
animals around us? It is that, though man cannot change what he is
born with, he is a being of progress with relation to his perfection
and characteristic good. Other beings are complete from their first
existence, in that line of excellence which is allotted to them; but
man begins with nothing realized (to use the word), and he has to
make capital for himself by the exercise of those faculties which are
his natural inheritance. Thus he gradually advances to the fulness of
his original destiny. Nor is this progress mechanical, nor is it of
necessity; it is committed to the personal efforts of each individual
of the species; each of us has the prerogative of completing his
inchoate and rudimental nature, and of developing his own perfection
out of the living elements with which his mind began to be. It is his
gift to be the creator of his own sufficiency; and to be emphatically
self-made. This is the law of his being, which he cannot escape; and
whatever is involved in that law he is bound, or rather he is carried
on, to fulfil.

And here I am brought to the bearing of these remarks upon my subject.
For this law of progress is carried out by means of the acquisition of
knowledge, of which inference and assent are the immediate instruments.
Supposing, then, the advancement of our nature, both in ourselves
individually and as regards the human family, is, to every one of us
in his place, a sacred duty, it follows that that duty is intimately
bound up with the right use of these two main instruments of fulfilling
it. And as we do not gain the knowledge of the law of progress by any
_à priori_ view of man, but by looking at it as the interpretation
which is provided by himself on a large scale in the ordinary action of
his intellectual nature, so too we must appeal to himself, as a fact,
and not to any antecedent theory, in order to find what is the law of
his mind as regards the two faculties in question. If then such an
appeal does bear me out in deciding, as I have done, that the course of
inference is ever more or less obscure, while assent is ever distinct
and definite, and yet that what is in its nature thus absolute does,
in fact follow upon what in outward manifestation is thus complex,
indirect, and recondite, what is left to us but to take things as they
are, and to resign ourselves to what we find? that is, instead of
devising, what cannot be, some sufficient science of reasoning which
may compel certitude in concrete conclusions, to confess that there is
no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony born to truth by the
mind itself, and that this phenomenon, perplexing as we may find it, is
a normal and inevitable characteristic of the mental constitution of a
being like man on a stage such as the world. His progress is a living
growth, not a mechanism; and its instruments are mental acts, not the
formulas and contrivances of language.

We are accustomed in this day to lay great stress upon the harmony
of the universe; and we have well learned the maxim so powerfully
inculcated by our own English philosopher, that in our inquiries into
its laws, we must sternly destroy all idols of the intellect, and
subdue nature by co-operating with her. Knowledge is power, for it
enables us to use eternal principles which we cannot alter. So also is
it in that microcosm, the human mind. Let us follow Bacon more closely
than to distort its faculties according to the demands of an ideal
optimism, instead of looking out for modes of thought proper to our
nature, and faithfully observing them in our intellectual exercises.

Of course I do not stop here. As the structure of the universe speaks
to us of Him who made it, so the laws of the mind are the expression,
not of mere constituted order, but of His will. I should be bound by
them even were they not His laws; but since one of their very functions
is to tell me of Him, they throw a reflex light upon themselves, and,
for resignation to my destiny, I substitute a cheerful concurrence in
an overruling Providence. We may gladly welcome such difficulties as
there are in our mental constitution, and in the interaction of our
faculties, if we are able to feel that He gave them to us, and He can
overrule them for us. We may securely take them as they are, and use
them as we find them. It is He who teaches us all knowledge; and the
way by which we acquire it is His way. He varies that way according to
the subject-matter; but whether He has set before us in our particular
pursuit the way of observation or of experiment, of speculation or of
research, of demonstration or of probability, whether we are inquiring
into the system of the universe, or into the elements of matter and of
life, or into the history of human society and past times, if we take
the way proper to our subject-matter, we have His blessing upon us, and
shall find, besides abundant matter for mere opinion, the materials in
due measure of proof and assent.

And especially, by this disposition of things, shall we learn, as
regards religious and ethical inquiries, how little we can effect,
however much we exert ourselves, without that Blessing; for, as if on
set purpose, He has made this path of thought rugged and circuitous
above other investigations, that the very discipline inflicted on
our minds in finding Him, may mould them into due devotion to Him
when He is found. “Verily Thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel,
the Saviour,” is the very law of His dealings with us. Certainly we
need a clue into the labyrinth which is to lead us to Him; and who
among us can hope to seize upon the true starting-points of thought
for that enterprise, and upon all of them, who is to understand their
right direction, to follow them out to their just limits, and duly to
estimate, adjust, and combine the various reasonings in which they
issue, so as safely to arrive at what it is worth any labour to secure,
without a special illumination from Himself? Such are the dealings
of Wisdom with the elect soul. “She will bring upon him fear, and
dread, and trial; and She will torture him with the tribulation of Her
discipline, till She try him by Her laws, and trust his soul. Then She
will strengthen him, and make Her way straight to him, and give him
joy.”


§ 2. The Nature of the Illative Sense.


It is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings,
not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of
judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative
Sense, and I shall best illustrate it by referring to parallel
faculties, which we commonly recognize without difficulty.

For instance, how does the mind fulfil its function of supreme
direction and control, in matters of duty, social intercourse,
and taste? In all of these separate actions of the intellect, the
individual is supreme, and responsible to himself, nay, under
circumstances, may be justified in opposing himself to the judgment
of the whole world; though he uses rules to his great advantage, as
far as they go, and is in consequence bound to use them. As regards
moral duty, the subject is fully considered in the well-known ethical
treatises of Aristotle.(31) He calls the faculty which guides the mind
in matters of conduct, by the name of _phronesis_, or judgment. This is
the directing, controlling, and determining principle in such matters,
personal and social. What it is to be virtuous, how we are to gain the
just idea and standard of virtue, how we are to approximate in practice
to our own standard, what is right and wrong in a particular case, for
the answers in fulness and accuracy to these and similar questions, the
philosopher refers us to no code of laws, to no moral treatise, because
no science of life, applicable to the case of an individual, has been
or can be written. Such is Aristotle’s doctrine, and it is undoubtedly
true. An ethical system may supply laws, general rules, guiding
principles, a number of examples, suggestions, landmarks, limitations,
cautions, distinctions, solutions of critical or anxious difficulties;
but who is to apply them to a particular case? whither can we go,
except to the living intellect, our own, or another’s? What is written
is too vague, too negative for our need. It bids us avoid extremes;
but it cannot ascertain for us, according to our personal need, the
golden mean. The authoritative oracle, which is to decide our path, is
something more searching and manifold than such jejune generalizations
as treatises can give, which are most distinct and clear when we least
need them. It is seated in the mind of the individual, who is thus his
own law, his own teacher, and his own judge in those special cases of
duty which are personal to him. It comes of an acquired habit, though
it has its first origin in nature itself, and it is formed and matured
by practice and experience; and it manifests itself, not in any breadth
of view, any philosophical comprehension of the mutual relations of
duty towards duty, or any consistency in its teachings, but it is a
capacity sufficient for the occasion, deciding what ought to be done
here and now, by this given person, under these given circumstances. It
decides nothing hypothetical, it does not determine what a man should
do ten years hence, or what another should do at this time. It may
indeed happen to decide ten years hence as it does now, and to decide a
second case now as it now decides a first; still its present act is for
the present, not for the distant or the future.

State or public law is inflexible, but this mental rule is not only
minute and particular, but has an elasticity, which, in its application
to individual cases, is, as I have said, not studious to maintain the
appearance of consistency. In old times the mason’s rule which was
in use at Lesbos was, according to Aristotle, not of wood or iron,
but of lead, so as to allow of its adjustment to the uneven surface
of the stones brought together for the work. By such the philosopher
illustrates the nature of equity in contrast with law, and such is that
_phronesis_, from which the science of morals forms its rules, and
receives its complement.

In this respect of course the law of truth differs from the law of
duty, that duties change, but truths never; but, though truth is ever
one and the same, and the assent of certitude is immutable, still
the reasonings which carry us on to truth and certitude are many and
distinct, and vary with the inquirer; and it is not with assent, but
with the controlling principle in inferences that I am comparing
_phronesis_. It is with this drift that I observe that the rule of
conduct for one man is not always the rule for another, though the rule
is always one and the same in the abstract, and in its principle and
scope. To learn his own duty in his own case, each individual must have
recourse to his own rule; and if his rule is not sufficiently developed
in his intellect for his need, then he goes to some other living,
present authority, to supply it for him, not to the dead letter of a
treatise or a code. A living, present authority, himself or another,
is his immediate guide in matters of a personal, social, or political
character. In buying and selling, in contracts, in his treatment of
others, in giving and receiving, in thinking, speaking, doing, and
working, in toil, in danger, in his recreations and pleasures, every
one of his acts, to be praiseworthy, must be in accordance with this
practical sense. Thus it is, and not by science, that he perfects the
virtues of justice, self-command, magnanimity, generosity, gentleness,
and all others. _Phronesis_ is the regulating principle of every one of
them.

These last words lead me to a further remark. I doubt whether it
is correct, strictly speaking, to consider this _phronesis_ as a
general faculty, directing and perfecting all the virtues at once. So
understood, it is little better than an abstract term, including under
it a circle of analogous faculties, severally proper to the separate
virtues. Properly speaking, there are as many kinds of _phronesis_
as there are virtues; for the judgment, good sense, or tact which
is conspicuous in a man’s conduct in one subject-matter, is not
necessarily traceable in another. As in the parallel cases of memory
and reasoning, he may be great in one aspect of his character, and
little-minded in another. He may be exemplary in his family, yet commit
a fraud on the revenue; he may be just and cruel, brave and sensual,
imprudent and patient. And if this be true of the moral virtues, it
holds good still more fully when we compare what is called his private
character with his public. A good man may make a bad king; profligates
have been great statesmen, or magnanimous political leaders.

So, too, I may go on to speak of the various callings and professions
which give scope to the exercise of great talents, for these talents
also are matured, not by mere rule, but by personal skill and sagacity.
They are as diverse as pleading and cross-examining, conducting a
debate in Parliament, swaying a public meeting, and commanding an
army; and here, too, I observe that, though the directing principle
in each case is called by the same name,—sagacity, skill, tact, or
prudence,—still there is no one ruling faculty leading to eminence in
all these various lines of action in common, but men will excel in one
of them, without any talent for the rest.

The parallel may be continued in the case of the Fine Arts, in which,
though true and scientific rules may be given, no one would therefore
deny that Phidias or Rafael had a far more subtle standard of taste and
a more versatile power of embodying it in his works, than any which he
could communicate to others in even a series of treatises. And here
again genius is indissolubly united to one definite subject-matter; a
poet is not therefore a painter, or an architect a musical composer.

And so, again, as regards the useful arts and personal accomplishments,
we use the same word “skill,” but proficiency in engineering or in
ship-building, or again in engraving, or again in singing, in playing
instruments, in acting, or in gymnastic exercises, is as simply
one with its particular subject-matter, as the human soul with its
particular body, and is, in its own department, a sort of instinct or
inspiration, not an obedience to external rules of criticism or of
science.

It is natural, then, to ask the question, why ratiocination should
be an exception to a general law which attaches to the intellectual
exercises of the mind; why it is held to be commensurate with logical
science; and why logic is made an instrumental art sufficient for
determining every sort of truth, while no one would dream of making any
one formula, however generalized, a working rule at once for poetry,
the art of medicine, and political warfare?

This is what I have to remark concerning the Illative Sense, and in
explanation of its nature and claims; and on the whole, I have spoken
of it in four respects,—as viewed in itself, in its subject-matter, in
the process it uses, and in its function and scope.

First, viewed in its exercise, it is one and the same in all concrete
matters, though employed in them in different measures. We do not
reason in one way in chemistry or law, in another in morals or
religion; but in reasoning on any subject whatever, which is concrete,
we proceed, as far indeed as we can, by the logic of language, but we
are obliged to supplement it by the more subtle and elastic logic of
thought; for forms by themselves prove nothing.

Secondly, it is in fact attached to definite subject-matters, so that
a given individual may possess it in one department of thought, for
instance, history, and not in another, for instance, philosophy.

Thirdly, in coming to its conclusion, it proceeds always in the same
way, by a method of reasoning, which is the elementary principle of
that mathematical calculus of modern times, which has so wonderfully
extended the limits of abstract science.

Fourthly, in no class of concrete reasonings, whether in experimental
science, historical research, or theology, is there any ultimate test
of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness
of the Illative Sense that gives them its sanction; just as there
is no sufficient test of poetical excellence, heroic action, or
gentleman-like conduct, other than the particular mental sense, be it
genius, taste, sense of propriety, or the moral sense, to which those
subject-matters are severally committed. Our duty in each of these is
to strengthen and perfect the special faculty which is its living rule,
and in every case as it comes to do our best. And such also is our duty
and our necessity, as regards the Illative Sense.


§ 3. The Range of the Illative Sense.


Great as are the services of language in enabling us to extend the
compass of our inferences, to test their validity, and to communicate
them to others, still the mind itself is more versatile and vigorous
than any of its works, of which language is one, and it is only
under its penetrating and subtle action that the margin disappears,
which I have described as intervening between verbal argumentation
and conclusions in the concrete. It determines what science cannot
determine, the limit of converging probabilities and the reasons
sufficient for a proof. It is the ratiocinative mind itself, and no
trick of art, however simple in its form and sure in operation, by
which we are able to determine that a moving body left to itself will
never stop, and that no man can live without eating.

Nor, again, is it by any diagram that we are able to scrutinize, sort,
and combine the many premisses which must be first run together before
we answer duly a given question. It is to the living mind that we must
look for the means of using correctly principles of whatever kind,
facts or doctrines, experiences or testimonies, true or probable,
and of discerning what conclusion from these is necessary, suitable,
or expedient, when they are taken for granted; and this, either by
means of a natural gift, or from mental formation and practice and
a long familiarity with those various starting-points. Thus, when
Laud said that he did not see his way to come to terms with the Holy
See, “till Rome was other than she was,” no Catholic would admit the
sentiment: but any Catholic may understand that this is just the
judgment consistent with Laud’s actual condition of thought and cast
of opinions, his ecclesiastical position, and the existing state of
England.

Nor, lastly, is an action of the mind itself less necessary in
relation to those first elements of thought which in all reasoning
are assumptions, the principles, tastes, and opinions, very often of
a personal character, which are half the battle in the inference with
which the reasoning is to terminate. It is the mind itself that detects
them in their obscure recesses, illustrates them, establishes them,
eliminates them, resolves them into simpler ideas, as the case may
be. The mind contemplates them without the use of words, by a process
which cannot be analyzed. Thus it was that Bacon separated the physical
system of the world from the theological; thus that Butler connected
together the moral system with the religious. Logical formulas could
never have sustained the reasonings involved in such investigations.

Thus the Illative Sense, that is, the reasoning faculty, as exercised
by gifted, or by educated or otherwise well-prepared minds, has its
function in the beginning, middle, and end of all discussion and
inquiry, and in every step of the process. It is a rule to itself,
and appeals to no judgment beyond its own; and attends upon the whole
course of thought from antecedents to consequents, with a minute
diligence and unwearied presence, which is impossible to a cumbrous
apparatus of verbal reasoning, though, in communicating with others,
words are the only instrument we possess, and a serviceable, though
imperfect instrument.

One function indeed there is of Logic, to which I have referred in
the preceding sentence, which the Illative Sense does not and cannot
perform. It supplies no common measure between mind and mind, as being
nothing else than a personal gift or acquisition. Few there are, as I
said above, who are good reasoners on all subject-matters. Two men, who
reason well each in his own province of thought, may, one or both of
them, fail and pronounce opposite judgments on a question belonging to
some third province. Moreover, all reasoning being from premisses, and
those premisses arising (if it so happen) in their first elements from
personal characteristics, in which men are in fact in essential and
irremediable variance one with another, the ratiocinative talent can do
no more than point out where the difference between them lies, how far
it is immaterial, when it is worth while continuing an argument between
them, and when not.

Now of the three main occasions of the exercise of the Illative Sense,
which I have been insisting on, and which are the measure of its range,
the start, the course, and the issue of an inquiry, I have already,
in treating of Informal Inference, shown the place it holds in the
final resolution of concrete questions. Here then it is left to me
to illustrate its presence and action in relation to the elementary
premisses, and, again, to the conduct of an argument. And first of the
latter.

1.

There has been a great deal written of late years on the subject of
the state of Greece and Rome during the pre-historic period; let us
say before the Olympiads in Greece, and the war with Pyrrhus in the
annals of Rome. Now, in a question like this, it is plain that the
inquirer has first of all to decide on the point from which he is to
start in the presence of the received accounts; on what side, from what
quarter he is to approach them; on what principles his discussion is
to be conducted; what he is to assume, what opinions or objections he
is summarily to put aside as nugatory, what arguments, and when, he
is to consider as apposite, what false issues are to be avoided, when
the state of his arguments is ripe for a conclusion. Is he to commence
with absolutely discarding all that has hitherto been received; or to
retain it in outline; or to make selections from it; or to consider
and interpret it as mythical, or as allegorical; or to hold so much to
be trustworthy, or at least of _primâ facie_ authority, as he cannot
actually disprove; or never to destroy except in proportion as he can
construct? Then, as to the kind of arguments suitable or admissible,
how far are tradition, analogy, isolated monuments and records, ruins,
vague reports, legends, the facts or sayings of later times, language,
popular proverbs, to tell in the inquiry? what are marks of truth, what
of falsehood, what is probable, what suspicious, what promises well for
discriminating facts from fictions? Then, arguments have to be balanced
against each other, and then lastly the decision is to be made, whether
any conclusion at all can be drawn, or whether any before certain
issues are tried and settled, or whether a probable conclusion or a
certain. It is plain how incessant will be the call here or there for
the exercise of a definitive judgment, how little that judgment will be
helped on by logic, and how intimately it will be dependent upon the
intellectual complexion of the writer.

This might be illustrated at great length, were it necessary, from
the writings of any of those able men, whose names are so well known
in connexion with the subject I have instanced; such as Niebuhr, Mr.
Clinton, Sir George Lewis, Mr. Grote, and Colonel Mure. These authors
have severally views of their own on the period of history which they
have selected for investigation, and they are too learned and logical
not to know and to use to the utmost the testimonies by which the facts
which they investigate are to be ascertained. Why then do they differ
so much from each other, whether in their estimate of those testimonies
or of those facts? Because that estimate is simply their own, coming of
their own judgment; and that judgment coming of assumptions of their
own, explicit or implicit; and those assumptions spontaneously issuing
out of the state of thought respectively belonging to each of them; and
all these successive processes of minute reasoning superintended and
directed by an intellectual instrument far too subtle and spiritual to
be scientific.

What was Niebuhr’s idea of the office he had undertaken? I suppose it
was to accept what he found in the historians of Rome, to interrogate
it, to take it to pieces, to put it together again, to re-arrange and
interpret it. Prescription together with internal consistency was
to him the evidence of fact, and if he pulled down he felt he was
bound to build up. Very different is the spirit of another school of
writers, with whom prescription is nothing, and who will admit no
evidence which has not first proved its right to be admitted. “We are
able,” says Niebuhr, “to trace the history of the Roman constitution
back to the beginning of the Commonwealth, as accurately as we wish,
and even more perfectly than the history of many portions of the
middle ages.” But, “we may rejoice,” says Sir George Lewis, “that the
ingenuity or learning of Niebuhr should have enabled him to advance
many noble hypotheses and conjectures respecting the form of the early
constitution of Rome, but, unless he can support those hypotheses by
sufficient evidence, they are not entitled to our belief.” “Niebuhr,”
says a writer nearly related to myself, “often expresses much contempt
for mere incredulous criticism and negative conclusions; ... yet wisely
to disbelieve is our first grand requisite in dealing with materials of
mixed worth.” And Sir George Lewis again, “It may be said that there is
scarcely any of the leading conclusions of Niebuhr’s work which has not
been impugned by some subsequent writer.”

Again, “It is true,” says Niebuhr, “that the Trojan war belongs to the
region of fable, yet undeniably it has an historical foundation.” But
Mr. Grote writes, “If we are asked whether the Trojan war is not a
legend ... raised upon a basis of truth, ... our answer must be, that,
as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality
of it be affirmed.” On the other hand, Mr. Clinton lays down the
general rule, “We may acknowledge as real persons, all those whom there
is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favour of the early
tradition, if no argument can be brought to overthrow it.” Thus he
lodges the _onus probandi_ with those who impugn the received accounts;
but Mr. Grote and Sir George Lewis throw it upon those who defend them.
“Historical evidence,” says the latter, “is founded on the testimony of
credible witnesses.” And again, “It is perpetually assumed in practice,
that historical evidence is different in its nature from other sorts of
evidence. This laxity seems to be justified by the doctrine of taking
the best evidence which can be obtained. The object of [my] inquiry
will be to apply to the early Roman history the same rules of evidence
which are applied by common consent to modern history.” Far less
severe is the judgment of Colonel Mure: “Where no positive historical
proof is affirmable, the balance of historical probability must reduce
itself very much to a reasonable indulgence to the weight of national
conviction, and a deference to the testimony of the earliest native
authorities.” “Reasonable indulgence” to popular belief, “deference” to
ancient tradition, are principles of writing history abhorrent to the
judicial temper of Sir George Lewis. He considers the words “reasonable
indulgence” to be “ambiguous,” and observes that “the very point which
cannot be taken for granted, and in which writers differ, is, as to the
extent to which contemporary attestation may be presumed without direct
and positive proof, ... the extent to which the existence of a popular
belief concerning a supposed matter of fact authorizes the inference
that it grew out of authentic testimony.” And Mr. Grote observes to the
same effect: “The word _tradition_ is an equivocal word, and begs the
whole question. It is tacitly understood to imply a tale descriptive
of some real matter of fact, taking rise at the time when the fact
happened, originally accurate, but corrupted by oral transmission.” And
Lewis, who quotes the passage, adds, “This _tacit understanding_ is the
key-stone of the whole argument.”

I am not contrasting these various opinions of able men, who have given
themselves to historical research, as if it were any reflection on them
that they differ from each other. It is the cause of their differing
on which I wish to insist. Taking the facts by themselves, probably
these authors would come to no conclusion at all; it is the “tacit
understandings” which Mr. Grote speaks of, the vague and impalpable
notions of “reasonableness” on his own side as well as on that of
others, which both make conclusions possible, and are the pledge of
their being contradictory. The conclusions vary with the particular
writer, for each writes from his own point of view and with his own
principles, and these admit of no common measure.

This in fact is their own account of the matter: “The results of
speculative historical inquiry,” says Colonel Mure, “can rarely
amount to more than fair presumption of the reality of the events in
question, as limited to their general substance, not as extending to
their details. Nor can there consequently be expected in the minds
of different inquirers any such unity regarding the precise degree
of reality, as may frequently exist in respect to events attested by
documentary evidence.” Mr. Grote corroborates this decision by the
striking instance of the diversity of existing opinions concerning the
Homeric Poems. “Our means of knowledge,” he says, “are so limited,
that no one can produce arguments sufficiently cogent to contend
against opposing preconceptions, and it creates a painful sensation
of diffidence, when we read the expressions of equal and absolute
persuasion with which the two opposite conclusions have both been
advanced.” And again, “There is a difference of opinion among the
best critics, which is probably not destined to be adjusted, since so
much depends partly upon critical feeling, partly upon the general
reasonings in respect to ancient epical unity, with which a man sits
down to the study.” Exactly so; every one has his own “critical
feeling,” his antecedent “reasonings,” and in consequence his own
“absolute persuasion,” coming in fresh and fresh at every turn of the
discussion; and who, whether stranger or friend, is to reach and affect
what is so intimately bound up with the mental constitution of each?

Hence the categorical contradictions between one writer and another,
which abound. Colonel Mure appeals in defence of an historical thesis
to the “fact of the Hellenic confederacy combining for the adoption of
a common national system of chronology in 776 B.C.” Mr. Grote replies:
“Nothing is more at variance with my conception,”—he just now spoke of
the preconceptions of others,—“of the state of the Hellenic world in
776 B.C., than the idea of a combination among all the members of the
race for any purpose, much more for the purpose of adopting a common
national system of chronology.” Colonel Mure speaks of the “bigoted
Athenian public;” Mr. Grote replies that “no public ever less deserved
the epithet of ‘bigoted’ than the Athenian,” Colonel Mure also speaks
of Mr. Grote’s “arbitrary hypothesis;” and again (in Mr. Grote’s
words), of his “unreasonable scepticism.” He cannot disprove by mere
argument the conclusions of Mr. Grote; he can but have recourse to a
personal criticism. He virtually says, “We differ in our personal view
of things.” Men become personal when logic fails; it is their mode
of appealing to their own primary elements of thought, and their own
illative sense, against the principles and the judgment of another.

I have already touched upon Niebuhr’s method of investigation, and
Sir George Lewis’s dislike of it: it supplies us with as apposite an
instance of a difference in first principles as is afforded by Mr.
Grote and Colonel Mure. “The main characteristic of his history,” says
Lewis, “is the extent to which he relies upon internal evidence, and
upon the indications afforded by the narrative itself, independently
of the testimony of its truth.” And, “Ingenuity and labour can produce
nothing but hypotheses and conjectures, which may be supported by
analogies, but can never rest upon the solid foundation of proof.” And
it is undeniable, that, rightly or wrongly, disdaining the scepticism
of the mere critic, Niebuhr does consciously proceed by the high path
of divination. “For my own part,” he says, “I _divine_ that, since
the censorship of Fabius and Decius falls in the same year, that Cn.
Flavius became mediator between his own class and the higher orders.”
Lewis considers this to be a process of guessing; and says, “Instead
of employing those tests of credibility which are consistently
applied to modern history,” Niebuhr, and his followers, and most of
his opponents, “attempt to guide their judgment by the indication of
internal evidence, and assume that the truth is discovered by an occult
faculty of historical divination.” Niebuhr defends himself thus: “The
real geographer has a tact which determines his judgment and choice
among different statements. He is able from isolated statements to
draw inferences respecting things that are unknown, which are closely
approximate to results obtained from observation of facts, and may
supply their place. He is able with limited data to form an image of
things which no eyewitness has described.” He applies this to himself.
The principle set forth in this passage is obviously the same as I
should put forward myself; but Sir George Lewis, though not simply
denying it as a principle, makes little account of it, when applied to
historical research. “It is not enough,” he says, “for an historian to
claim the possession of a retrospective second-sight, which is denied
to the rest of the world—of a mysterious doctrine, revealed only to the
initiated.” And he pronounces, that “the history of Niebuhr has opened
more questions than it has closed, and it has set in motion a large
body of combatants, whose mutual variances are not at present likely to
be settled by deference to a common principle.(32)”

We see from the above extracts how a controversy, such as that to which
they belong, is carried on from starting-points, and with collateral
aids, not formally proved, but more or less assumed, the process of
assumption lying in the action of the Illative Sense, as applied to
primary elements of thought respectively congenial to the disputants.
Not that explicit argumentation on these minute or minor, though
important, points is not sometimes possible to a certain extent;
but, as I had said, it is too unwieldy an expedient for a constantly
recurring need, even when it is tolerably exact.

2.

And now secondly, as to the first principles themselves. In
illustration, I will mention under separate heads some of those
elementary contrarieties of opinion, on which the Illative Sense has to
act, discovering them, following them out, defending or resisting them,
as the case may be.

1. As to the statement of the case. This depends on the particular
aspect under which we view a subject, that is, on the abstraction which
forms our representative notion of what it is. Sciences are only so
many distinct aspects of nature; sometimes suggested by nature itself,
sometimes created by the mind. (1) One of the simplest and broadest
aspects under which to view the physical world, is that of a system of
final causes, or, on the other hand, of initial or effective causes.
Bacon, having it in view to extend our power over nature, adopted the
latter. He took firm hold of the idea of causation (in the common
sense of the word) as contrasted with that of design, refusing to
mix up the two ideas in one inquiry, and denouncing such traditional
interpretations of facts, as did but obscure the simplicity of the
aspect necessary for his purpose. He saw what others before him might
have seen in what they saw, but who did not see as he saw it. In this
achievement of intellect, which has been so fruitful in results, lie
his genius and his fame.

(2) So again, to refer to a very different subject-matter, we often
hear of the exploits of some great lawyer, judge or advocate, who is
able in perplexed cases, when common minds see nothing but a hopeless
heap of facts, foreign or contrary to each other, to detect the
principle which rightly interprets the riddle, and, to the admiration
of all hearers, converts a chaos into an orderly and luminous
whole. This is what is meant by originality, in thinking: it is the
discovery of an aspect of a subject-matter, simpler, perhaps, and more
intelligible than any hitherto taken.

(3) On the other hand, such aspects are often unreal, as being mere
exhibitions of ingenuity, not of true originality of mind. This is
especially the case in what are called philosophical views of history.
Such seems to me the theory advocated in a work of great learning,
vigour, and acuteness, Warburton’s “Divine Legation of Moses.” I do
not call Gibbon merely ingenious; still his account of the rise of
Christianity is the mere subjective view of one who could not enter
into its depth and power.

(4) The aspect under which we view things is often intensely personal;
nay, even awfully so, considering that, from the nature of the case,
it does not bring home its idiosyncrasy either to ourselves or to
others. Each of us looks at the world in his own way, and does not know
that perhaps it is characteristically his own. This is the case even
as regards the senses. Some men have little perception of colours;
some recognize one or two; to some men two contrary colours, as red
and green, are one and the same. How poorly can we appreciate the
beauties of nature, if our eyes discern, on the face of things, only an
Indian-ink or a drab creation!

(5) So again, as regards form: each of us abstracts the relation of
line to line in his own personal way,—as one man might apprehend a
curve as convex, another as concave. Of course, as in the case of a
curve, there may be a limit to possible aspects; but still, even when
we agree together, it is not perhaps that we learn one from another, or
fall under any law of agreement, but that our separate idiosyncrasies
happen to concur. I fear I may seem trifling, if I allude to an
illustration which has ever had a great force with me, and that for the
very reason it is so trivial and minute. Children, learning to read,
are sometimes presented with the letters of the alphabet turned into
the figures of men in various attitudes. It is curious to observe from
such representations, how differently the shape of the letters strikes
different minds. In consequence I have continually asked the question
in a chance company, which way certain of the great letters look, to
the right or to the left; and whereas nearly every one present had his
own clear view, so clear that he could not endure the opposite view,
still I have generally found that one half of the party considered the
letters in question to look to the left, while the other half thought
they looked to the right.

(6) This variety of interpretation in the very elements of outlines
seems to throw light upon other cognate differences between one man
and another. If they look at the mere letters of the alphabet so
differently, we may understand how it is they form such distinct
judgments upon handwriting; nay, how some men may have a talent for
decyphering from it the intellectual and moral character of the writer,
which others have not. Another thought that occurs is, that perhaps
here lies the explanation why it is that family likenesses are so
variously recognized, and how mistakes in identity may be dangerously
frequent.

(7) If we so variously apprehend the familiar objects of sense, still
more various, we may suppose, are the aspects and associations attached
by us, one with another, to intellectual objects. I do not say we
differ in the objects themselves, but that we may have interminable
differences as to their relations and circumstances. I have heard
say (again to take a trifling matter) that at the beginning of this
century, it was a subject of serious, nay, of angry controversy,
whether it began with January 1800, or January 1801. Argument,
which ought, if in any case, to have easily brought the question to
a decision, was but sprinkling water upon a flame. I am not clear
that, if it could be fairly started now, it would not lead to similar
results; certainly I know those who studiously withdraw from giving
an opinion on the subject, when it is accidentally mooted, from
their experience of the eager feeling which it is sure to excite in
some one or other who is present. This eagerness can only arise from
an overpowering sense that the truth of the matter lies in the one
alternative, and not in the other.

These instances, because they are so casual, suggest how it comes to
pass, that men differ so widely from each other in religious and moral
perceptions. Here, I say again, it does not prove that there is no
objective truth, because not all men are in possession of it; or that
we are not responsible for the associations which we attach, and the
relations which we assign, to the objects of the intellect. But this it
does suggest to us, that there is something deeper in our differences
than the accident of external circumstances; and that we need the
interposition of a Power greater than human teaching and human argument
to make our beliefs true and our minds one.

2. Next I come to the implicit assumption of definite propositions
in the first start of a course of reasoning, and the arbitrary
exclusion of others, of whatever kind. Unless we had the right, when
we pleased, of ruling that propositions were irrelevant or absurd, I
do not see how we could conduct an argument at all; our way would be
simply blocked up by extravagant principles and theories, gratuitous
hypotheses, false issues, unsupported statements, and incredible
facts. There are those who have treated the history of Abraham as an
astronomical record, and have spoken of our Adorable Saviour as the
sun in _Aries_. Arabian Mythology has changed Solomon into a mighty
wizard. Noah has been considered the patriarch of the Chinese people.
The ten tribes have been pronounced still to live in their descendants,
the Red Indians; or to be the ancestors of the Goths and Vandals, and
thereby of the present European races. Some have conjectured that the
Apollos of the Acts of the Apostles was Apollonius Tyaneus. Able men
have reasoned out, almost against their will, that Adam was a negro.
These propositions, and many others of various kinds, we should think
ourselves justified in passing over, if we were engaged in a work on
sacred history; and there are others, on the contrary, which we should
assume as true by our own right and without notice, and without which
we could not set about or carry on our work.

(1) However, the right of making assumptions has been disputed; but,
when the objections are examined, I think they only go to show that
we have no right in argument to make any assumption we please. Thus,
in the historical researches which just now came before us, it seems
fair to say that no testimony should be received, except such as comes
from competent witnesses, while it is not unfair to urge, on the other
side, that tradition, though unauthenticated, being (what is called)
in possession, has a prescription in its favour, and may, _primâ
facie_, or provisionally, be received. Here are the materials of a fair
dispute; but there are writers who seem to have gone far beyond this
reasonable scepticism, laying down as a general proposition that we
have no right in philosophy to make any assumption whatever, and that
we ought to begin with a universal doubt. This, however, is of all
assumptions the greatest, and to forbid assumptions universally is to
forbid this one in particular. Doubt itself is a positive state, and
implies a definite habit of mind, and thereby necessarily involves a
system of principles and doctrines all its own. Again, if nothing is to
be assumed, what is our very method of reasoning but an assumption? and
what our nature itself? The very sense of pleasure and pain, which is
one of the most intimate portions of ourselves, inevitably translates
itself into intellectual assumptions.

Of the two, I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin
with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that
it is our duty to doubt of everything. The former, indeed, seems the
true way of learning. In that case, we soon discover and discard what
is contradictory to itself; and error having always some portion of
truth in it, and the truth having a reality which error has not, we may
expect, that when there is an honest purpose and fair talents, we shall
somehow make our way forward, the error falling off from the mind, and
the truth developing and occupying it. Thus it is that the Catholic
religion is reached, as we see, by inquirers from all points of the
compass, as if it mattered not where a man began, so that he had an eye
and a heart for the truth.

(2) An argument has been often put forward by unbelievers, I think by
Paine, to this effect, that “a revelation, which is to be received as
true, ought to be written on the sun.” This appeals to the common-sense
of the many with great force, and implies the assumption of a
principle which Butler, indeed, would not grant, and would consider
unphilosophical, and yet I think something may be said in its favour.
Whether abstractedly defensible or not, Catholic populations would
not be averse, _mutatis mutandis_, to admitting it. Till these last
centuries, the Visible Church was, at least to her children, the light
of the world, as conspicuous as the sun in the heavens; and the Creed
was written on her forehead, and proclaimed through her voice, by
a teaching as precise as it was emphatical; in accordance with the
text, “Who is she that looketh forth at the dawn, fair as the moon,
bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” It was not,
strictly speaking, a miracle, doubtless; but in its effect, nay, in
its circumstances, it was little less. Of course I would not allow
that the Church fails in this manifestation of the truth now, any more
than in former times, though the clouds have come over the sun; for
what she has lost in her appeal to the imagination, she has gained in
philosophical cogency, by the evidence of her persistent vitality.
So far is clear, that if Paine’s aphorism has a _primâ facie_ force
against Christianity, it owes this advantage to the miserable deeds of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

(3) Another conflict of first principles or assumptions, which have
often been implicit on either side, has been carried through in
our day, and relates to the end and scope of civil society, that
is, whether government and legislation ought to be of a religious
character, or not; whether the state has a conscience; whether
Christianity is the law of the land; whether the magistrate, in
punishing offenders, exercises a retributive office or a corrective;
or whether the whole structure of society is raised upon the basis of
secular expediency. The relation of philosophy and the sciences to
theology comes into the question. The old time-honoured theory has,
during the last forty years, been vigorously contending with the new;
and the new is in the ascendant.

(4) There is another great conflict of first principles, and that among
Christians, which has occupied a large space in our domestic history,
during the last thirty or forty years, and that is the controversy
about the Rule of Faith. I notice it as affording an instance of an
assumption so deeply sunk into the popular mind, that it is a work
of great difficulty to obtain from its maintainers an acknowledgment
that it is an assumption. That Scripture is the Rule of Faith is in
fact an assumption so congenial to the state of mind and course of
thought usual among Protestants, that it seems to them rather a truism
than a truth. If they are in controversy with Catholics on any point
of faith, they at once ask, “Where do you find it in Scripture?” and
if Catholics reply, as they must do, that it is not necessarily in
Scripture in order to be true, nothing can persuade them that such
an answer is not an evasion, and a triumph to themselves. Yet it is
by no means self-evident that all religious truth is to be found in
a number of works, however sacred, which were written at different
times, and did not always form one book; and in fact it is a doctrine
very hard to prove. So much so, that years ago, when I was considering
it from a Protestant point of view, and wished to defend it to the
best of my power, I was unable to give any better account of it than
the following, which I here quote from its appositeness to my present
subject.

“It matters not,” I said, speaking of the first Protestants, “whether
or not they only happened to come right on what, in a logical point
of view, are faulty premisses. They had no time for theories of any
kind; and to require theories at their hand argues an ignorance of
human nature, and of the ways in which truth is struck out in the
course of life. Common sense, chance, moral perception, genius, the
great discoverers of principles do not reason. They have no arguments,
no grounds, they see the truth, but they do not know how they see
it; and if at any time they attempt to prove it, it is as much a
matter of experiment with them, as if they had to find a road to a
distant mountain, which they see with the eye; and they get entangled,
embarrassed, and perchance overthrown in the superfluous endeavour. It
is the second-rate men, though most useful in their place, who prove,
reconcile, finish, and explain. Probably, the popular feeling of the
sixteenth century saw the Bible to be the Word of God, so as nothing
else is His Word, by the power of a strong sense, by a sort of moral
instinct, or by a happy augury.(33)”

That is, I considered the assumption an act of the Illative Sense;—I
should now add, the Illative Sense, acting on mistaken elements of
thought.

3. After the aspects in which a question is to be viewed, and the
principles on which it is to be considered, come the arguments by which
it is decided; among these are antecedent reasons, which are especially
in point here, because they are in great measure made by ourselves and
belong to our personal character, and to them I shall confine myself.

Antecedent reasoning, when negative, is safe. Thus no one would
say that, because Alexander’s rash heroism is one of the leading
characteristics of his history, therefore we are justified, except in
writing a romance, in asserting that at a particular time and place,
he distinguished himself by a certain exploit about which history
is altogether silent; but, on the other hand, his notorious bravery
would be almost decisive against any charge against him of having on a
particular occasion acted as a coward.

In like manner, good character goes far in destroying the force of even
plausible charges. There is indeed a degree of evidence in support of
an allegation, against which reputation is no defence; but it must be
singularly strong to overcome an established antecedent probability
which stands opposed to it. Thus historical personages or great
authors, men of high and pure character, have had imputations cast
upon them, easy to make, difficult or impossible to meet, which are
indignantly trodden under foot by all just and sensible men, as being
as anti-social as they are inhuman. I need not add what a cruel and
despicable part a husband or a son would play, who readily listened to
a charge against his wife or his father. Yet all this being admitted,
a great number of cases remain which are perplexing, and on which we
cannot adjust the claims of conflicting and heterogeneous arguments
except by the keen and subtle operation of the Illative Sense.

Butler’s argument in his _Analogy_ is such a presumption used
negatively. Objection being brought against certain characteristics of
Christianity, he meets it by the presumption in their favour derived
from their parallels as discoverable in the order of nature, arguing
that they do not tell against the Divine origin of Christianity, unless
they tell against the Divine origin of the natural system also. But he
could not adduce it as a positive and direct proof of the Divine origin
of the Christian doctrines that they had their parallels in nature, or
at the utmost as more than a recommendation of them to the religious
inquirer.

Unbelievers use the antecedent argument from the order of nature
against our belief in miracles. Here, if they only mean that the fact
of that system of laws, by which physical nature is governed, makes it
antecedently improbable that an exception should occur in it, there is
no objection to the argument; but if, as is not uncommon, they mean
that the fact of an established order is absolutely fatal to the very
notion of an exception, they are using a presumption as if it were a
proof. They are saying,—What has happened 999 times one way cannot
possibly happen on the 1000th time another way, _because_ what has
happened 999 times one way is likely to happen in the same way on the
1000th. If, however, they mean that the order of nature constitutes a
physical necessity, and that a law is an unalterable fate, this is to
assume the very point in debate, and is much more than its antecedent
probability.

Facts cannot be proved by presumptions, yet it is remarkable that in
cases where nothing stronger than presumption was even professed,
scientific men have sometimes acted as if they thought this kind of
argument, taken by itself, decisive of a fact which was in debate. In
the controversy about the Plurality of worlds, it has been considered,
on purely antecedent grounds, as far as I see, to be so necessary that
the Creator should have filled with living beings the luminaries which
we see in the sky, and the other cosmical bodies which we imagine
there, that it almost amounts to a blasphemy to doubt it.

Theological conclusions, it is true, have often been made on antecedent
reasoning; but then it must be recollected that theological reasoning
professes to be sustained by a more than human power, and to be
guaranteed by a more than human authority. It may be true, also, that
conversions to Christianity have often been made on antecedent reasons;
yet, even admitting the fact, which is not quite clear, a number of
antecedent probabilities, confirming each other, may make it a duty in
the judgment of a prudent man, not only to act as if a statement were
true, but actually to accept and believe it. This is not unfrequently
instanced in our dealings with others, when we feel it right, in spite
of our misgivings, to oblige ourselves to believe their honesty. And in
all these delicate questions there is constant call for the exercise of
the Illative Sense.




Chapter X. Inference And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.


And now I have completed my review of the second subject to which I
have given my attention in this Essay, the connexion existing between
the intellectual acts of Assent and Inference, my first being the
connexion of Assent with Apprehension; and as I closed my remarks
upon Assent and Apprehension by applying the conclusions at which I
had arrived to our belief in the Truths of Religion, so now I ought
to speak of its Evidences, before quitting the consideration of the
dependence of Assent upon Inference. I shall attempt to do so in this
Chapter, not without much anxiety, lest I should injure so large,
momentous, and sacred a subject by a necessarily cursory treatment.

I begin with expressing a sentiment, which is habitually in my
thoughts, whenever they are turned to the subject of mental or moral
science, and which I am as willing to apply here to the Evidences of
Religion as it properly applies to Metaphysics or Ethics, viz. that
in these provinces of inquiry egotism is true modesty. In religious
inquiry each of us can speak only for himself, and for himself he has
a right to speak. His own experiences are enough for himself, but
he cannot speak for others: he cannot lay down the law; he can only
bring his own experiences to the common stock of psychological facts.
He knows what has satisfied and satisfies himself; if it satisfies
him, it is likely to satisfy others; if, as he believes and is sure,
it is true, it will approve itself to others also, for there is but
one truth. And doubtless he does find in fact, that, allowing for the
difference of minds and of modes of speech, what convinces him, does
convince others also. There will be very many exceptions, but these
will admit of explanation. Great numbers of men refuse to inquire at
all; they put the subject of religion aside altogether; others are
not serious enough to care about questions of truth and duty and to
entertain them; and to numbers, from their temper of mind, or the
absence of doubt, or a dormant intellect, it does not occur to inquire
why or what they believe; many, though they tried, could not do so in
any satisfactory way. This being the case, it causes no uneasiness to
any one who honestly attempts to set down his own view of the Evidences
of Religion, that at first sight he seems to be but one among many
who are all in opposition to each other. But, however that may be, he
brings together his reasons, and relies on them, because they are his
own, and this is his primary evidence; and he has a second ground of
evidence, in the testimony of those who agree with him. But his best
evidence is the former, which is derived from his own thoughts; and it
is that which the world has a right to demand of him; and therefore
his true sobriety and modesty consists, not in claiming for his
conclusions an acceptance or a scientific approval which is not to be
found anywhere, but in stating what are personally his own grounds for
his belief in Natural and Revealed Religion,—grounds which he holds to
be so sufficient, that he thinks that others do hold them implicitly
or in substance, or would hold them, if they inquired fairly, or will
hold if they listen to him, or do not hold from impediments, invincible
or not as it may be, into which he has no call to inquire. However,
his own business is to speak for himself. He uses the words of the
Samaritans to their countrywoman, when our Lord had remained with them
for two days, “Now we believe, not for thy saying, for we have heard
Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”

In these words it is declared both that the Gospel Revelation is
divine, and that it carries with it the evidence of its divinity; and
this is of course the matter of fact. However, these two attributes
need not have been united; a revelation might have been really
given, yet given without credentials. Our Supreme Master might have
imparted to us truths which nature cannot teach us, without telling
us that He had imparted them, as is actually the case now, as regards
heathen countries, into which portions of revealed truth overflow
and penetrate, without their populations knowing whence those truths
came. But the very idea of Christianity in its profession and history,
is something more than this; it is a “Revelatio revelata;” it is a
definite message from God to man distinctly conveyed by His chosen
instruments, and to be received as such a message; and therefore to
be positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained as true, on the
ground of its being divine, not as true on intrinsic grounds, not as
probably true, or partially true, but as absolutely certain knowledge,
certain in a sense in which nothing else can be certain, because it
comes from Him who neither can deceive nor be deceived.

And the whole tenor of Scripture from beginning to end is to this
effect: the matter of revelation is not a mere collection of truths,
not a philosophical view, not a religious sentiment or spirit, not
a special morality,—poured out upon mankind as a stream might pour
itself into the sea, mixing with the world’s thought, modifying,
purifying, invigorating it;—but an authoritative teaching, which bears
witness to itself and keeps itself together as one, in contrast to the
assemblage of opinions on all sides of it, and speaks to all men, as
being ever and everywhere one and the same, and claiming to be received
intelligently, by all whom it addresses, as one doctrine, discipline,
and devotion directly given from above. In consequence, the exhibition
of credentials, that is, of evidence, that it is what it professes to
be, is essential to Christianity, as it comes to us; for we are not
left at liberty to pick and choose out of its contents according to
our judgment, but must receive it all, as we find it, if we accept it
at all. It is a religion in addition to the religion of nature; and as
nature has an intrinsic claim upon us to be obeyed and used, so what is
over and above nature, or supernatural, must also bring with it valid
testimonials of its right to demand our homage.

Next, as to its relation to nature. As I have said, Christianity is
simply an addition to it; it does not supersede or contradict it; it
recognizes and depends on it, and that of necessity: for how possibly
can it prove its claims except by an appeal to what men have already?
be it ever so miraculous, it cannot dispense with nature; this would
be to cut the ground from under it; for what would be the worth of
evidences in favour of a revelation which denied the authority of that
system of thought, and those courses of reasoning, out of which those
evidences necessarily grew?

And in agreement with this obvious conclusion we find in Scripture our
Lord and His Apostles always treating Christianity as the completion
and supplement of Natural Religion, and of previous revelations; as
when He says that the Father testified of Him; that not to know Him
was not to know the Father; and as St. Paul at Athens appeals to the
“Unknown God,” and says that “He that made the world” “now declareth
to all men to do penance, because He hath appointed a day to judge
the world by the man whom He hath appointed.” As then our Lord and
His Apostles appeal to the God of nature, we must follow them in that
appeal; and, to do this with the better effect, we must first inquire
into the chief doctrines and the grounds of Natural Religion.


§ 1. Natural Religion.


By Religion I mean the knowledge of God, of His Will, and of our duties
towards Him; and there are three main channels which Nature furnishes
for our acquiring this knowledge, viz. our own minds, the voice of
mankind, and the course of the world, that is, of human life and human
affairs. The informations which these three convey to us teach us the
Being and Attributes of God, our responsibility to Him, our dependence
on Him, our prospect of reward or punishment, to be somehow brought
about, according as we obey or disobey Him. And the most authoritative
of these three means of knowledge, as being specially our own, is
our own mind, whose informations give us the rule by which we test,
interpret, and correct what is presented to us for belief, whether by
the universal testimony of mankind, or by the history of society and of
the world.

Our great internal teacher of religion is, as I have said in an earlier
part of this Essay, our Conscience.(34) Conscience is a personal guide,
and I use it because I must use myself; I am as little able to think
by any mind but my own as to breathe with another’s lungs. Conscience
is nearer to me than any other means of knowledge. And as it is given
to me, so also is it given to others; and being carried about by every
individual in his own breast, and requiring nothing besides itself,
it is thus adapted for the communication to each separately of that
knowledge which is most momentous to him individually,—adapted for the
use of all classes and conditions of men, for high and low, young and
old, men and women, independently of books, of educated reasoning, of
physical knowledge, or of philosophy. Conscience, too, teaches us,
not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real
image of Him, as a medium of worship; it gives us a rule of right and
wrong, as being His rule, and a code of moral duties. Moreover, it is
so constituted that, if obeyed, it becomes clearer in its injunctions,
and wider in their range, and corrects and completes the accidental
feebleness of its initial teachings. Conscience, then, considered as
our guide, is fully furnished for its office. I say all this without
entering into the question how far external assistances are in all
cases necessary to the action of the mind, because in fact man does not
live in isolation, but is everywhere found as a member of society. I am
not concerned here with abstract questions.

Now Conscience suggests to us many things about that Master, whom
by means of it we perceive, but its most prominent teaching, and
its cardinal and distinguishing truth, is that He is our Judge.
In consequence, the special Attribute under which it brings Him
before us, to which it subordinates all other Attributes, is that of
justice—retributive justice. We learn from its informations to conceive
of the Almighty, primarily, not as a God of Wisdom, of Knowledge, of
Power, of Benevolence, but as a God of Judgment and Justice; as One,
who not simply for the good of the offender, but as an end good in
itself, and as a principle of government, ordains that the offender
should suffer for his offence. If it tells us anything at all of the
characteristics of the Divine Mind, it certainly tells us this; and,
considering that our shortcomings are far more frequent and important
than our fulfilment of the duties enjoined upon us, and that of this
point we are fully aware ourselves, it follows that the aspect under
which Almighty God is presented to us by Nature, is (to use a figure)
of One who is angry with us, and threatens evil. Hence its effect is
to burden and sadden the religious mind, and is in contrast with the
enjoyment derivable from the exercise of the affections, and from
the perception of beauty, whether in the material universe or in the
creations of the intellect. This is that fearful antagonism brought
out with such soul-piercing reality by Lucretius, when he speaks so
dishonourably of what he considers the heavy yoke of religion, and the
“æternas pœnas in morte timendum;” and, on the other hand, rejoices in
his “Alma Venus,” “quæ rerum naturam sola gubernas.” And we may appeal
to him for the fact, while we repudiate his view of it.

Such being the _primâ facie_ aspect of religion which the teachings
of Conscience bring before us individually, in the next place let us
consider what are the doctrines, and what the influences of religion,
as we find it embodied in those various rites and devotions which
have taken root in the many races of mankind, since the beginning
of history, and before history, all over the earth. Of these also
Lucretius gives us a specimen; and they accord in form and complexion
with that doctrine about duty and responsibility, which he so bitterly
hates and loathes. It is scarcely necessary to insist, that wherever
Religion exists in a popular shape, it has almost invariably worn its
dark side outwards. It is founded in one way or other on the sense of
sin; and without that vivid sense it would hardly have any precepts
or any observances. Its many varieties all proclaim or imply that
man is in a degraded, servile condition, and requires expiation,
reconciliation, and some great change of nature. This is suggested
to us in the many ways in which we are told of a realm of light and
a realm of darkness, of an elect fold and a regenerate state. It is
suggested in the almost ubiquitous and ever-recurring institution of
a Priesthood; for wherever there is a priest, there is the notion of
sin, pollution, and retribution, as, on the other hand, of intercession
and mediation. Also, still more directly, is the notion of our guilt
impressed upon us by the doctrine of future punishment, and that
eternal, which is found in mythologies and creeds of such various
parentage.

Of these distinct rites and doctrines embodying the severe side of
Natural Religion, the most remarkable is that of atonement, that is, “a
substitution of something offered, or some personal suffering, for a
penalty which would otherwise be exacted;” most remarkable, I say, both
from its close connexion with the notion of vicarious satisfaction,
and, on the other hand, from its universality. “The practice of
atonement,” says the author, whose definition of the word I have just
given, “is remarkable for its antiquity and universality, proved by the
earliest records that have come down to us of all nations, and by the
testimony of ancient and modern travellers. In the oldest books of the
Hebrew Scriptures, we have numerous instances of expiatory rites, where
atonement is the prominent feature. At the earliest date, to which
we can carry our inquiries by means of the heathen records, we meet
with the same notion of atonement. If we pursue our inquiries through
the accounts left us by the Greek and Roman writers of the barbarous
nations with which they were acquainted, from India to Britain, we
shall find the same notions and similar practices of atonement. From
the most popular portion of our own literature, our narratives of
voyages and travels, every one, probably, who reads at all will be
able to find for himself abundant proof that the notion has been as
permanent as it is universal. It shows itself among the various tribes
of Africa, the islanders of the South Seas, and even that most peculiar
race, the natives of Australia, either in the shape of some offering,
or some mutilation of the person.(35)”

These ceremonial acknowledgments, in so many distinct forms of worship,
of the existing degradation of the human race, of course imply a
brighter, as well as a threatening aspect of Natural Religion; for why
should men adopt any rites of deprecation or of purification at all,
unless they had some hope of attaining to a better condition than their
present? Of this happier side of religion I will speak presently; here,
however, a question of another kind occurs, viz. whether the notion of
atonement can be admitted among the doctrines of Natural Religion,—I
mean, on the ground that it is inconsistent with those teachings of
Conscience, which I have recognized above, as the rule and corrective
of every other information on the subject. If there is any truth
brought home to us by conscience, it is this, that we are personally
responsible for what we do, that we have no means of shifting our
responsibility, and that dereliction of duty involves punishment; how,
it may be asked, can acts of ours of any kind—how can even amendment of
life—undo the past? And if even our own subsequent acts of obedience
bring with them no promise of reversing what has once been committed,
how can external rites, or the actions of another (as of a priest),
be substitutes for that punishment which is the connatural fruit and
intrinsic development of violation of the sense of duty? I think this
objection avails as far as this, that amendment is no reparation, and
that no ceremonies or penances can in themselves exercise any vicarious
virtue in our behalf; and that, if they avail, they only avail in the
intermediate season of probation; that in some way we must make them
our own; and that, when the time comes, which conscience forebodes, of
our being called to judgment, then, at least, we shall have to stand in
and by ourselves, whatever we shall have by that time become, and must
bear our own burden. But it is plain that in this final account, as it
lies between us and our Master, He alone can decide how the past and
the present will stand together who is our Creator and our Judge.

In thus making it a necessary point to adjust the religions of the
world with the intimations of our conscience, I am suggesting the
reason why I confine myself to such religions as have had their rise in
barbarous times, and do not recognize the religion of what is called
civilization, as having legitimately a part in the delineation of
Natural Religion. It may at first sight seem strange, that, considering
I have laid such stress upon the progressive nature of man, I should
take my ideas of his religion from his initial, and not his final
testimony about its doctrines; and it may be urged that the religion
of civilized times is quite opposite in character to the rites and
traditions of barbarians, and has nothing of that gloom and sternness,
on which I have insisted as their characteristic. Thus the Greek
Mythology was for the most part cheerful and graceful, and the new
gods certainly more genial and indulgent than the old ones. And, in
like manner, the religion of philosophy is more noble and more humane
than those primitive conceptions which were sufficient for early kings
and warriors. But my answer to this objection is obvious: the progress
of which man’s nature is capable is a development, not a destruction
of its original state; it must subserve the elements from which it
proceeds, in order to be a true development and not a perversion.(36)

And it does in fact subserve and complete that nature with which man
is born. It is otherwise with the religion of so-called civilization;
such religion does but contradict the religion of barbarism; and since
this civilization itself is not a development of man’s whole nature,
but mainly of the intellect, recognizing indeed the moral sense, but
ignoring the conscience, no wonder that the religion in which it
issues has no sympathy either with the hopes and fears of the awakened
soul, or with those frightful presentiments which are expressed in the
worship and traditions of the heathen. This artificial religion, then,
has no place in the inquiry; first, because it comes of a one-sided
progress of mind, and next, for the very reason that it contradicts
informants which speak with greater authority than itself.

Now we come to the third natural informant on the subject of Religion;
I mean the system and the course of the world. This established order
of things, in which we find ourselves, if it has a Creator, must
surely speak of His will in its broad outlines and its main issues.
This principle being laid down as certain, when we come to apply it
to things as they are, our first feeling is one of surprise and (I
may say) of dismay, that His control of the world is so indirect, and
His action so obscure. This is the first lesson that we gain from the
course of human affairs. What strikes the mind so forcibly and so
painfully is, His absence (if I may so speak) from His own world.(37)
It is a silence that speaks. It is as if others had got possession of
His work. Why does not He, our Maker and Ruler, give us some immediate
knowledge of Himself? Why does He not write His Moral Nature in large
letters upon the face of history, and bring the blind, tumultuous rush
of its events into a celestial, hierarchical order? Why does He not
grant us in the structure of society at least so much of a revelation
of Himself as the religions of the heathen attempt to supply? Why
from the beginning of time has no one uniform steady light guided all
families of the earth, and all individual men, how to please Him? Why
is it possible without absurdity to deny His will, His attributes,
His existence? Why does He not walk with us one by one, as He is said
to have walked with His chosen men of old time? We both see and know
each other; why, if we cannot have the sight of Him, have we not at
least the knowledge? On the contrary, He is specially “a Hidden God;”
and with our best efforts we can only glean from the surface of the
world some faint and fragmentary views of Him. I see only a choice of
alternatives in explanation of so critical a fact:—either there is no
Creator, or He has disowned His creatures. Are then the dim shadows
of His Presence in the affairs of men but a fancy of our own, or, on
the other hand, has He hid His face and the light of His countenance,
because we have in some special way dishonoured Him? My true informant,
my burdened conscience, gives me at once the true answer to each of
these antagonist questions:—it pronounces without any misgiving that
God exists:—and it pronounces quite as surely that I am alienated from
Him; that “His Hand is not shortened, but that our iniquities have
divided between us and our God.” Thus it solves the world’s mystery,
and sees in that mystery only a confirmation of its own original
teaching.

Let us pass on to another great fact of experience, bearing on
Religion, which confirms this testimony both of conscience and of the
forms of worship which prevail among mankind;—I mean, the amount of
suffering, bodily and mental, which is our portion in this life. Not
only is the Creator far off, but some being of malignant nature seems,
as I have said, to have got hold of us, and to be making us his sport.
Let us say there are a thousand millions of men on the earth at this
time; who can weigh and measure the aggregate of pain which this one
generation has endured and will endure from birth to death? Then add to
this all the pain which has fallen and will fall upon our race through
centuries past and to come. Is there not then some great gulf fixed
between us and the good God? Here again the testimony of the system of
nature is more than corroborated by those popular traditions about the
unseen state, which are found in mythologies and superstitions, ancient
and modern; for those traditions speak, not only of present misery, but
of pain and evil hereafter, and even without end. But this dreadful
addition is not necessary for the conclusion which I am here wishing to
draw. The real mystery is, not that evil should never have an end, but
that it should ever have had a beginning. Even a universal restitution
could not undo what had been, or account for evil being the necessary
condition of good. How are we to explain it, the existence of God being
taken for granted, except by saying that another will, besides His, has
had a part in the disposition of His work, that there is an intractable
quarrel, a chronic alienation, between God and man?

I have implied that the laws on which this world is governed do not
go so far as to prove that evil will never die out of the creation;
nevertheless, they look in that direction. No experience indeed of
life can assure us about the future, but it can and does give us means
of conjecturing what is likely to be; and those conjectures coincide
with our natural forebodings. Experience enables us to ascertain the
moral constitution of man, and thereby to presage his future from
his present. It teaches us, first, that he is not sufficient for
his own happiness, but is dependent upon the sensible objects which
surround him, and that these he cannot take with him when he leaves
the world; secondly, that disobedience to his sense of right is even
by itself misery, and that he carries that misery about him, wherever
he is, though no divine retribution followed upon it; and thirdly,
that he cannot change his nature and his habits by wishing, but is
simply himself, and will ever be himself and what he now is, wherever
he is, as long as he continues to be,—or at least that pain has no
natural tendency to make him other than he is, and that the longer he
lives, the more difficult he is to change. How can we meet these not
irrational anticipations, except by shutting our eyes, turning away
from them, and saying that we have no call, no right, to think of them
at present, or to make ourselves miserable about what is not certain,
and may be not true?(38)

Such is the severe aspect of Natural Religion: also it is the most
prominent aspect, because the multitude of men follow their own likings
and wills, and not the decisions of their sense of right and wrong.
To them Religion is a mere yoke, as Lucretius describes it; not a
satisfaction or refuge, but a terror and a superstition. However, I
must not for an instant be supposed to mean, that this is its only, its
chief, or its legitimate aspect. All Religion, so far as it is genuine,
is a blessing, Natural as well as Revealed. I have insisted on its
severe aspect in the first place, because, from the circumstances of
human nature, though not by the fault of Religion, such is the shape
in which we first encounter it. Its large and deep foundation is the
sense of sin and guilt, and without this sense there is for man, as he
is, no genuine religion. Otherwise, it is but counterfeit and hollow;
and that is the reason why this so-called religion of civilization
and philosophy is so great a mockery. However, true as this judgment
is which I pass on philosophical religion, and troubled as are the
existing relations between God and man, as both the voice of mankind
and the facts of Divine Government testify, equally true are other
general laws which govern those relations, and they speak another
language, and compensate for what is stern in the teaching of nature,
without tending to deny that sternness.

The first of these laws, relieving the aspect of Natural Religion, is
the very fact that religious beliefs and institutions, of some kind
or other, are of such general acceptance in all times and places. Why
should men subject themselves to the tyranny which Lucretius denounces,
unless they had either experience or hope of benefits to themselves
by so doing? Though it be mere hope of benefits, that alone is a
great alleviation of the gloom and misery which their religious rites
presuppose or occasion; for thereby they have a prospect, more or less
clear, of some happier state in reserve for them, or at least the
chances of it. If they simply despaired of their fortunes, they would
not care about religion. And hope of future good, as we know, sweetens
all suffering.

Moreover, they have an earnest of that future in the real and recurring
blessings of life, the enjoyment of the gifts of the earth, and of
domestic affection and social intercourse, which is sufficient to
touch and to subdue even the most guilty of men in his better moments,
reminding him that he is not utterly cast off by Him whom nevertheless
he is not given to know. Or, in the Apostle’s words, though the Creator
once “suffered all nations to walk in their own ways,” still, “He left
not Himself without testimony, doing good from heaven, giving rains and
fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Nor are these blessings of physical nature the only tokens in the
Divine System, which in that heathen time, and indeed in every
age, bring home to our experience the fact of a Good God, in spite
of the tumult and confusion of the world. It is possible to give
an interpretation to the course of things, by which every event
or occurrence in its order becomes providential: and though that
interpretation does not hold good unless the world is contemplated
from a particular point of view, in one given aspect, and with certain
inward experiences, and personal first principles and judgments,
yet these may be fairly pronounced to be common conditions of human
thought, that is, till they are wilfully or accidentally lost; and
they issue in fact, in leading the great majority of men to recognize
the Hand of unseen power, directing in mercy or in judgment the
physical and moral system. In the prominent events of the world, past
and contemporary, the fate, evil or happy, of great men, the rise and
fall of states, popular revolutions, decisive battles, the migration
of races, the replenishing of the earth, earthquakes and pestilences,
critical discoveries and inventions, the history of philosophy, the
advancement of knowledge, in these the spontaneous piety of the
human mind discerns a Divine Supervision. Nay, there is a general
feeling, originating directly in the workings of conscience, that a
similar governance is extended over the persons of individuals, who
thereby both fulfil the purposes and receive the just recompenses of
an Omnipotent Providence. Good to the good, and evil to the evil,
is instinctively felt to be, even from what we see, amid whatever
obscurity and confusion, the universal rule of God’s dealings with
us. Hence come the great proverbs, indigenous in both Christian and
heathen nations, that punishment is sure, though slow, that murder will
out, that treason never prospers, that pride will have a fall, that
honesty is the best policy, and that curses fall on the heads of those
who utter them. To the unsophisticated apprehension of the many, the
successive passages of life, social or political, are so many miracles,
if that is to be accounted miraculous which brings before them the
immediate Divine Presence; and should it be objected that this is an
illogical exercise of reason, I answer, that since it actually brings
them to a right conclusion, and was intended to bring them to it, if
logic finds fault with it, so much the worse for logic.

Again, prayer is essential to religion, and, where prayer is, there
is a natural relief and solace in all trouble, great or ordinary:
now prayer is not less general in mankind at large than is faith in
Providence. It has ever been in use, both as a personal and as a social
practice. Here again, if, in order to determine what the Religion of
Nature is, we may justly have recourse to the spontaneous acts and
proceedings of our race, as viewed on a large field, we may safely
say that prayer, as well as hope, is a constituent of man’s religion.
Nor is it a fair objection to this argument, to say that such prayers
and rites as have obtained in various places and times, are in their
character, object, and scope inconsistent with each other; because
their contrarieties do not come into the idea of religion, as such, at
all, and the very fact of their discordance destroys their right to
be taken into account, so far as they are discordant; for what is not
universal has no claim to be considered natural, right, or of divine
origin. Thus we may determine prayer to be part of Natural Religion,
from such instances of the usage as are supplied by the priests of Baal
and by dancing Dervishes, without therefore including in our notions
of prayer the frantic excesses of the one, or the artistic spinning of
the other, or sanctioning their respective objects of belief, Baal or
Mahomet.

As prayer is the voice of man to God, so Revelation is the voice of
God to man. Accordingly, it is another alleviation of the darkness
and distress which weigh upon the religions of the world, that in
one way or other such religions are founded on some idea of express
revelation, coming from the unseen agents whose anger they deprecate;
nay, that the very rites and observances, by which they hope to gain
the favour of these beings, are by these beings themselves communicated
and appointed. The Religion of Nature is not a deduction of reason,
or the joint, voluntary manifesto of a multitude meeting together and
pledging themselves to each other, as men move resolutions now for some
political or social purpose, but it is a tradition or an interposition
vouchsafed to a people from above. To such an interposition men even
ascribed their civil polity or citizenship, which did not originate
in any plebiscite, but in _dii minores_ or heroes, was inaugurated
with portents or palladia, and protected and prospered by oracles
and auguries. Here is an evidence, too, how congenial the notion of
a revelation is to the human mind, so that the expectation of it may
truly be considered an integral part of Natural Religion.

Among the observances imposed by these professed revelations, none is
more remarkable, or more general, than the rite of sacrifice, in which
guilt was removed or blessing gained by an offering, which availed
instead of the merits of the offerer. This, too, as well as the notion
of divine interpositions, may be considered almost an integral part
of the Religion of Nature, and an alleviation of its gloom. But it
does not stand by itself; I have already spoken of the doctrine of
atonement, under which it falls, and which, if what is universal is
natural, enters into the idea of religious service. And what the nature
of man suggests, the providential system of the world sanctions by
enforcing. It is the law, or the permission, given to our whole race,
to use the Apostle’s words, to “bear one another’s burdens;” and this,
as I said when on the subject of Atonement, is quite consistent with
his antithesis that “every one must bear his own burden.” The final
burden of responsibility when we are called to judgment is our own;
but among the media by which we are prepared for that judgment are the
exertions and pains taken in our behalf by others. On this vicarious
principle, by which we appropriate to ourselves what others do for
us, the whole structure of society is raised. Parents work and endure
pain, that their children may prosper; children suffer for the sin of
their parents, who have died before it bore fruit. “Delirant reges,
plectuntur Achivi.” Sometimes it is a compulsory, sometimes a willing
mediation. The punishment which is earned by the husband falls upon
the wife; the benefits in which all classes partake are wrought out by
the unhealthy or dangerous toil of the few. Soldiers endure wounds and
death for those who sit at home; and ministers of state fall victims
to their zeal for their countrymen, who do little else than criticize
their actions. And so in some measure or way this law embraces all of
us. We all suffer for each other, and gain by each other’s sufferings;
for man never stands alone here, though he will stand by himself one
day hereafter; but here he is a social being, and goes forward to his
long home as one of a large company.

Butler, it need scarcely be said, is the great master of this
doctrine, as it is brought out in the system of nature. In answer
to the objection to the Christian doctrine of satisfaction, that it
“represents God as indifferent whether He punishes the innocent or
the guilty,” he observes that “the world is a constitution or system,
whose parts have a mutual reference to each other; and that there is a
scheme of things gradually carrying on, called the course of nature,
to the carrying on of which God has appointed us, in various ways,
to contribute. And in the daily course of natural providence, it is
appointed that innocent people should suffer for the faults of the
guilty. Finally, indeed and upon the whole, every one shall receive
according to his personal deserts; but during the progress, and, for
aught we know, even in order to the completion of this moral scheme,
vicarious punishments may be fit, and absolutely necessary. We see in
what variety of ways one person’s sufferings contribute to the relief
of another; and being familiarized to it, men are not shocked with it.
So the reason of their insisting on objections against the [doctrine
of] satisfaction is, either that they do not consider God’s settled and
uniform appointments as His appointments at all; or else they forget
that vicarious punishment is a providential appointment of every day’s
experience.(39)” I will but add, that, since all human suffering is in
its last resolution the punishment of sin, and punishment implies a
Judge and a rule of justice, he who undergoes the punishment of another
in his stead may be said in a certain sense to satisfy the claims of
justice towards that other in his own person.

One concluding remark has to be made here. In all sacrifices it
was specially required that the thing offered should be something
rare, and unblemished; and in like manner in all atonements and all
satisfactions, not only was the innocent taken for the guilty, but it
was a point of special importance that the victim should be spotless,
and the more manifest that spotlessness, the more efficacious was the
sacrifice. This leads me to a last principle which I shall notice as
proper to Natural Religion, and as lightening the prophecies of evil in
which it is founded; I mean the doctrine of meritorious intercession.
The man in the Gospel did but speak for the human race everywhere, when
he said, “God heareth not sinners; but if a man be a worshipper of God,
and doth His will, him He heareth.” Hence every religion has had its
eminent devotees, exalted above the body of the people, mortified men,
brought nearer to the Source of good by austerities, self-inflictions,
and prayer, who have influence with Him, and extend a shelter and
gain blessings for those who become their clients. A belief like this
has been, of course, attended by numberless superstitions; but those
superstitions vary with times and places, and the belief itself in
the mediatorial power of the good and holy has been one and the same
everywhere. Nor is this belief an idea of past times only or of heathen
countries. It is one of the most natural visions of the young and
innocent. And all of us, the more keenly we feel our own distance from
holy persons, the more are we drawn near to them, as if forgetting that
distance, and proud of them because they are so unlike ourselves, as
being specimens of what our nature may be, and with some vague hope
that we, their relations by blood, may profit in our own persons by
their holiness.

Such, then, in outline is that system of natural beliefs and
sentiments, which, though true and divine, is still possible to us
independently of Revelation, and is the preparation for it; though
in Christians themselves it cannot really be separated from their
Christianity, and never is possessed in its higher forms in any people
without some portion of those inward aids which Christianity imparts
to us, and those endemic traditions which have their first origin in a
paradisiacal illumination.


§ 2. Revealed Religion.


In determining, as above, the main features of Natural Religion, and
distinguishing it from the religion of philosophy or civilization, I
may be accused of having taken a course of my own, for which I have no
sufficient warrant. Such an accusation does not give me much concern.
Every one who thinks on these subjects takes a course of his own,
though it will also happen to be the course which others take besides
himself. The minds of many separately bear them forward in the same
direction, and they are confirmed in it by each other. This I consider
to be my own case; if I have mis-stated or omitted notorious facts in
my account of Natural Religion, if I have contradicted or disregarded
anything which He who speaks through my conscience has told us all
directly from Heaven, then indeed I have acted unjustifiably and have
something to unsay; but, if I have done no more than view the notorious
facts of the case in the medium of my primary mental experiences, under
the aspects which they spontaneously present to me, and with the aid
of my best illative sense, I only do on one side of the question what
those who think differently do on the other. As they start with one
set of first principles, I start with another. I gave notice just now
that I should offer my own witness in the matter in question; though of
course it would not be worth while my offering it, unless what I felt
myself agreed with what is felt by hundreds and thousands besides me,
as I am sure it does, whatever be the measure, more or less, of their
explicit recognition of it.

In thus speaking of Natural Religion as in one sense a matter of
private judgment, and that with a view of proceeding from it to the
proof of Christianity, I seem to give up the intention of demonstrating
either. Certainly I do; not that I deny that demonstration is possible.
Truth certainly, as such, rests upon grounds intrinsically and
objectively and abstractedly demonstrative, but it does not follow
from this that the arguments producible in its favour are unanswerable
and irresistible. These latter epithets are relative, and bear upon
matters of fact; arguments in themselves ought to do, what perhaps in
the particular case they cannot do. The fact of revelation is in itself
demonstrably true, but it is not therefore true irresistibly; else, how
comes it to be resisted? There is a vast distance between what it is in
itself, and what it is to us. Light is a quality of matter, as truth is
of Christianity; but light is not recognized by the blind, and there
are those who do not recognize truth, from the fault, not of truth, but
of themselves. I cannot convert men, when I ask for assumptions which
they refuse to grant to me; and without assumptions no one can prove
anything about anything.

I am suspicious then of scientific demonstrations in a question of
concrete fact, in a discussion between fallible men. However, let those
demonstrate who have the gift; “unusquisque in suo sensu abundet.”
For me, it is more congenial to my own judgment to attempt to prove
Christianity in the same informal way in which I can prove for certain
that I have been born into this world, and that I shall die out of it.
It is pleasant to my own feelings to follow a theological writer, such
as Amort, who has dedicated to the great Pope, Benedict XIV., what
he calls “a new, modest, and easy way of demonstrating the Catholic
Religion.” In this work he adopts the argument merely of the _greater_
probability;(40) I prefer to rely on that of an _accumulation_ of
various probabilities; but we both hold (that is, I hold with him),
that from probabilities we may construct legitimate proof, sufficient
for certitude. I follow him in holding, that, since a Good Providence
watches over us, He blesses such means of argument as it has pleased
Him to give us, in the nature of man and of the world, if we use them
duly for those ends for which He has given them; and that, as in
mathematics we are justified by the dictate of nature in withholding
our assent from a conclusion of which we have not yet a strict logical
demonstration, so by a like dictate we are not justified, in the case
of concrete reasoning and especially of religious inquiry, in waiting
till such logical demonstration is ours, but on the contrary are bound
in conscience to seek truth and to look for certainty by modes of
proof, which, when reduced to the shape of formal propositions, fail to
satisfy the severe requisitions of science.(41)

Here then at once is one momentous doctrine or principle, which enters
into my own reasoning, and which another ignores, viz. the providence
and intention of God; and of course there are other principles,
explicit or implicit, which are in like circumstances. It is not
wonderful then, that, while I can prove Christianity divine to my
own satisfaction, I shall not be able to force it upon any one else.
Multitudes indeed I ought to succeed in persuading of its truth without
any force at all, because they and I start from the same principles,
and what is a proof to me is a proof to them; but if any one starts
from any other principles but ours, I have not the power to change his
principles or the conclusion which he draws from them, any more than
I can make a crooked man straight. Whether his mind will ever grow
straight, whether I can do anything towards its becoming straight,
whether he is not responsible, responsible to his Maker, for being
mentally crooked, is another matter; still the fact remains, that, in
any inquiry about things in the concrete, men differ from each other,
not so much in the soundness of their reasoning as in the principles
which govern its exercise, that those principles are of a personal
character, that where there is no common measure of minds, there is
no common measure of arguments, and that the validity of proof is
determined, not by any scientific test, but by the illative sense.

Accordingly, instead of saying that the truths of Revelation depend
on those of Natural Religion, it is more pertinent to say that belief
in revealed truths depends on belief in natural. Belief is a state
of mind; belief generates belief; states of mind correspond to each
other; the habits of thought and the reasonings which lead us on to a
higher state of belief than our present, are the very same which we
already possess in connexion with the lower state. Those Jews became
Christians in Apostolic times who were already what may be called
crypto-Christians; and those Christians in this day remain Christian
only in name, and (if it so happen) at length fall away, who are
nothing deeper or better than men of the world, _savants_, literary
men, or politicians.

That a special preparation of mind is required for each separate
department of inquiry and discussion (excepting, of course, that of
abstract science) is strongly insisted upon in well-known passages of
the Nicomachean Ethics. Speaking of the variations which are found in
the logical perfection of proof in various subject-matters, Aristotle
says, “A well-educated man will expect exactness in every class of
subjects, according as the nature of the thing admits; for it is much
the same mistake to put up with a mathematician using probabilities,
and to require demonstration of an orator. Each man judges skilfully in
those things about which he is well-informed; it is of these, that he
is a good judge; viz. he, in each subject-matter, is a judge, who is
well-educated in that subject-matter, and he is in an absolute sense
a judge, who is in all of them well-educated.” Again: “Young men come
to be mathematicians and the like, but they cannot possess practical
judgment; for this talent is employed upon individual facts, and these
are learned only by experience; and a youth has not experience, for
experience is only gained by a course of years. And so, again, it would
appear that a boy may be a mathematician, but not a philosopher, or
learned in physics, and for this reason,—because the one study deals
with abstractions, while the other studies gain their principles from
experience, and in the latter subjects youths do not give assent, but
make assertions, but in the former they know what it is that they are
handling.”

These words of a heathen philosopher, laying down broad principles
about all knowledge, express a general rule, which in Scripture
is applied authoritatively to the case of revealed knowledge in
particular;—and that not once or twice only, but continually, as is
notorious. For instance:—“I have understood,” says the Psalmist, “more
than all my teachers, because Thy testimonies are my meditation.”
And so our Lord: “He that hath ears, let him hear.” “If any man will
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” And “He that is of God,
heareth the words of God.” Thus too the Angels at the Nativity announce
“Peace to men of good will.” And we read in the Acts of the Apostles
of “Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened to attend to those things which
were said by Paul.” And we are told on another occasion, that “as many
as were ordained,” or disposed by God, “to life everlasting, believed.”
And St. John tells us, “He that knoweth God, heareth us; he that is not
of God, heareth us not; by this we know the spirit of truth, and the
spirit of error.”

1.

Relying then on these authorities, human and Divine, I have no scruple
in beginning the review I shall take of Christianity by professing
to consult for those only whose minds are properly prepared for it;
and by being prepared, I mean to denote those who are imbued with the
religious opinions and sentiments which I have identified with Natural
Religion. I do not address myself to those, who in moral evil and
physical see nothing more than imperfections of a parallel nature;
who consider that the difference in gravity between the two is one of
degree only, not of kind; that moral evil is merely the offspring of
physical, and that as we remove the latter so we inevitably remove
the former; that there is a progress of the human race which tends to
the annihilation of moral evil; that knowledge is virtue, and vice is
ignorance; that sin is a bugbear, not a reality; that the Creator does
not punish except in the sense of correcting; that vengeance in Him
would of necessity be vindictiveness; that all that we know of Him, be
it much or little, is through the laws of nature; that miracles are
impossible; that prayer to Him is a superstition; that the fear of Him
is unmanly; that sorrow for sin is slavish and abject; that the only
intelligible worship of Him is to act well our part in the world, and
the only sensible repentance to do better in future; that if we do our
duties in this life, we may take our chance for the next; and that it
is of no use perplexing our minds about the future state, for it is all
a matter of guess. These opinions characterize a civilized age; and if
I say that I will not argue about Christianity with men who hold them,
I do so, not as claiming any right to be impatient or peremptory with
any one, but because it is plainly absurd to attempt to prove a second
proposition to those who do not admit the first.

I assume then that the above system of opinion is simply false,
inasmuch as it contradicts the primary teachings of nature in the human
race, wherever a religion is found and its workings can be ascertained.
I assume the Presence of God in our conscience, and the universal
experience, as keen as our experience of bodily pain, of what we call a
sense of sin or guilt. This sense of sin, as of something not only evil
in itself, but an affront to the good God, is chiefly felt as regards
one or other of three violations of His Law. He Himself is Sanctity,
Truth, and Love; and the three offences against His Majesty are
impurity, inveracity, and cruelty. All men are not distressed at these
offences alike; but the piercing pain and sharp remorse which one or
other inflicts upon the mind, till habituated to them, brings home to
it the notion of what sin is, and is the vivid type and representative
of its intrinsic hatefulness.

Starting from these elements, we may determine without difficulty the
class of sentiments, intellectual and moral, which constitute the
formal preparation for entering upon what are called the Evidences
of Christianity. These Evidences, then, presuppose a belief and
perception of the Divine Presence, a recognition of His attributes
and an admiration of His Person viewed under them, a conviction of
the worth of the soul and of the reality and momentousness of the
unseen world, an understanding that, in proportion as we partake in
our own persons of the attributes which we admire in Him, we are dear
to Him, a consciousness on the contrary that we are far from partaking
them, a consequent insight into our guilt and misery, an eager hope
of reconciliation to Him, a desire to know and to love Him, and a
sensitive looking-out in all that happens, whether in the course of
nature or of human life, for tokens, if such there be, of His bestowing
on us what we so greatly need. These are specimens of the state of mind
for which I stipulate in those who would inquire into the truth of
Christianity; and my warrant for so definite a stipulation lies in the
teaching, as I have described it, of conscience and the moral sense,
in the testimony of those religious rites which have ever prevailed
in all parts of the world, and in the character and conduct of those
who have commonly been selected by the popular instinct as the special
favourites of Heaven.

2.

I have appealed to the popular ideas on the subject of religion, and
to the objects of popular admiration and praise, as illustrating my
account of the preparation of mind which is necessary for the inquirer
into Christianity. Here an obvious objection occurs, in noticing
which I shall be advanced one step farther in the work which I have
undertaken.

It may be urged, then, that no appeal will avail me, which is made
to religions so notoriously immoral as those of paganism; nor indeed
can it be made without an explanation. Certainly, as regards ethical
teaching, various religions, which have been popular in the world, have
not supplied any; and in the corrupt state in which they appear in
history, they are little better than schools of imposture, cruelty, and
impurity. Their objects of worship were immoral as well as false, and
their founders and heroes have been in keeping with their gods. This is
undeniable, but it does not destroy the use that may be made of their
testimony. There is a better side of their teaching; purity has often
been held in reverence, if not practised; ascetics have been in honour;
hospitality has been a sacred duty; and dishonesty and injustice have
been under a ban. Here then, as before, I take our natural perception
of right and wrong as the standard for determining the characteristics
of Natural Religion, and I use the religious rites and traditions which
are actually found in the world, only so far as they agree with our
moral sense.

This leads me to lay down the general principle, which I have all
along implied:—that no religion is from God which contradicts our
sense of right and wrong. Doubtless; but at the same time we ought to
be quite sure that, in a particular case which is before us, we have
satisfactorily ascertained what the dictates of our moral nature are,
and that we apply them rightly, and whether the applying them or not
comes into question at all. The precepts of a religion certainly may
be absolutely immoral; a religion which simply commanded us to lie, or
to have a community of wives, would _ipso facto_ forfeit all claim to
a divine origin. Jupiter and Neptune, as represented in the classical
mythology, are evil spirits, and nothing can make them otherwise. And I
should in like manner repudiate a theology which taught that men were
created in order to be wicked and wretched.

I alluded just now to those who consider the doctrine of retributive
punishment, or of divine vengeance, to be incompatible with the true
religion; but I do not see how they can maintain their ground. In order
to do so, they have first to prove that an act of vengeance must, as
such, be a sin in our own instance; but even this is far from clear.
Anger and indignation against cruelty and injustice, resentment of
injuries, desire that the false, the ungrateful, and the depraved
should meet with punishment, these, if not in themselves virtuous
feelings, are at least not vicious; but, first from the certainty
that, if habitual, it will run into excess and become sin, and next
because the office of punishment has not been committed to us, and
further because it is a feeling unsuitable to those who are themselves
so laden with imperfection and guilt, therefore vengeance, in itself
allowable, is forbidden to us. These exceptions do not hold in the
case of a perfect being, and certainly not in the instance of the
Supreme Judge. Moreover, we see that even men on earth have different
duties, according to their personal qualifications and their positions
in the community. The rule of morals is the same for all; and yet,
notwithstanding, what is right in one is not necessarily right in
another. What would be a crime in a private man to do, is a crime in
a magistrate not to have done; still wider is the difference between
man and his Maker. Nor must it be forgotten, that, as I have observed
above, retributive justice is the very attribute under which God is
primarily brought before us in the teachings of our natural conscience.

And further, we cannot determine the character of particular actions,
till we have the whole case before us out of which they arise; unless,
indeed, they are in themselves distinctively vicious. We all feel
the force of the maxim, “Audi alteram partem.” It is difficult to
trace the path and to determine the scope of Divine Providence. We
read of a day when the Almighty will condescend to place His actions
in their completeness before His creatures, and “will overcome when
He is judged.” If, till then, we feel it to be a duty to suspend our
judgment concerning certain of His actions or precepts, we do no more
than what we do every day in the case of an earthly friend or enemy,
whose conduct in some point requires explanation. It surely is not too
much to expect of us that we should act with parallel caution, and
be “memores conditionis nostræ” as regards the acts of our Creator.
There is a poem of Parnell’s which strikingly brings home to us how
differently the divine appointments will look in the light of day, from
what they appear to be in our present twilight. An Angel, in disguise
of a man, steals a golden cup, strangles an infant, and throws a guide
into the stream, and then explains to his horrified companion, that
acts which would be enormities in man, are in him, as God’s minister,
deeds of merciful correction or of retribution.

Moreover, when we are about to pass judgment on the dealings of
Providence with other men, we shall do well to consider first His
dealings with ourselves. We cannot know about others, about ourselves
we do know something; and we know that He has ever been good to us,
and not severe. Is it not wise to argue from what we actually know
to what we do not know? It may turn out in the day of account, that
unforgiven souls, while charging His laws with injustice in the case of
others, may be unable to find fault with His dealings severally towards
themselves.

As to those various religions which, together with Christianity, teach
the doctrine of eternal punishment, here again we ought, before we
judge, to understand, not only the whole state of the case, but what is
meant by the doctrine itself. Eternity, or endlessness, is in itself
only a negative idea, though punishment is positive. Its fearful force,
as added to punishment, lies in what it is not; it means no change
of state, no annihilation, no restoration. But it cannot become a
quality of punishment, any more than a man’s living seventy years is a
quality of his mind, or enters into the idea of his virtues or talents.
If punishment be attended by continuity, by a sense of duration and
succession, by the mental presence of its past and its future, by
a sustained power of realizing it,(42) this must be because it is
endless and something more; such inflictions are an addition to its
endlessness, and do not necessarily belong to it because it is endless.
As I have already said, the great mystery is, not that evil has no end,
but that it had a beginning. But I submit the whole subject to the
Theological School.

3.

One of the most important effects of Natural Religion on the mind, in
preparation for Revealed, is the anticipation which it creates, that a
Revelation will be given. That earnest desire of it, which religious
minds cherish, leads the way to the expectation of it. Those who
know nothing of the wounds of the soul, are not led to deal with the
question, or to consider its circumstances; but when our attention is
roused, then the more steadily we dwell upon it, the more probable
does it seem that a revelation has been or will be given to us. This
presentiment is founded on our sense, on the one hand, of the infinite
goodness of God, and, on the other, of our own extreme misery and
need—two doctrines which are the primary constituents of Natural
Religion. It is difficult to put a limit to the legitimate force of
this antecedent probability. Some minds will feel it so powerfully,
as to recognize in it almost a proof, without direct evidence, of the
divinity of a religion claiming to be the true, supposing its history
and doctrine are free from positive objection, and there be no rival
religion with plausible claims of its own. Nor ought this trust in a
presumption to seem preposterous to those who are so confident, on _à
priori_ grounds, that the moon is inhabited by rational beings, and
that the course of nature is never crossed by miraculous agency. Any
how, very little positive evidence seems to be necessary, when the mind
is penetrated by the strong anticipation which I am supposing. It was
this instinctive apprehension, as we may conjecture, which carried on
Dionysius and Damaris at Athens to a belief in Christianity, though
St. Paul did no miracle there, and only asserted the doctrines of the
Divine Unity, the Resurrection, and the universal judgment, while, on
the other hand, it had had no tendency to attach them to any of the
mythological rites in which the place abounded.

Here my method of argument differs from that adopted by Paley in his
Evidences of Christianity. This clear-headed and almost mathematical
reasoner postulates, for his proof of its miracles, only thus much,
that, under the circumstances of the case, a revelation is not
improbable. He says, “We do not assume the attributes of the Deity,
or the existence of a future state.” “It is not necessary for our
purpose that these propositions (viz. that a future existence should be
destined by God for His human creation, and that, being so destined,
He should have acquainted them with it,) be capable of proof, or even
that, by arguments drawn from the light of nature, they can be made out
as probable; it is enough that we are able to say of them, that they
are not so violently improbable, so contradictory to what we already
believe of the divine power and character, that [they] ought to be
rejected at first sight, and to be rejected by whatever strength or
complication of evidence they be attested.” He has such confidence in
the strength of the testimony which he can produce in favour of the
Christian miracles, that he only asks to be allowed to bring it into
court.

I confess to much suspicion of legal proceedings and legal arguments,
when used in questions whether of history or of philosophy. Rules
of court are dictated by what is expedient on the whole and in the
long run; but they incur the risk of being unjust to the claims of
particular cases. Why am I to begin with taking up a position not my
own, and unclothing my mind of that large outfit of existing thoughts,
principles, likings, desires, and hopes, which make me what I am? If I
am asked to use Paley’s argument for my own conversion, I say plainly
I do not want to be converted by a smart syllogism;(43) if I am asked
to convert others by it, I say plainly I do not care to overcome
their reason without touching their hearts. I wish to deal, not with
controversialists, but with inquirers.

I think Paley’s argument clear, clever, and powerful; and there is
something which looks like charity in going out into the highways and
hedges, and compelling men to come in; but in this matter some exertion
on the part of the persons whom I am to convert is a condition of a
true conversion. They who have no religious earnestness are at the
mercy, day by day, of some new argument or fact, which may overtake
them, in favour of one conclusion or the other. And how, after all,
is a man better for Christianity, who has never felt the need of it
or the desire? On the other hand, if he has longed for a revelation
to enlighten him and to cleanse his heart, why may he not use, in
his inquiries after it, that just and reasonable anticipation of its
probability, which such longing has opened the way to his entertaining?

Men are too well inclined to sit at home, instead of stirring
themselves to inquire whether a revelation has been given; they expect
its evidences to come to them without their trouble; they act, not
as suppliants, but as judges.(44) Modes of argument such as Paley’s,
encourage this state of mind; they allow men to forget that revelation
is a boon, not a debt on the part of the Giver; they treat it as a mere
historical phenomenon. If I was told that some great man, a foreigner,
whom I did not know, had come into town, and was on his way to call
on me, and to go over my house, I should send to ascertain the fact,
and meanwhile should do my best to put my house into a condition to
receive him. He would not be pleased if I left the matter to take
its chance, and went on the maxim that seeing was believing. Like
this is the conduct of those who resolve to treat the Almighty with
dispassionateness, a judicial temper, clearheadedness, and candour. It
is the way with some men, (surely not a good way,) to say, that without
these lawyerlike qualifications conversion is immoral. It is their way,
a miserable way, to pronounce that there is no religious love of truth
where there is fear of error. On the contrary, I would maintain that
the fear of error is simply necessary to the genuine love of truth.
No inquiry comes to good which is not conducted under a deep sense of
responsibility, and of the issues depending upon its determination.
Even the ordinary matters of life are an exercise of conscientiousness;
and where conscience is, fear must be. So much is this acknowledged
just now, that there is almost an affectation, in popular literature,
in the case of criticisms on the fine arts, on poetry, and music, of
speaking about conscientiousness in writing, painting, or singing; and
that earnestness and simplicity of mind, which makes men fear to go
wrong in these minor matters, has surely a place in the most serious of
all undertakings.

It is on these grounds that, in considering Christianity, I start
with conditions different from Paley’s; not, however, as undervaluing
the force and the serviceableness of his argument, but as preferring
inquiry to disputation in a question about truth.

4.

There is another point on which my basis of argument differs from
Paley’s. He argues on the principle that the credentials, which
ascertain for us a message from above, are necessarily in their nature
miraculous; nor have I any thought of venturing to say otherwise.
In fact, all professed revelations have been attended, in one
shape or another, with the profession of miracles; and we know how
direct and unequivocal are the miracles of both the Jewish Covenant
and of our own. However, my object here is to assume as little as
possible as regards facts, and to dwell only on what is patent and
notorious; and therefore I will only insist on those coincidences
and their cumulations, which, though not in themselves miraculous,
do irresistibly force upon us, almost by the law of our nature, the
presence of the extraordinary agency of Him whose being we already
acknowledge. Though coincidences rise out of a combination of general
laws, there is no law of those coincidences;(45) they have a character
of their own, and seem left by Providence in His own hands, as the
channel by which, inscrutable to us, He may make known to us His will.

For instance, if I am a believer in a God of Truth and Avenger of
dishonesty, and know for certain that a market-woman, after calling
on Him to strike her dead if she had in her possession a piece of
money not hers, did fall down dead on the spot, and that the money was
found in her hand, how can I call this a blind coincidence, and not
discern in it an act of Providence over and above its general laws?
So, certainly, thought the inhabitants of an English town, when they
erected a pillar as a record of such an event at the place where it
occurred. And if a Pope excommunicates a great conqueror; and he,
on hearing the threat, says to one of his friends, “Does he think
the world has gone back a thousand years? does he suppose the arms
will fall from the hands of my soldiers?” and within two years, on
the retreat over the snows of Russia, as two contemporary historians
relate, “famine and cold tore their arms from the grasp of the
soldiers,” “they fell from the hands of the bravest and most robust,”
and “destitute of the power of raising them from the ground, the
soldiers left them in the snow;” is not this too, though no miracle,
a coincidence so special, as rightly to be called a Divine judgment?
So thinks Alison, who avows with religious honesty, that “there is
something in these marvellous coincidences beyond the operation of
chance, and which even a Protestant historian feels himself bound
to mark for the observation of future years.(46)” And so, too, of a
cumulation of coincidences, separately less striking; when Spelman sets
about establishing the fact of the ill-fortune which in a multitude
of instances has followed upon acts of sacrilege, then, even though
in many instances it has not followed, and in many instances he
exaggerates, still there may be a large residuum of cases which cannot
be properly resolved into the mere accident of concurrent causes,
but must in reason be considered the warning voice of God. So, at
least, thought Gibson, Bishop of London, when he wrote, “Many of the
instances, and those too well-attested, are so terrible in the event,
and in the circumstances so surprising, that no considering person can
well pass them over.”

I think, then, that the circumstances under which a professed
revelation comes to us, may be such as to impress both our reason and
our imagination with a sense of its truth, even though no appeal be
made to strictly miraculous intervention—in saying which I do not mean
of course to imply that those circumstances, when traced back to their
first origins, are not the outcome of such intervention, but that the
miraculous intervention addresses us at this day in the guise of those
circumstances; that is, of coincidences, which are indications, to
the illative sense of those who believe in a Moral Governor, of His
immediate Presence, especially to those who in addition hold with me
the strong antecedent probability that, in His mercy, He will thus
supernaturally present Himself to our apprehension.

5.

Now as to the fact; has what is so probable in anticipation actually
been granted to us, or have we still to look out for it? It is very
plain, supposing it has been granted, which among all the religions
of the world comes from God: and if it is not that, a revelation is
not yet given, and we must look forward to the future. There is only
one Religion in the world which tends to fulfil the aspirations,
needs, and foreshadowings of natural faith and devotion. It may be
said, perhaps, that, educated in Christianity, I merely judge of it
by its own principles; but this is not the fact. For, in the first
place, I have taken my idea of what a revelation must be, in good
measure, from the actual religions of the world; and as to its ethics,
the ideas with which I come to it are derived not simply from the
Gospel, but prior to it from heathen moralists, whom Fathers of the
Church and Ecclesiastical writers have imitated or sanctioned; and
as to the intellectual position from which I have contemplated the
subject, Aristotle has been my master. Besides, I do not here single
out Christianity with reference simply to its particular doctrines or
precepts, but for a reason which is on the surface of its history.
It alone has a definite message addressed to all mankind. As far as
I know, the religion of Mahomet has brought into the world no new
doctrine whatever, except, indeed, that of its own divine origin;
and the character of its teaching is too exact a reflection of the
race, time, place, and climate in which it arose, to admit of its
becoming universal. The same dependence on external circumstances is
characteristic, so far as I know, of the religions of the far East; nor
am I sure of any definite message from God to man which they convey
and protect, though they may have sacred books. Christianity, on the
other hand, is in its idea an announcement, a preaching; it is the
depositary of truths beyond human discovery, momentous, practical,
maintained one and the same in substance in every age from its first,
and addressed to all mankind. And it has actually been embraced and
is found in all parts of the world, in all climates, among all races,
in all ranks of society, under every degree of civilization, from
barbarism to the highest cultivation of mind. Coming to set right and
to govern the world, it has ever been, as it ought to be, in conflict
with large masses of men, with the civil power, with physical force,
with adverse philosophies; it has had successes, it has had reverses;
but it has had a grand history, and has effected great things, and is
as vigorous in its age as in its youth. In all these respects it has a
distinction in the world and a pre-eminence of its own; it has upon it
_primâ facie_ signs of divinity; I do not know what can be advanced by
rival religions to match prerogatives so special; so that I feel myself
justified in saying either Christianity is from God, or a revelation
has not yet been given to us.

It will not surely be objected, as a point in favour of some of the
Oriental religions, that they are older than Christianity by some
centuries; yet, should it be so said, it must be recollected that
Christianity is only the continuation and conclusion of what professes
to be an earlier revelation, which may be traced back into prehistoric
times, till it is lost in the darkness that hangs over them. As far
as we know, there never was a time when that revelation was not,—a
revelation continuous and systematic, with distinct representatives and
an orderly succession. And this, I suppose, is far more than can be
said for the religions of the East.

6.

Here, then, I am brought to the consideration of the Hebrew nation
and the Mosaic religion, as the first step in the direct evidence for
Christianity.

The Jews are one of the few Oriental nations who are known in history
as a people of progress, and their line of progress is the development
of religious truth. In that their own line they stand by themselves
among all the populations, not only of the East, but of the West. Their
country may be called the classical home of the religious principle, as
Greece is the home of intellectual power, and Rome that of political
and practical wisdom. Theism is their life; it is emphatically their
national religion, for they never were without it, and were made a
people by means of it. This is a phenomenon singular and solitary in
history, and must have a meaning. If there be a God and Providence, it
must come from Him, whether immediately or indirectly; and the people
themselves have ever maintained that it has been His direct work, and
has been recognized by Him as such. We are apt to treat pretences to a
divine mission or to supernatural powers as of frequent occurrence, and
on that score to dismiss them from our thoughts; but we cannot so deal
with Judaism. When mankind had universally denied the first lesson of
their conscience by lapsing into polytheism, is it a thing of slight
moment that there was just one exception to the rule, that there was
just one people who, first by their rulers and priests, and afterwards
by their own unanimous zeal, professed, as their distinguishing
doctrine, the Divine Unity and Government of the world, and that,
moreover, not only as a natural truth, but as revealed to them by that
God Himself of whom they spoke,—who so embodied it in their national
polity, that a Theocracy was the only name by which it could be called?
It was a people founded and set up in Theism, kept together by Theism,
and maintaining Theism for a period from first to last of 2000 years,
till the dissolution of their body politic; and they have maintained it
since in their state of exile and wandering for 2000 years more. They
begin with the beginning of history, and the preaching of this august
dogma begins with them. They are its witnesses and confessors, even
to torture and death; on it and its revelation are moulded their laws
and government; on this their politics, philosophy, and literature are
founded; of this truth their poetry is the voice, pouring itself out
in devotional compositions which Christianity, through all its many
countries and ages, has been unable to rival; on this aboriginal truth,
as time goes on, prophet after prophet bases his further revelations,
with a sustained reference to a time when, according to the secret
counsels of its Divine Object and Author, it is to receive completion
and perfection,—till at length that time comes.

The last age of their history is as strange as their first. When that
time of destined blessing came, which they had so accurately marked
out, and were so carefully waiting for—a time which found them, in
fact, more zealous for their Law, and for the dogma it enshrined, than
they ever had been before—then, instead of any final favour coming
on them from above, they fell under the power of their enemies, and
were overthrown, their holy city razed to the ground, their polity
destroyed, and the remnant of their people cast off to wander far and
away through every land except their own, as we find them at this day;
lasting on, century after century, not absorbed in other populations,
not annihilated, as likely to last on, as unlikely to be restored, as
far as outward appearances go, now as a thousand years ago. What nation
has so grand, so romantic, so terrible a history? Does it not fulfil
the idea of, what the nation calls itself, a chosen people, chosen for
good and evil? Is it not an exhibition in a course of history of that
primary declaration of conscience, as I have been determining it, “With
the upright Thou shalt be upright, and with the froward Thou shalt be
froward”? It must have a meaning, if there is a God. We know what was
their witness of old time; what is their witness now?

Why, I say, was it that, after so memorable a career, when their sins
and sufferings were now to come to an end, when they were looking
out for a deliverance and a Deliverer, suddenly all was reversed for
once and for all? They were the favoured servants of God, and yet a
peculiar reproach and note of infamy is affixed to their name. It was
their belief that His protection was unchangeable, and that their
Law would last for ever;—it was their consolation to be taught by an
uninterrupted tradition, that it could not die, except by changing into
a new self, more wonderful than it was before;—it was their faithful
expectation that a promised King was coming, the Messiah, who would
extend the sway of Israel over all people;—it was a condition of their
covenant, that, as a reward to Abraham, their first father, the day at
length should dawn when the gates of their narrow land should open,
and they should pour out for the conquest and occupation of the whole
earth;—and, I repeat, when the day came, they did go forth, and they
did spread into all lands, but as hopeless exiles, as eternal wanderers.

Are we to say that this failure is a proof that, after all, there was
nothing providential in their history? For myself, I do not see how a
second portent obliterates a first; and, in truth, their own testimony
and their own sacred books carry us on towards a better solution
of the difficulty. I have said they were in God’s favour under a
covenant,—perhaps they did not fulfil the conditions of it. This indeed
seems to be their own account of the matter, though it is not clear
what their breach of engagement was. And that in some way they did sin,
whatever their sin was, is corroborated by the well-known chapter in
the Book of Deuteronomy, which so strikingly anticipates the nature
of their punishment. That passage, translated into Greek as many as
350 years before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, has on it the marks
of a wonderful prophecy; but I am not now referring to it as such,
but merely as an indication that the disappointment, which actually
overtook them at the Christian era, was not necessarily out of keeping
with the original divine purpose, or again with the old promise made to
them, and their confident expectation of its fulfilment. Their national
ruin, which came instead of aggrandizement, is described in that book,
in spite of all promises, with an emphasis and minuteness which prove
that it was contemplated long before, at least as a possible issue of
the fortunes of Israel. Among other inflictions which should befall the
guilty people, it was told them that they should fall down before their
enemies, and should be scattered throughout all the kingdoms of the
earth; that they never should have quiet in those nations, or have rest
for the sole of their foot; that they were to have a fearful heart and
languishing eyes, and a soul consumed with heaviness; that they were
to suffer wrong, and to be crushed at all times, and to be astonished
at the terror of their lot; that their sons and daughters were to be
given to another people, and they were to look and to sicken all the
day, and their life was ever to hang in doubt before them, and fear to
haunt them day and night; that they should be a proverb and a by-word
of all people among whom they were brought; and that curses were to
come on them, and to be signs and wonders on them and their seed for
ever. Such are some portions, and not the most terrible, of this
extended anathema; and its partial accomplishment at an earlier date of
their history was a warning to them, when the destined time drew near,
that, however great the promises made to them might be, those promises
were dependent on the terms of the covenant which stood between them
and their Maker, and that, as they had turned to curses at that former
time, so they might turn to curses again.

This grand drama, so impressed with the characters of supernatural
agency, concerns us here only in its bearing upon the evidence for
the divine origin of Christianity; and it is at this point that
Christianity comes upon the historical scene. It is a notorious fact
that it issued from the Jewish land and people; and, had it no other
than this historical connexion with Judaism, it would have some share
in the prestige of its original home. But it claims to be far more
than this; it professes to be the actual completion of the Mosaic Law,
the promised means of deliverance and triumph to the nation, which
that nation itself, as I have said, has since considered to be, on
account of some sin or other, withheld or forfeited. It professes to
be, not the casual, but the legitimate offspring, heir, and successor
of the Mosaic covenant, or rather to be Judaism itself, developed and
transformed. Of course it has to prove its claim, as well as to prefer
it; but if it succeeds in doing so, then all those tokens of the Divine
Presence, which distinguish the Jewish history, at once belong to it,
and are a portion of its credentials.

And at least the _primâ facie_ view of its relations towards Judaism
is in favour of these pretensions. It is an historical fact, that, at
the very time that the Jews committed their unpardonable sin, whatever
it was, and were driven out from their home to wander over the earth,
their Christian brethren, born of the same stock, and equally citizens
of Jerusalem, did also issue forth from the same home, but in order to
subdue that same earth and make it their own; that is, they undertook
the very work which, according to the promise, their nation actually
was ordained to execute; and, with a method of their own indeed, and
with a new end, and only slowly and painfully, but still really and
thoroughly, they did it. And since that time the two children of the
promise have ever been found together—of the promise forfeited and the
promise fulfilled; and whereas the Christian has been in high place,
so the Jew has been degraded and despised—the one has been “the head,”
and the other “the tail;” so that, to go no farther, the fact that
Christianity actually has done what Judaism was to have done, decides
the controversy, by the logic of facts, in favour of Christianity.
The prophecies announced that the Messiah was to come at a definite
time and place; Christians point to Him as coming then and there, as
announced; they are not met by any counter claim or rival claimant on
the part of the Jews, only by their assertion that He did not come at
all, though up to the event they had said He was then and there coming.
Further, Christianity clears up the mystery which hangs over Judaism,
accounting fully for the punishment of the people, by specifying their
sin, their heinous sin. If, instead of hailing their own Messiah,
they crucified Him, then the strange scourge which has pursued them
after the deed, and the energetic wording of the curse before it, are
explained by the very strangeness of their guilt;—or rather, their
sin is their punishment; for in rejecting their Divine King, they
_ipso facto_ lost the living principle and tie of their nationality.
Moreover, we see what led them into error; they thought a triumph and
an empire were to be given to them at once, which were given indeed
eventually, but by the slow and gradual growth of many centuries and a
long warfare.

On the whole, then, I observe, on the one hand, that, Judaism having
been the channel of religious traditions which are lost in the depth
of their antiquity, of course it is a great point for Christianity
to succeed in proving that it is the legitimate heir to that former
religion. Nor is it, on the other, of less importance to the
significance of those early traditions to be able to determine that
they were not lost together with their original store-house, but were
transferred, on the failure of Judaism, to the custody of the Christian
Church. And this apparent correspondence between the two is in itself a
presumption for such correspondence being real. Next, I observe, that
if the history of Judaism is so wonderful as to suggest the presence
of some special divine agency in its appointments and fortunes, still
more wonderful and divine is the history of Christianity; and again
it is more wonderful still, that two such wonderful creations should
span almost the whole course of ages, during which nations and states
have been in existence, and should constitute a professed system of
continued intercourse between earth and heaven from first to last amid
all the vicissitudes of human affairs. This phenomenon again carries on
its face, to those who believe in a God, the probability that it has
that divine origin which it professes to have; and, (when viewed in the
light of the strong presumption which I have insisted on, that in God’s
mercy a revelation from Him will be granted to us, and of the contrast
presented by other religions, no one of which professes to be a
revelation direct, definite, and integral as this is,)—this phenomenon,
I say, of cumulative marvels raises that probability, both for Judaism
and Christianity, in religious minds, almost to a certainty.

7.

If Christianity is connected with Judaism as closely as I have
been supposing, then there have been, by means of the two, direct
communications between man and his Maker from time immemorial down
to this day—a great prerogative such, that it is nowhere else even
claimed. No other religion but these two professes to be the organ of
a formal revelation, certainly not of a revelation which is directed
to the benefit of the whole human race. Here it is that Mahometanism
fails, though it claims to carry on the line of revelation after
Christianity; for it is the mere creed and rite of certain races,
bringing with it, as such, no gifts to our nature, and is rather a
reformation of local corruptions, and a return to the ceremonial
worship of earlier times, than a new and larger revelation. And while
Christianity was the heir to a dead religion, Mahometanism was little
more than a rebellion against a living one. Moreover, though Mahomet
professed to be the Paraclete, no one pretends that he occupies a place
in the Christian Scriptures as prominent as that which the Messiah
fills in the Jewish. To this especial prominence of the Messianic idea
I shall now advert; that is, to the prophecies of the Old Scriptures,
and to the argument which they furnish in favour of Christianity; and
though I know that argument might be clearer and more exact than it is,
and I do not pretend here to do much more than refer to the fact of its
existence, still so far forth as we enter into it, will it strengthen
our conviction of the claim to divinity both of the Religion which
is the organ of those prophecies, and of the Religion which is their
object.

Now that the Jewish Scriptures were in existence long before the
Christian era, and were in the sole custody of the Jews, is undeniable;
whatever then their Scriptures distinctly say of Christianity, if
not attributable to chance or to happy conjecture, is prophetic. It
is undeniable too, that the Jews gathered from those books that a
great Personage was to be born of their stock, and to conquer the
whole world and to become the instrument of extraordinary blessings
to it; moreover, that he would make his appearance at a fixed date,
and that, the very date when, as it turned out, our Lord did actually
come. This is the great outline of the prediction, and if nothing more
could be said about them than this, to prove as much as this is far
from unimportant. And it is undeniable, I say, both that the Jewish
Scriptures contain thus much, and that the Jews actually understood
them as containing it.

First, then, as to what Scripture declares. From the book of Genesis
we learn that the chosen people was set up in this one idea, viz. to
be a blessing to the whole earth, and that, by means of one of their
own race, a greater than their father Abraham. This was the meaning and
drift of their being chosen. There is no room for mistake here; the
divine purpose is stated from the first with the utmost precision. At
the very time of Abraham’s call, he is told of it:—“I will make of thee
a great nation, and in thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed.”
Thrice is this promise and purpose announced in Abraham’s history; and
after Abraham’s time it is repeated to Isaac, “In thy seed shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed;” and after Isaac to Jacob, when a
wanderer from his home, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the tribes
of the earth be blessed.” And from Jacob the promise passes on to his
son Judah, and that with an addition, viz. with a reference to the
great Person who was to be the world-wide blessing, and to the date
when He should come. Judah was the chosen son of Jacob, and his staff
or sceptre, that is, his patriarchal authority, was to endure till a
greater than Judah came, so that the loss of the sceptre, when it took
place, was the sign of His near approach. “The sceptre,” says Jacob
on his death-bed, “shall not be taken away from Judah, until He come
for whom it is reserved,” or “who is to be sent,” “and He shall be the
expectation of the nations.(47)”

Such was the categorical prophecy, literal and unequivocal in its
wording, direct and simple in its scope. One man, born of the chosen
tribe, was the destined minister of blessing to the whole world; and
the race, as represented by that tribe, was to lose its old self in
gaining a new self in Him. Its destiny was sealed upon it in its
beginning. An expectation was the measure of its life. It was created
for a great end, and in that end it had its ending. Such were the
initial communications made to the chosen people, and there they
stopped;—as if the outline of promise, so sharply cut, had to be
effectually imprinted on their minds, before more knowledge was given
to them; as if, by the long interval of years which passed before the
more varied prophecies in type and figure, after the manner of the
East, were added, the original notices might stand out in the sight of
all in their severe explicitness, as archetypal truths, and guides in
interpreting whatever else was obscure in its wording or complex in its
direction.

And in the second place it is quite clear that the Jews did thus
understand their prophecies, and did expect their great Ruler, in
the very age in which our Lord came, and in which they, on the other
hand, were destroyed, losing their old self without gaining their
new. Heathen historians shall speak for the fact. “A persuasion had
possession of most of them,” says Tacitus, speaking of their resistance
to the Romans, “that it was contained in the ancient books of the
priests that at that very time the East should prevail, and that men
who issued from Judea should obtain the empire. The common people, as
is the way with human cupidity, having once interpreted in their own
favour this grand destiny, were not even by their reverses brought
round to the truth of facts.” And Suetonius extends the belief:—“The
whole East was rife with an old and persistent belief, that at that
time persons who issued from Judea, should possess the empire.” After
the event of course the Jews drew back, and denied the correctness of
their expectation, still they could not deny that the expectation had
existed. Thus the Jew Josephus, who was of the Roman party, says that
what encouraged them in the stand they made against the Romans was “an
ambiguous oracle, found in their sacred writings, that at that date
some one of them from that country should rule the world.” He can but
pronounce that the oracle was ambiguous; he cannot state that they
thought it so.

Now, considering that at that very time our Lord did appear as a
teacher, and founded not merely a religion, but (what was then quite
a new idea in the world) a system of religious warfare, an aggressive
and militant body, a dominant Catholic Church, which aimed at the
benefit of all nations by the spiritual conquest of all; and that
this warfare, then begun by it, has gone on without cessation down
to this day, and now is as living and real as ever it was; that that
militant body has from the first filled the world, that it has had
wonderful successes, that its successes have on the whole been of
extreme benefit to the human race, that it has imparted an intelligent
notion about the Supreme God to millions who would have lived and
died in irreligion, that it has raised the tone of morality wherever
it has come, has abolished great social anomalies and miseries, has
elevated the female sex to its proper dignity, has protected the poorer
classes, has destroyed slavery, encouraged literature and philosophy,
and had a principal part in that civilization of human kind, which,
with some evils still, has on the whole been productive of far greater
good,—considering, I say, that all this began at the destined,
expected, recognized season when the old prophecy said that in one
Man, born of the tribe of Judah, all the tribes of the earth were to
be blessed, I feel I have a right to say (and my line of argument does
not lead me to say more), that it is at the very least a remarkable
coincidence,—that is, one of those coincidences which, when they are
accumulated, come close upon the idea of miracle, as being impossible
without the Hand of God directly and immediately in them.

When we have got as far as this, we may go on a great deal farther.
Announcements, which could not be put forward in the front of the
argument, as being figurative, vague, or ambiguous, may be used validly
and with great effect, when they have been interpreted for us, first by
the prophetic outline, and still more by the historical object. It is a
principle which applies to all matters on which we reason, that what is
only a maze of facts, without order or drift prior to the explanation,
may, when we once have that explanation, be located and adjusted with
great facility in all its separate parts, as we know is the case as
regards the motions of the heavenly bodies since the hypothesis of
Newton. In like manner the event is the true key to prophecy, and
reconciles conflicting and divergent descriptions by embodying them
in one common representative. Thus it is that we learn how, as the
prophecies said, the Messiah could both suffer, yet be victorious; His
kingdom be Judaic in structure, yet evangelic in spirit; and His people
the children of Abraham, yet “sinners of the Gentiles.” These seeming
paradoxes, are only parallel and akin to those others which form so
prominent a feature in the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles.

As to the Jews, since they lived before the event, it is not wonderful,
that, though they were right in their general interpretation of
Scripture as far as it went, they stopped short of the whole truth;
nay, that even when their Messiah came, they could not recognize Him as
the promised King as we recognize Him now;—for we have the experience
of His history for nearly two thousand years, by which to interpret
their Scriptures. We may partly understand their position towards those
prophecies, by our own at present towards the Apocalypse. Who can deny
the superhuman grandeur and impressiveness of that sacred book! yet,
as a prophecy, though some outlines of the future are discernible,
how differently it affects us from the predictions of Isaiah! either
because it relates to undreamed-of events still to come, or because
it has been fulfilled long ago in events which in their detail and
circumstance have never become history. And the same remark applies
doubtless to portions of the Messianic prophecies still; but, if their
fulfilment has been thus gradual in time past, we must not be surprised
though portions of them still await their slow but true accomplishment
in the future.

8.

When I implied that in some points of view Christianity has not
answered the expectations of the old prophecies, of which it claims
to be the fulfilment, I had in mind principally the contrast which is
presented to us between the picture which they draw of the universality
of the kingdom of the Messiah, and that partial development of it
through the world, which is all the Christian Church can show; and
again the contrast between the rest and peace which they said He was to
introduce, and the Church’s actual history,—the conflicts of opinion
which have raged within its pale, the violent acts and unworthy lives
of many of its rulers, and the moral degradation of great masses of its
people. I do not profess to meet these difficulties here, except by
saying that the failure of Christianity in one respect in corresponding
to those prophecies cannot destroy the force of its correspondence to
them in others; just as we may allow that the portrait of a friend is a
faulty likeness to him, and yet be quite sure that it is his portrait.
What I shall actually attempt to show here is this,—that Christianity
was quite aware from the first of its own prospective future, so
unlike the expectations which the prophets would excite concerning it,
and that it meets the difficulty thence arising by anticipation, by
giving us its own predictions of what it was to be in historical fact,
predictions which are at once explanatory comments upon the Jewish
Scriptures, and direct evidences of its own prescience.

I think it observable then, that, though our Lord claims to be the
Messiah, He shows so little of conscious dependence on the old
Scriptures, or of anxiety to fulfil them; as if it became Him, who was
the Lord of the Prophets, to take His own course, and to leave their
utterances to adjust themselves to Him as they could, and not to be
careful to accommodate Himself to them. The evangelists do indeed show
some such natural zeal in His behalf, and thereby illustrate what I
notice in Him by the contrast. They betray an earnestness to trace in
His Person and history the accomplishment of prophecy, as when they
discern it in His return from Egypt, in His life at Nazareth, in the
gentleness and tenderness of His mode of teaching, and in the various
minute occurrences of His passion; but He Himself goes straight forward
on His way, of course claiming to be the Messiah of the Prophets,(48)
still not so much recurring to past prophecies, as uttering new ones,
with an antithesis not unlike that which is so impressive in the
Sermon on the Mount, when He first says, “It has been said by them
of old time,” and then adds, “But I say unto you.” Another striking
instance of this is seen in the Names under which He spoke of Himself,
which have little or no foundation in any thing which was said of
Him beforehand in the Jewish Scriptures. They speak of Him as Ruler,
Prophet, King, Hope of Israel, Offspring of Judah, and Messiah; and
His Evangelists and Disciples call Him Master, Lord, Prophet, Son of
David, King of Israel, King of the Jews, and Messiah or Christ; but He
Himself, though, I repeat, He acknowledges these titles as His own,
especially that of the Christ, chooses as His special designations
these two, Son of God and Son of Man, the latter of which is only once
given Him in the Old Scriptures, and by which He corrects any narrow
Judaic interpretation of them; while the former was never distinctly
used of Him before He came, and seems first to have been announced to
the world by the Angel Gabriel and St. John the Baptist. In those two
Names, Son of God and Son of Man, declaratory of the two natures of
Emmanuel, He separates Himself from the Jewish Dispensation, in which
He was born, and inaugurates the New Covenant.

This is not an accident, and I shall now give some instances of it,
that is, of what I may call the independent autocratic view which He
takes of His own religion, into which the old Judaism was melting, and
of the prophetic insight into its spirit and its future which that view
involves. In quoting His own sayings from the Evangelists for this
purpose, I assume (of which there is no reasonable doubt) that they
wrote before any historical events had happened of a nature to cause
them unconsciously to modify or to colour the language which their
Master used.

1. First, then, the fact has been often insisted on as a bold
conception, unheard of before, and worthy of divine origin, that He
should even project a universal religion, and that to be effected by
what may be called a propagandist movement from one centre. Hitherto
it had been the received notion in the world, that each nation had its
own gods. The Romans legislated upon that basis, and the Jews had held
it from the first, holding of course also, that all gods but their
own God were idols and demons. It is true that the Jews ought to have
been taught by their prophecies what was in store for the world and
for them, and that their first dispersion through the Empire centuries
before Christ came, and the proselytes which they collected around them
in every place, were a kind of comment on the prophecies larger than
their own; but we see what was, in fact, when our Lord came, their
expectation from those prophecies, in the passages which I have quoted
above from the Roman historians of His day. But He from the first
resisted those plausible, but mistaken interpretations of Scripture. In
His cradle indeed He had been recognized by the Eastern sages as their
king; the Angel announced that He was to reign over the house of Jacob;
Nathanael, too, owned Him as the Messiah with a regal title; but He,
on entering upon His work, interpreted these anticipations in His own
way, and that not the way of Theudas and Judas of Galilee, who took the
sword, and collected soldiers about them,—nor the way of the Tempter,
who offered Him “all the kingdoms of the world.” In the words of the
Evangelists, He began, not to fight, but “to preach;” and further, to
“preach the kingdom of heaven,” saying, “The time is accomplished, and
the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe the Gospel.” This is
the significant title, “the kingdom of heaven,”—the more significant,
when explained by the attendant precept of repentance and faith,—on
which He founds the polity which He was establishing from first to
last. One of His last sayings before He suffered was, “My kingdom is
not of this world.” And His last words, before He left the earth, when
His disciples asked Him about His kingdom, were that they, preachers
as they were, and not soldiers, should “be His witnesses to the end of
the earth,” should “preach to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem,”
should “go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,”
should “go and make disciples of all nations till the consummation of
all things.”

The last Evangelist of the four is equally precise in recording the
initial purpose with which our Lord began His ministry, viz. to create
an empire, not by force, but by persuasion. “Light is come into the
world; every one that doth evil, hateth the light, but he that doth
truth, cometh to the light.” “Lift up your eyes, and see the countries,
for they are white already to harvest.” “No man can come to Me, except
the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him.” “And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all things to Myself.”

Thus, while the Jews, relying on their Scriptures with great appearance
of reason, looked for a deliverer who should conquer with the sword, we
find that Christianity, from the first, not by an after-thought upon
trial and experience, but as a fundamental truth, magisterially set
right that mistake, transfiguring the old prophecies, and bringing to
light, as St. Paul might say, “the mystery which had been hidden from
ages and generations, but now was made manifest in His saints, the
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you,” not
simply over you, but in you, by faith and love, “the hope of glory.”

2. I have partly anticipated my next remark, which relates to the
means by which the Christian enterprise was to be carried into effect.
That preaching was to have a share in the victories of the Messiah
was plain from Prophet and Psalmist; but then Charlemagne preached,
and Mahomet preached, with an army to back them. The same Psalm which
speaks of those “who preach good tidings,” speaks also of their King’s
“foot being dipped in the blood of His enemies;” but what is so grandly
original in Christianity is, that on its broad field of conflict its
preachers were to be simply unarmed, and to suffer, but to prevail.
If we were not so familiar with our Lord’s words, I think they would
astonish us. “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.”
This was to be their normal state, and so it was; and all the promises
and directions given to them imply it. “Blessed are they that suffer
persecution;” “blessed are ye when they revile you;” “the meek shall
inherit the earth;” “resist not evil;” “you shall be hated of all
men for My Name’s sake;” “a man’s enemies shall be they of his own
household;” “he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”
What sort of encouragement was this for men who were to go about an
immense work? Do men in this way send out their soldiers to battle, or
their sons to India or Australia? The King of Israel hated Micaiah,
because he always “prophesied of him evil.” “So persecuted they the
Prophets that were before you,” says our Lord. Yes, and the Prophets
failed; they were persecuted and they lost the battle. “Take, my
brethren,” says St. James, “for an example of suffering evil, of labour
and patience, the Prophets, who spake in the Name of the Lord.” They
were “racked, mocked, stoned, cut asunder, they wandered about,—of whom
the world was not worthy,” says St. Paul. What an argument to encourage
them to aim at success by suffering, to put before them the precedent
of those who suffered and who failed!

Yet the first preachers, our Lord’s immediate disciples, saw no
difficulty in a prospect to human eyes so appalling, so hopeless. How
connatural this strange, unreasoning, reckless courage was with their
regenerate state is shown most signally in St. Paul, as having been a
convert of later vocation. He was no personal associate of our Lord’s,
yet how faithfully he echoes back our Lord’s language! His instrument
of conversion is “the foolishness of preaching;” “the weak things of
the earth confound the strong;” “we hunger and thirst, and are naked,
and are buffeted, and have no home;” “we are reviled and bless, we are
persecuted, and blasphemed, and are made the refuse of this world, and
the offscouring of all things.” Such is the intimate comprehension,
on the part of one who had never seen our Lord on earth, and knew
little from His original disciples of the genius of His teaching;—and
considering that the prophecies, upon which he had lived from his
birth, for the most part bear on their surface a contrary doctrine, and
that the Jews of that day did commonly understand them in that contrary
sense, we cannot deny that Christianity, in tracing out the method
by which it was to prevail in the future, took its own, independent
line, and, in assigning from the first a rule and a history to its
propagation, a rule and a history which have been carried out to this
day, rescues itself from the charge of but partially fulfilling those
Jewish prophecies, by the assumption of a prophetical character of its
own.

3. Now we come to a third point, in which the Divine Master explains,
and in a certain sense corrects, the prophecies of the Old Covenant, by
a more exact interpretation of them from Himself. I have granted that
they seemed to say that His coming would issue in a period of peace
and religiousness. “Behold,” says the Prophet, “a king shall reign in
justice, and princes shall rule in judgment. The fool shall no more
be called prince, neither shall the deceitful be called great. The
wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid.
They shall not hurt nor kill in all My holy mountain, for the earth is
filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the
sea.”

These words seem to predict a reversal of the consequences of the
fall, and that reversal has not been granted to us, it is true; but
let us consider how distinctly Christianity warns us against any such
anticipation. While it is so forcibly laid down in the Gospels that the
history of the kingdom of heaven begins in suffering and sanctity, it
is as plainly said that it results in unfaithfulness and sin; that is
to say, that, though there are at all times many holy, many religious
men in it, and though sanctity, as at the beginning, is ever the life
and the substance and the germinal seed of the Divine Kingdom, yet
there will be many too, there will be more, who by their lives are a
scandal and injury to it, not a defence. This again, is an astonishing
announcement, and the more so when viewed in contrast with the precepts
delivered by our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount, and His description
to the Apostles of their weapons and their warfare. So perplexing to
Christians was the fact when fulfilled, as it was in no long time on a
large scale, that three of the early heresies more or less originated
in obstinate, unchristian refusal to readmit to the privileges of the
Gospel those who had fallen into sin. Yet our Lord’s words are express:
He tells us that “Many are called, few are chosen;” in the parable of
the Marriage Feast, the servants who are sent out gather together “all
that they found, both bad and good;” the foolish virgins “had no oil in
their vessels;” amid the good seed an enemy sows seed that is noxious
or worthless; and “the kingdom is like to a net which gathered together
all kind of fishes;” and “at the end of the world the Angels shall go
forth, and shall separate the wicked from among the just.”

Moreover, He not only speaks of His religion as destined to possess a
wide temporal power, such, that, as in the case of the Babylonian, “the
birds of the air should dwell in its branches,” but He opens on us the
prospect of ambition and rivalry in its leading members, when He warns
His disciples against desiring the first places in His kingdom; nay, of
grosser sins, in His description of the Ruler, who “began to strike his
fellow-servants, and to eat and drink and be drunken,”—passages which
have an awful significance, considering what kind of men have before
now been His chosen representatives, and have sat in the chair of His
Apostles.

If then it be objected that Christianity does not, as the old prophets
seem to promise, abolish sin and irreligion within its pale, we may
answer, not only that it did not engage to do so, but that actually in
a prophetical spirit it warned its followers against the expectation of
its so doing.

9.

According to our Lord’s announcements before the event, Christianity
was to prevail and to become a great empire, and to fill the earth; but
it was to accomplish this destiny, not as other victorious powers had
done, and as the Jews expected, by force of arms or by other means of
this world, but by the novel expedient of sanctity and suffering. If
some aspiring party of this day, the great Orleans family, or a branch
of the Hohenzollern, wishing to found a kingdom, were to profess, as
their only weapon, the practice of virtue, they would not startle us
more than it startled a Jew eighteen hundred years ago, to be told that
his glorious Messiah was not to fight, like Joshua or David, but simply
to preach. It is indeed a thought so strange, both in its prediction
and in its fulfilment, as urgently to suggest to us that some Divine
Power went with him who conceived and proclaimed it. This is what I
have been saying;—now I wish to consider the fact, which was predicted,
in itself, without reference to its being the subject whether of a
prediction or of a fulfilment; that is, the history of the rise and
establishment of Christianity; and to inquire whether it is a history
that admits of being resolved, by any philosophical ingenuity, into the
ordinary operation of moral, social, or political causes.

As is well known, various writers have attempted to assign human causes
in explanation of the phenomenon: Gibbon especially has mentioned five,
viz. the zeal of Christians, inherited from the Jews, their doctrine
of a future state, their claim to miraculous power, their virtues, and
their ecclesiastical organization. Let us briefly consider them.

He thinks these five causes, when combined, will fairly account for the
event; but he has not thought of accounting for their combination. If
they are ever so available for his purpose, still that availableness
arises out of their coincidence, and out of what does that coincidence
arise? Until this is explained, nothing is explained, and the question
had better have been let alone. These presumed causes are quite
distinct from each other, and, I say, the wonder is, what made them
come together. How came a multitude of Gentiles to be influenced with
Jewish zeal? How came zealots to submit to a strict, ecclesiastical
_régime_? What connexion has a secular _régime_ with the immortality
of the soul? Why should immortality, a philosophical doctrine, lead
to belief in miracles, which is a superstition of the vulgar? What
tendency had miracles and magic to make men austerely virtuous? Lastly,
what power was there in a code of virtue, as calm and enlightened
as that of Antoninus, to generate a zeal as fierce as that of
Maccabæus? Wonderful events before now have apparently been nothing
but coincidences, certainly; but they do not become less wonderful by
cataloguing their constituent causes, unless we also show how these
came to be constituent.

However, this by the way; the real question is this,—are these
historical characteristics of Christianity, also in matter of fact,
historical causes of Christianity? Has Gibbon given proof that they
are? Has he brought evidence of their operation, or does he simply
conjecture in his private judgment that they operated? Whether they
were adapted to accomplish a certain work, is a matter of opinion;
whether they did accomplish it is a question of fact. He ought to
adduce instances of their efficiency before he has a right to say that
they are efficient. And the second question is, what is this effect, of
which they are to be considered as causes? It is no other than this,
the conversion of bodies of men to the Christian faith. Let us keep
this in view. We have to determine whether these five characteristics
of Christianity were efficient causes of bodies of men becoming
Christians? I think they neither did effect such conversions, nor were
adapted to do so, and for these reasons:—

1. For first, as to zeal, by which Gibbon means party spirit, or
_esprit de corps_; this doubtless is a motive principle when men
are already members of a body, but does it operate in bringing them
into it? The Jews were born in Judaism, they had a long and glorious
history, and would naturally feel and show _esprit de corps_; but how
did party spirit tend to transplant Jew or Gentile out of his own
place into a new society, and that a society which as yet scarcely
was formed in a society? Zeal, certainly, may be felt for a cause,
or for a person; on this point I shall speak presently; but Gibbon’s
idea of Christian zeal is nothing better than the old wine of Judaism
decanted into new Christian bottles, and would be too flat a stimulant,
even if it admitted of such a transference, to be taken as a cause of
conversion to Christianity without definite evidence in proof of the
fact. Christians had zeal for Christianity after they were converted,
not before.

2. Next, as to the doctrine of a future state. Gibbon seems to mean by
this doctrine the fear of hell; now certainly in this day there are
persons converted from sin to a religious life, by vivid descriptions
of the future punishment of the wicked; but then it must be recollected
that such persons already believe in the doctrine thus urged upon
them. On the contrary, give some Tract upon hell-fire to one of the
wild boys in a large town, who has had no education, who has no faith;
and, instead of being startled by it, he will laugh at it as something
frightfully ridiculous. The belief in Styx and Tartarus was dying out
of the world at the time that Christianity came in, as the parallel
belief now seems to be dying out in all classes of our own society. The
doctrine of eternal punishment does only anger the multitude of men in
our large towns now, and make them blaspheme; why should it have had
any other effect on the heathen populations in the age when our Lord
came? Yet it was among those populations, that He and His made their
way from the first. As to the hope of eternal life, that doubtless, as
well as the fear of hell, was a most operative doctrine in the case of
men who had been actually converted, of Christians brought before the
magistrate, or writhing under torture, but the thought of eternal glory
does not keep bad men from a bad life now, and why should it convert
them then from their pleasant sins, to a heavy, mortified, joyless
existence, to a life of ill-usage, fright, contempt, and desolation?

3. That the claim to miracles should have any wide influence in favour
of Christianity among heathen populations, who had plenty of portents
of their own, is an opinion in curious contrast with the objection
against Christianity which has provoked an answer from Paley, viz.
that “Christian miracles are not recited or appealed to, by early
Christian writers themselves, so fully or so frequently as might have
been expected.” Paley solves the difficulty as far as it is a fact,
by observing, as I have suggested, that “it was their lot to contend
with magical agency, against which the mere production of these facts
was not sufficient for the convincing of their adversaries:” “I do
not know,” he continues, “whether they themselves thought it quite
decisive of the controversy.” A claim to miraculous power on the part
of Christians, which was so unfrequent as to become now an objection to
the fact of their possessing it, can hardly have been a principal cause
of their success.

4. And how is it possible to imagine with Gibbon that what he calls
the “sober and domestic virtues” of Christians, their “aversion to
the luxury of the age,” their “chastity, temperance, and economy,”
that these dull qualities were persuasives of a nature to win and
melt the hard heathen heart, in spite too of the dreary prospect of
the _barathrum_, the amphitheatre, and the stake? Did the Christian
morality by its severe beauty make a convert of Gibbon himself?
On the contrary, he bitterly says, “It was not in this world that
the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either
agreeable or useful.” “The virtue of the primitive Christians, like
that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and
ignorance.” “Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the
common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions
of impending calamities, inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of
some danger which would arise from the new sect.” Here we have not only
Gibbon hating their moral and social bearing, but his heathen also. How
then were those heathen overcome by the amiableness of that which they
viewed with such disgust? We have here plain proof that the Christian
character repelled the heathen; where is the evidence that it converted
them?

5. Lastly, as to the ecclesiastical organization, this, doubtless, as
time went on, was a special characteristic of the new religion; but
how could it directly contribute to its extension? Of course it gave
it strength, but it did not give it life. We are not born of bones and
muscles. It is one thing to make conquests, another to consolidate an
empire. It was before Constantine that Christians made their great
conquests. Rules are for settled times, not for time of war. So much
is this contrast felt in the Catholic Church now, that, as is well
known, in heathen countries and in countries which have thrown off her
yoke, she suspends her diocesan administration and her Canon Law, and
puts her children under the extraordinary, extra-legal jurisdiction of
Propaganda.

This is what I am led to say on Gibbon’s Five Causes. I do not deny
that they might have operated now and then; Simon Magus came to
Christianity in order to learn the craft of miracles, and Peregrinus
from love of influence and power; but Christianity made its way, not by
individual, but by broad, wholesale conversions, and the question is,
how they originated?

It is very remarkable that it should not have occurred to a man of
Gibbon’s sagacity to inquire, what account the Christians themselves
gave of the matter. Would it not have been worth while for him to have
let conjecture alone, and to have looked for facts instead? Why did he
not try the hypothesis of faith, hope, and charity? Did he never hear
of repentance towards God, and faith in Christ? Did he not recollect
the many words of Apostles, Bishops, Apologists, Martyrs, all forming
one testimony? No; such thoughts are close upon him, and close upon the
truth; but he cannot sympathize with them, he cannot believe in them,
he cannot even enter into them, _because_ he needs the due formation
of mind.(49) Let us see whether the facts of the case do not come out
clear and unequivocal, if we will but have the patience to endure them.

A Deliverer of the human race through the Jewish nation had been
promised from time immemorial. The day came when He was to appear,
and He was eagerly expected; moreover, One actually did make His
appearance at that date in Palestine, and claimed to be He. He left the
earth without apparently doing much for the object of His coming. But
when He was gone, His disciples took upon themselves to go forth to
preach to all parts of the earth with the object of preaching _Him_,
and collecting converts _in His Name_. After a little while they are
found wonderfully to have succeeded. Large bodies of men in various
places are to be seen, professing to be His disciples, owning Him as
their King, and continually swelling in number and penetrating into
the populations of the Roman Empire; at length they convert the Empire
itself. All this is historical fact. Now, we want to know the farther
historical fact, viz. the cause of their conversion; in other words,
what were the topics of that preaching which was so effective? If
we believe what is told us by the preachers and their converts, the
answer is plain. They “preached Christ;” they called on men to believe,
hope, and place their affections, in that Deliverer who had come and
gone; and the moral instrument by which they persuaded them to do so,
was a description of the life, character, mission, and power of that
Deliverer, a promise of His invisible Presence and Protection here,
and of the Vision and Fruition of Him hereafter. From first to last to
Christians, as to Abraham, He Himself is the centre and fulness of the
dispensation. They, as Abraham, “see His day, and are glad.”

A temporal sovereign makes himself felt by means of his subordinate
administrators, who bring his power and will to bear upon every
individual of his subjects who personally know him not; the universal
Deliverer, long expected, when He came, He too, instead of making and
securing subjects by a visible graciousness or majesty, departs;—_but_
is found, through His preachers, to have imprinted the Image(50) or
Idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually; and that
Image, apprehended and worshipped in individual minds, becomes a
principle of association, and a real bond of those subjects one with
another, who are thus united to the body by being united to that Image;
and moreover that Image, which is their moral life, when they have been
already converted, is also the original instrument of their conversion.
It is the Image of Him who fulfils the one great need of human nature,
the Healer of its wounds, the Physician of the soul, this Image it is
which both creates faith, and then rewards it.

When we recognize this central Image as the vivifying idea both of the
Christian body and of individuals in it, then, certainly, we are able
to take into account at least two of Gibbon’s causes, as having, in
connexion with that idea, some influence both in making converts and
in strengthening them to persevere. It was the Thought of Christ, not
a corporate body or a doctrine, which inspired that zeal which the
historian so poorly comprehends; and it was the Thought of Christ which
gave a life to the promise of that eternity, which without Him would
be, in any soul, nothing short of an intolerable burden.

Now a mental vision such as this, perhaps will be called cloudy,
fanciful, unintelligible; that is, in other words, miraculous. I
think it is so. How, without the Hand of God, could a new idea, one
and the same, enter at once into myriads of men, women, and children
of all ranks, especially the lower, and have power to wean them from
their indulgences and sins, and to nerve them against the most cruel
tortures, and to last in vigour as a sustaining influence for seven
or eight generations, till it founded an extended polity, broke the
obstinacy of the strongest and wisest government which the world has
ever seen, and forced its way from its first caves and catacombs to the
fulness of imperial power?

In considering this subject, I shall confine myself to the proof, as
far as my limits allow, of two points,—first, that this Thought or
Image of Christ was the principle of conversion and of fellowship;
and next, that among the lower classes, who had no power, influence,
reputation, or education, lay its principal success.(51)

As to the vivifying idea, this is St. Paul’s account of it: “I make
known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have
received, and wherein you stand; by which also you are saved. For I
delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” &c., &c. “I am
the least of the Apostles; but, whether I or they, so we preached, and
so you believed.” “It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.” “We preach Christ crucified.” “I determined
to know nothing among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” “Your
life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, shall
appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory.” “I live, but now
not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

St. Peter, who has been accounted the master of a separate school, says
the same: “Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, yet love; in whom you
now believe, and shall rejoice.”

And St. John, who is sometimes accounted a third master in
Christianity: “It hath not yet appeared what we shall be; but we know
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall
see Him as He is.”

That their disciples followed them in this sovereign devotion to an
Invisible Lord, will appear as I proceed.

And next, as to the worldly position and character of His disciples,
our Lord, in the well-known passage, returns thanks to His Heavenly
Father “because,” He says, “Thou hast hid these things”—the mysteries
of His kingdom—“from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to
little ones.” And, in accordance with this announcement, St. Paul says
that “not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble,” became Christians. He, indeed, is one of those few; so
were others his contemporaries, and, as time went on, the number of
these exceptions increased, so that converts were found, not a few, in
the high places of the Empire, and in the schools of philosophy and
learning; but still the rule held, that the great mass of Christians
were to be found in those classes which were of no account in the
world, whether on the score of rank or of education.

We all know this was the case with our Lord and His Apostles. It seems
almost irreverent to speak of their temporal employments, when we are
so simply accustomed to consider them in their spiritual associations;
but it is profitable to remind ourselves that our Lord Himself was a
sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four Apostles were
fishermen, one a petty tax collector, two husbandmen, and another is
said to have been a market gardener.(52) When Peter and John were
brought before the Council, they are spoken of as being, in a secular
point of view, “illiterate men, and of the lower sort,” and thus they
are spoken of in a later age by the Fathers.

That their converts were of the same rank as themselves, is reported,
in their favour or to their discredit, by friends and enemies, for
four centuries. “If a man be educated,” says Celsus in mockery, “let
him keep clear of us Christians; we want no men of wisdom, no men of
sense. We account all such as evil. No; but, if there be one who is
inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, or a fool, let him come with
good heart.” “They are weavers,” he says elsewhere, “shoemakers,
fullers, illiterate, clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says Trypho.
“The greater part of you,” says Cæcilius, “are worn with want, cold,
toil, and famine; men collected from the lowest dregs of the people;
ignorant, credulous women;” “unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant
even of the sordid arts of life; they do not understand even civil
matters, how can they understand divine?” “They have left their tongs,
mallets, and anvils, to preach about the things of heaven,” says
Libanius. “They deceive women, servants, and slaves,” says Julian.
The author of Philopatris speaks of them as “poor creatures, blocks,
withered old fellows, men of downcast and pale visages.” As to their
religion, it had the reputation popularly, according to various
Fathers, of being an anile superstition, the discovery of old women, a
joke, a madness, an infatuation, an absurdity, a fanaticism.

The Fathers themselves confirm these statements, so far as they relate
to the insignificance and ignorance of their brethren. Athenagoras
speaks of the virtue of their “ignorant men, mechanics, and old
women.” “They are gathered,” says St. Jerome, “not from the Academy or
Lyceum, but from the low populace.” “They are whitesmiths, servants,
farm-labourers, woodmen, men of sordid trades, beggars,” says
Theodoret. “We are engaged in the farm, in the market, at the baths,
wine-shops, stables, and fairs; as seamen, as soldiers, as peasants,
as dealers,” says Tertullian. How came such men to be converted? and,
being converted, how came such men to overturn the world? Yet they went
forth from the first, “conquering and to conquer.”

The first manifestation of their formidable numbers is made just about
the time when St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom, and was the
cause of a terrible persecution. We have the account of it in Tacitus.
“Nero,” he says, “to put an end to the common talk [that Rome had
been set on fire by his order], imputed it to others, visiting with a
refinement of punishment those detestable criminals who went by the
name of Christians. The author of that denomination was Christus, who
had been executed in Tiberius’s time by the procurator, Pontius Pilate.
The pestilent superstition, checked for a while, burst out again, not
only throughout Judea, the first seat of the evil, but even throughout
Rome, the centre both of confluence and outbreak of all that is
atrocious and disgraceful from every quarter. First were arrested those
who made no secret of their sect; and by this clue a vast multitude of
others, convicted, not so much of firing the city, as of hatred to the
human race. Mockery was added to death; clad in skins of beasts, they
were torn to pieces by dogs; they were nailed up to crosses; they were
made inflammable, so that, when day failed, they might serve as lights.
Hence, guilty as they were, and deserving of exemplary punishment, they
excited compassion, as being destroyed, not for the public welfare, but
from the cruelty of one man.”

The two Apostles suffered, and a silence follows of a whole generation.
At the end of thirty or forty years, Pliny, the friend of Trajan, as
well as of Tacitus, is sent as that Emperor’s Proprætor into Bithynia,
and is startled and perplexed by the number, influence, and pertinacity
of the Christians whom he finds there, and in the neighbouring province
of Pontus. He has the opportunity of being far more fair to them than
his friend the historian. He writes to Trajan to know how he ought to
deal with them, and I will quote some portions of his letter.

He says he does not know how to proceed with them, as their religion
has not received toleration from the state. He never was present at any
trial of them; he doubted whether the children among them, as well as
grown people, ought to be accounted as culprits, whether recantation
would set matters right, or whether they incurred punishment all the
same; whether they were to be punished, merely because Christians, even
though no definite crime was proved against them. His way had been to
examine them, and put questions to them; if they confessed the charge,
he gave them one or two chances, threatening them with punishment;
then, if they persisted, he gave orders for their execution. “For,” he
argues, “I felt no doubt that, whatever might be the character of their
opinions, stubborn and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. Others
there were of a like infatuation, whom, being citizens, I sent to Rome.”

Some satisfied him; they repeated after him an invocation to the
gods, and offered wine and incense to the Emperor’s image, and in
addition, cursed the name of Christ. “Accordingly,” he says, “I let
them go; for I am told nothing can compel a real Christian to do any
of these things.” There were others, too, who sacrificed; who had been
Christians, some of them for as many as twenty years.

Then he is curious to know something more definite about them. “This,
the informers told me, was the whole of their crime or mistake, that
they were accustomed to assemble on a stated day before dawn, and to
say together a hymn to Christ as a god, and to bind themselves by an
oath [sacramento] (not to any crime, but on the contrary) to keep from
theft, robbery, adultery, breach of promise, and making free with
deposits. After this they used to separate, and then to meet again for
a meal, which was social and harmless. However, they left even that
off, after my Edict against their meeting.”

This information led him to put to the torture two maid-servants, “who
were called ministers,” in order to find out what was true, what was
false in it; but he says he could make out nothing, except a depraved
and excessive superstition. This is what led him to consult the
Emperor, “especially because of the number who were implicated in it;
for these are, or are likely to be, many, of all ages, nay, of both
sexes. For the contagion of this superstition has spread, not only
in the cities, but about the villages and the open country.” He adds
that already there was some improvement. “The almost forsaken temples
begin to be filled again, and the sacred solemnities after a long
intermission are revived. Victims, too, are again on sale, purchasers
having been most rare to find.”

The salient points in this account are these, that, at the end of
one generation from the Apostles, nay, almost in the lifetime of St.
John, Christians had so widely spread in a large district of Asia, as
nearly to suppress the Pagan religions there; that they were people of
exemplary lives; that they had a name for invincible fidelity to their
religion; that no threats or sufferings could make them deny it; and
that their only tangible characteristic was the worship of our Lord.

This was at the beginning of the second century; not a great many
years after, we have another account of the Christian body, from an
anonymous Greek Christian, in a letter to a friend whom he was anxious
to convert. It is far too long to quote, and difficult to compress; but
a few sentences will show how strikingly it agrees with the account
of the heathen Pliny, especially in two points,—first, in the numbers
of the Christians, secondly, on devotion to our Lord as the vivifying
principle of their association.

“Christians,” says the writer, “differ not from other men in country,
or speech, or customs. They do not live in cities of their own, or
speak in any peculiar dialect, or adopt any strange modes of living.
They inhabit their native countries, but as sojourners; they take their
part in all burdens, as if citizens, and in all sufferings, as if they
were strangers. In foreign countries they recognize a home, and in
every home they see a foreign country. They marry like other men, but
do not disown their children. They obey the established laws, but they
go beyond them in the tenor of their lives. They love all men, and are
persecuted by all; they are not known, and they are condemned; they
are poor, and make many rich; they are dishonoured, yet in dishonour
they are glorified; they are slandered, and they are cleared; they are
called names, and they bless. By the Jews they are assailed as aliens,
by the Greeks they are persecuted, nor can they who hate them say why.

“Christians are in the world, as the soul in the body. The soul
pervades the limbs of the body, and Christians the cities of the
world. The flesh hates the soul, and wars against it, though suffering
no wrong from it; and the world hates Christians. The soul loves
the flesh that hates it, and Christians love their enemies. Their
tradition is not an earthly invention, nor is it a mortal thought
which they so carefully guard, nor a dispensation of human mysteries
which is committed to their charge; but God Himself, the Omnipotent
and Invisible Creator, has from heaven established among men His Truth
and His Word, the Holy and Incomprehensible, and has deeply fixed the
same in their hearts; not, as might be expected, sending any servant,
angel, or prince, or administrator of things earthly or heavenly, but
the very Artificer and Demiurge of the Universe. Him God hath sent to
man, not to inflict terror, but in clemency and gentleness, as a King
sending a King who was His Son; He sent Him as God to men, to save
them. He hated not, nor rejected us, nor remembered our guilt, but
showed Himself long-suffering, and, in His own words, bore our sins. He
gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the just for the unjust. For what
other thing, except His Righteousness, could cover our guilt? In whom
was it possible for us, lawless sinners, to find justification, save
in the Son of God alone? O sweet interchange! O heavenly workmanship
past finding out! O benefits exceeding expectation! Sending, then, a
Saviour, who is able to save those who of themselves are incapable of
salvation, He has willed that we should regard Him as our Guardian,
Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Physician; our Mind, Light, Honour, Glory,
Strength, and Life.(53)”

The writing from which I have been quoting is of the early part of
the second century. Twenty or thirty years after it St. Justin Martyr
speaks as strongly of the spread of the new Religion: “There is not
any one race of men,” he says, “barbarian or Greek, nay, of those who
live in waggons, or who are Nomads, or Shepherds in tents, among whom
prayers and eucharists are not offered to the Father and Maker of the
Universe, through the name of the crucified Jesus.”

Towards the end of the century, Clement:—“The word of our Master did
not remain in Judea, as philosophy remained in Greece, but has been
poured out over the whole world, persuading Greeks and Barbarians
alike, race by race, village by village, every city, whole houses, and
hearers one by one, nay, not a few of the philosophers themselves.”

And Tertullian, at the very close of it, could in his _Apologia_
even proceed to threaten the Roman Government:—“We are a people of
yesterday,” he says; “and yet we have filled every place belonging to
you, cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your
tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum. We leave you your temples
only. We can count your armies, and our numbers in a single province
will be greater. In what war with you should we not be sufficient and
ready, even though unequal in numbers, who so willingly are put to
death, if it were not in this Religion of ours more lawful to be slain
than to slay?”

Once more, let us hear the great Origen, in the early part of the
next century:—“In all Greece and in all barbarous races within our
world, there are tens of thousands who have left their national laws
and customary gods for the law of Moses and the word of Jesus Christ;
though to adhere to that law is to incur the hatred of idolaters, and
the risk of death besides to have embraced that word. And considering
how, in so few years, in spite of the attacks made on us, to the loss
of life or property, and with no great store of teachers, the preaching
of that word has found its way into every part of the world, so that
Greek and barbarians, wise and unwise, adhere to the religion of Jesus,
doubtless it is a work greater than any work of man.”

We need no proof to assure us that this steady and rapid growth of
Christianity was a phenomenon which startled its contemporaries, as
much as it excites the curiosity of philosophic historians now; and
they too then had their own ways of accounting for it, different indeed
from Gibbon’s, but quite as pertinent, though less elaborate. These
were principally two, both leading them to persecute it,—the obstinacy
of the Christians and their magical powers, of which the former was the
explanation adopted by educated minds, and the latter chiefly by the
populace.

As to the former, from first to last, men in power magisterially
reprobate the senseless obstinacy of the members of the new sect, as
their characteristic offence. Pliny, as we have seen, found it to be
their only fault, but one sufficient to merit capital punishment. The
Emperor Marcus seems to consider obstinacy the ultimate motive-cause
to which their unnatural conduct was traceable. After speaking of the
soul, as “ready, if it must now be separated from the body, to be
extinguished, or dissolved, or to remain with it;” he adds, “but the
readiness must come of its own judgment, not from simple perverseness,
as in the case of Christians, but with considerateness, with gravity,
and without theatrical effect, so as to be persuasive.” And Diocletian,
in his Edict of persecution, professes it to be his “earnest aim to
punish the depraved persistence of those most wicked men.”

As to the latter charge, their founder, it was said, had gained a
knowledge of magic in Egypt, and had left behind him in his sacred
books the secrets of the art. Suetonius himself speaks of them as “men
of a magical superstition;” and Celsus accuses them of “incantations
in the name of demons.” The officer who had custody of St. Perpetua,
feared her escape from prison “by magical incantations.” When St.
Tiburtius had walked barefoot on hot coals, his judge cried out that
Christ had taught him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown into prison as
dealing in poisons; the populace called out against St. Agnes, “Away
with the witch! away with the sorceress!” When St. Bonosus and St.
Maximilian bore the burning pitch without shrinking, Jews and heathen
cried out, “Those wizards and sorcerers!” “What new delusion,” says
the magistrate concerning St. Romanus, in the Hymn of Prudentius, “has
brought in these sophists who deny the worship of the Gods? how doth
this chief sorcerer mock us, stilled by his Thessalian charm to laugh
at punishment?(54)”

It is indeed difficult to enter into the feelings of irritation and
fear, of contempt and amazement, which were excited, whether in the
town populace or in the magistrates in the presence of conduct so
novel, so unvarying, so absolutely beyond their comprehension. The
very young and the very old, the child, the youth in the heyday of
his passions, the sober man of middle age, maidens and mothers of
families, boors and slaves as well as philosophers and nobles, solitary
confessors and companies of men and women,—all these were seen equally
to defy the powers of darkness to do their worst. In this strange
encounter it became a point of honour with the Roman to break the
determination of his victim, and it was the triumph of faith when his
most savage expedients for that purpose were found to be in vain.
The martyrs shrank from suffering like other men, but such natural
shrinking was incommensurable with apostasy. No intensity of torture
had any means of affecting what was a mental conviction; and the
sovereign Thought in which they had lived was their adequate support
and consolation in their death. To them the prospect of wounds and
loss of limbs was not more terrible than it is to the combatant of
this world. They faced the implements of torture as the soldier takes
his post before the enemy’s battery. They cheered and ran forward to
meet his attack, and as it were dared him, if he would, to destroy the
numbers who kept closing up the foremost rank, as their comrades who
had filled it fell. And when Rome at last found she had to deal with a
host of Scævolas, then the proudest of earthly sovereignties, arrayed
in the completeness of her material resources, humbled herself before a
power which was founded on a mere sense of the unseen.

In the colloquy of the aged Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostles,
with the Emperor Trajan, we have a sort of type of what went on for
three, or rather four centuries. He was sent all the way from Antioch
to Rome to be devoured by the beasts in the amphitheatre. As he
travelled, he wrote letters to various Christian Churches, and among
others to his Roman brethren, among whom he was to suffer. Let us
see whether, as I have said, the Image of that Divine King, who had
been promised from the beginning, was not the living principle of his
obstinate resolve. The old man is almost fierce in his determination
to be martyred. “May those beasts,” he says to his brethren, “be my
gain, which are in readiness for me! I will provoke and coax them to
devour me quickly, and not to be afraid of me, as they are of some whom
they will not touch. Should they be unwilling, I will compel them.
Bear with me; I know what is my gain. Now I begin to be a disciple. Of
nothing of things visible or invisible am I ambitious, save to gain
Christ. Whether it is fire or the cross, the assault of wild beasts,
the wrenching of my bones, the crunching of my limbs, the crushing of
my whole body, let the tortures of the devil all assail me, if I do but
gain Christ Jesus.” Elsewhere in the same Epistle he says, “I write
to you, still alive, but longing to die. My Love is crucified! I have
no taste for perishable food. I long for God’s Bread, heavenly Bread,
Bread of life, which is Flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I long
for God’s draught, His Blood, which is Love without corruption, and
Life for evermore.” It is said that, when he came into the presence
of Trajan, the latter cried out, “Who are you, poor devil, who are so
eager to transgress our rules?” “That is no name,” he answered, “for
Theophorus.” “Who is Theophorus?” asked the Emperor. “He who bears
Christ in his breast.” In the Apostle’s words, already cited, he had
“Christ in him, the hope of glory.” All this may be called enthusiasm;
but enthusiasm affords a much more adequate explanation of the
confessorship of an old man, than do Gibbon’s five reasons.

Instances of the same ardent spirit, and of the living faith on which
it was founded, are to be found wherever we open the _Acta Martyrum_.
In the outbreak at Smyrna, in the middle of the second century, amid
tortures which even moved the heathen bystanders to compassion, the
sufferers were conspicuous for their serene calmness. “They made it
evident to us all,” says the Epistle of the Church, “that in the midst
of those sufferings they were absent from the body, or rather, that the
Lord stood by them, and walked in the midst of them.”

At that time Polycarp, the familiar friend of St. John, and a
contemporary of Ignatius, suffered in his extreme old age. When, before
his sentence, the Proconsul bade him “swear by the fortunes of Cæsar,
and have done with Christ,” his answer betrayed that intimate devotion
to the self-same Idea, which had been the inward life of Ignatius.
“Eighty and six years,” he answered, “have I been His servant, and
He has never wronged me, but ever has preserved me; and how can I
blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” When they would have fastened him to
the stake, he said, “Let alone; He who gives me to bear the fire, will
give me also to stand firm upon the pyre without your nails.”

Christians felt it as an acceptable service to Him who loved them, to
confess with courage and to suffer with dignity. In this chivalrous
spirit, as it may be called, they met the words and deeds of their
persecutors, as the children of men return bitterness for bitterness,
and blow for blow. “What soldier,” says Minucius, with a reference to
the invisible Presence of our Lord, “does not challenge danger more
daringly under the eye of his commander?” In that same outbreak at
Smyrna, when the Proconsul urged the young Germanicus to have mercy
on himself and on his youth, to the astonishment of the populace he
provoked a wild beast to fall upon him. In like manner, St. Justin
tells us of Lucius, who, when he saw a Christian sent off to suffer, at
once remonstrated sharply with the judge, and was sent off to execution
with him; and then another presented himself, and was sent off also.
When the Christians were thrown into prison, in the fierce persecution
at Lyons, Vettius Epagathus, a youth of distinction who had given
himself to an ascetic life, could not bear the sight of the sufferings
of his brethren, and asked leave to plead their cause. The only answer
he got was to be sent off the first to die. What the contemporary
account sees in his conduct is, not that he was zealous for his
brethren, though zealous he was, nor that he believed in miracles,
though he doubtless did believe; but that he “was a gracious disciple
of Christ, following the Lamb whithersoever He went.”

In that memorable persecution, when Blandina, a slave, was seized for
confessorship, her mistress and her fellow-Christians dreaded lest,
from her delicate make, she should give way under the torments; but
she even tired out her tormentors. It was a refreshment and relief
to her to cry out amid her pains, “I am a Christian.” They remanded
her to prison, and then brought her out for fresh suffering a second
day and a third. On the last day she saw a boy of fifteen brought
into the amphitheatre for death; she feared for him, as others had
feared for her; but he too went through his trial generously, and
went to God before her. Her last sufferings were to be placed in the
notorious red-hot chair, and then to be exposed in a net to a wild
bull; they finished by cutting her throat. Sanctus, too, when the
burning plates of brass were placed on his limbs, all through his
torments did but say, “I am a Christian,” and stood erect and firm,
“bathed and strengthened,” say his brethren who write the account,
“in the heavenly well of living water which flows from the breast of
Christ,” or, as they say elsewhere of all the martyrs, “refreshed with
the joy of martyrdom, the hope of blessedness, love towards Christ, and
the spirit of God the Father.” How clearly do we see all through this
narrative what it was which nerved them for the combat! If they love
their brethren, it is in the fellowship of their Lord; if they look for
heaven, it is because He is the Light of it.

Epipodius, a youth of gentle nurture, when struck by the Prefect on
the mouth, while blood flowed from it, cried out, “I confess that
Jesus Christ is God, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost.”
Symphorian, of Autun, also a youth, and of noble birth, when told
to adore an idol, answered, “Give me leave, and I will hammer it to
pieces.” When Leonidas, the father of the young Origen, was in prison
for his faith, the boy, then seventeen, burned to share his martyrdom,
and his mother had to hide his clothes to prevent him from executing
his purpose. Afterwards he attended the confessors in prison, stood
by them at the tribunal, and gave them the kiss of peace when they
were led out to suffer, and this, in spite of being several times
apprehended and put upon the rack. Also in Alexandria, the beautiful
slave, Potamiæna, when about to be stripped in order to be thrown into
the cauldron of hot pitch, said to the Prefect, “I pray you rather let
me be dipped down slowly into it with my clothes on, and you shall
see with what patience I am gifted by Him of whom you are ignorant,
Jesus Christ.” When the populace in the same city had beaten out
the aged Apollonia’s teeth, and lit a fire to burn her, unless she
would blaspheme, she leaped into the fire herself, and so gained her
crown. When Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, was led to martyrdom, his deacon,
Laurence, followed him weeping and complaining, “O my father, whither
goest thou without thy son?” And when his own turn came, three days
afterwards, and he was put upon the gridiron, after a while he said to
the Prefect, “Turn me; this side is done.” Whence came this tremendous
spirit, scaring, nay, offending, the fastidious criticism of our
delicate days? Does Gibbon think to sound the depths of the eternal
ocean with the tape and measuring-rod of his merely literary philosophy?

When Barulas, a child of seven years old, was scourged to blood for
repeating his catechism before the heathen judge—viz. “There is but
one God, and Jesus Christ is true God”—his mother encouraged him to
persevere, chiding him for asking for some drink. At Merida, a girl
of noble family, of the age of twelve, presented herself before the
tribunal, and overturned the idols. She was scourged and burned with
torches; she neither shed a tear, nor showed other signs of suffering.
When the fire reached her face, she opened her mouth to receive it, and
was suffocated. At Cæsarea, a girl, under eighteen, went boldly to ask
the prayers of some Christians who were in chains before the Prætorium.
She was seized at once, and her sides torn open with the iron rakes,
preserving the while a bright and joyous countenance. Peter, Dorotheus,
Gorgonius, were boys of the imperial bedchamber; they were highly in
favour with their masters, and were Christians. They too suffered
dreadful torments, dying under them, without a shadow of wavering. Call
such conduct madness, if you will, or magic: but do not mock us by
ascribing it in such mere children to simple desire of immortality, or
to any ecclesiastical organization.

When the persecution raged in Asia, a vast multitude of Christians
presented themselves before the Proconsul, challenging him to proceed
against them. “Poor wretches!” half in contempt and half in affright,
he answered, “if you must die, cannot you find ropes or precipices
for the purpose?” At Utica, a hundred and fifty Christians of both
sexes and all ages were martyrs in one company. They are said to have
been told to burn incense to an idol, or they should be thrown into a
pit of burning lime; they without hesitation leapt into it. In Egypt
a hundred and twenty confessors, after having sustained the loss of
eyes or of feet, endured to linger out their lives in the mines of
Palestine and Cilicia. In the last persecution, according to the
testimony of the grave Eusebius, a contemporary, the slaughter of men,
women, and children, went on by twenties, sixties, hundreds, till the
instruments of execution were worn out, and the executioners could
kill no more. Yet he tells us, as an eye-witness, that, as soon as any
Christians were condemned, others ran from all parts, and surrounded
the tribunals, confessing the faith, and joyfully receiving their
condemnation, and singing songs of thanksgiving and triumph to the last.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Thus was the Roman power overcome. Thus did the Seed of Abraham, and
the Expectation of the Gentiles, the meek Son of man, “take to Himself
His great power and reign” in the hearts of His people, in the public
theatre of the world. The mode in which the primeval prophecy was
fulfilled is as marvellous, as the prophecy itself is clear and bold.

“So may all Thy enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love Thee
shine, as the sun shineth in his rising!”

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I will add the memorable words of the two great Apologists of the
period:—

“Your cruelty,” says Tertullian, “though each act be more refined
than the last, doth profit you nothing. To our sect it is rather an
inducement. We grow up in greater numbers, as often as you cut us down.
The blood of the martyrs is their seed for the harvest.”

Origen even uses the language of prophecy. To the objection of Celsus
that Christianity from its principles would, if let alone, open the
whole empire to the irruption of the barbarians, and the utter ruin of
civilization, he replies, “If all Romans are such as we, then too the
barbarians will draw near to the Word of God, and will become the most
observant of the Law. And every worship shall come to nought, and that
of the Christians alone obtain the mastery, for the Word is continually
gaining possession of more and more souls.”

One additional remark:—It was fitting that those mixed unlettered
multitudes, who for three centuries had suffered and triumphed by
virtue of the inward Vision of their Divine Lord, should be selected,
as we know they were, in the fourth, to be the special champions of His
Divinity and the victorious foes of its impugners, at a time when the
civil power, which had found them too strong for its arms, attempted,
by means of a portentous heresy in the high places of the Church, to
rob them of that Truth which had all along been the principle of their
strength.

10.

I have been forestalling all along the thought with which I shall close
these considerations on the subject of Christianity; and necessarily
forestalling it, because it properly comes first, though the course
which my argument has taken has not allowed me to introduce it in its
natural place. Revelation begins where Natural Religion fails. The
Religion of Nature is a mere inchoation, and needs a complement,—it can
have but one complement, and that very complement is Christianity.

Natural Religion is based upon the sense of sin; it recognizes the
disease, but it cannot find, it does but look out for the remedy. That
remedy, both for guilt and for moral impotence, is found in the central
doctrine of Revelation, the Mediation of Christ. I need not go into a
subject so familiar to all men in a Christian country.

Thus it is that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promise made to
Abraham, and of the Mosaic revelations; this is how it has been able
from the first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of
human society to which its preachers reached; this is why the Roman
power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not
stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its
never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously
potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its
path. It has with it that gift of staunching and healing the one
deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than
a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of
controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts. It is
a living truth which never can grow old.

Some persons speak of it as if it were a thing of history, with only
indirect bearings upon modern times; I cannot allow that it is a mere
historical religion. Certainly it has its foundations in past and
glorious memories, but its power is in the present. It is no dreary
matter of antiquarianism; we do not contemplate it in conclusions
drawn from dumb documents and dead events, but by faith exercised in
ever-living objects, and by the appropriation and use of ever-recurring
gifts.

Our communion with it is in the unseen, not in the obsolete. At this
very day its rites and ordinances are continually eliciting the active
interposition of that Omnipotence in which the Religion long ago began.
First and above all is the Holy Mass, in which He who once died for us
upon the Cross, brings back and perpetuates, by His literal presence
in it, that one and the same sacrifice which cannot be repeated. Next,
there is the actual entrance of Himself, soul and body, and divinity,
into the soul and body of every worshipper who comes to Him for the
gift, a privilege more intimate than if we lived with Him during His
long-past sojourn upon earth. And then, moreover, there is His personal
abidance in our churches, raising earthly service into a foretaste of
heaven. Such is the profession of Christianity, and, I repeat, its very
divination of our needs is in itself a proof that it is really the
supply of them.

Upon the doctrines which I have mentioned as central truths, others,
as we all know, follow, which rule our personal conduct and course
of life, and our social and civil relations. The promised Deliverer,
the Expectation of the nations, has not done His work by halves. He
has given us Saints and Angels for our protection. He has taught us
how by our prayers and services to benefit our departed friends, and
to keep up a memorial of ourselves when we are gone. He has created a
visible hierarchy and a succession of sacraments, to be the channels
of His mercies, and the Crucifix secures the thought of Him in every
house and chamber. In all these ways He brings Himself before us. I
am not here speaking of His gifts as gifts, but as memorials; not as
what Christians know they convey, but in their visible character; and I
say, that, as human nature itself is still in life and action as much
as ever it was, so He too lives, to our imaginations, by His visible
symbols, as if He were on earth, with a practical efficacy which even
unbelievers cannot deny, to be the corrective of that nature, and its
strength day by day, and that this power of perpetuating His Image,
being altogether singular and special, and the prerogative of Him
and Him alone, is a grand evidence how well He fulfils to this day
that Sovereign Mission which, from the first beginning of the world’s
history, has been in prophecy assigned to Him.

I cannot better illustrate this argument than by recurring to a deep
thought on the subject of Christianity, which has before now attracted
the notice of philosophers and preachers,(55) as coming from the
wonderful man who swayed the destinies of Europe in the first years
of this century. It was an argument not unnatural in one who had that
special passion for human glory, which has been the incentive of so
many heroic careers and of so many mighty revolutions in the history
of the world. In the solitude of his imprisonment, and in the view of
death, he is said to have expressed himself to the following effect:—


    “I have been accustomed to put before me the examples of Alexander
    and Cæsar, with the hope of rivalling their exploits, and living
    in the minds of men for ever. Yet, after all, in what sense does
    Cæsar, in what sense does Alexander live? Who knows or cares
    anything about them? At best, nothing but their names is known;
    for who among the multitude of men, who hear or who utter their
    names, really knows anything about their lives or their deeds, or
    attaches to those names any definite idea? Nay, even their names
    do but flit up and down the world like ghosts, mentioned only on
    particular occasions, or from accidental associations. Their chief
    home is the schoolroom; they have a foremost place in boys’
    grammars and exercise-books; they are splendid examples for
    themes; they form writing-copies. So low is heroic Alexander
    fallen, so low is imperial Cæsar, ‘ut pueris placeant et
    declamatio fiant.’

    “But, on the contrary” (he is reported to have continued), “there
    is just One Name in the whole world that lives; it is the Name of
    One who passed His years in obscurity, and who died a malefactor’s
    death. Eighteen hundred years have gone since that time, but still
    it has its hold upon the human mind. It has possessed the world,
    and it maintains possession. Amid the most varied nations, under
    the most diversified circumstances, in the most cultivated, in the
    rudest races and intellects, in all classes of society, the Owner
    of that great Name reigns. High and low, rich and poor,
    acknowledge Him. Millions of souls are conversing with Him, are
    venturing on His word, are looking for His presence. Palaces,
    sumptuous, innumerable, are raised to His honour; His image, as in
    the hour of his deepest humiliation, is triumphantly displayed in
    the proud city, in the open country, in the corners of streets, on
    the tops of mountains. It sanctifies the ancestral hall, the
    closet, and the bedchamber; it is the subject for the exercise of
    the highest genius in the imitative arts. It is worn next the
    heart in life; it is held before the failing eyes in death. Here,
    then, is One who is _not_ a mere name, who is not a mere fiction,
    who is a reality. He is dead and gone, but still He lives,—lives
    as the living, energetic thought of successive generations, as the
    awful motive-power of a thousand great events. He has done without
    effort what others with life-long struggles have not done. Can He
    be less than Divine? Who is He but the Creator Himself; who is
    sovereign over His own works, towards whom our eyes and hearts
    turn instinctively, because He is our Father and our God?(56)”


Here I end my specimens, among the many which might be given, of the
arguments adducible for Christianity. I have dwelt upon them, in order
to show how I would apply the principles of this Essay to the proof
of its divine origin. Christianity is addressed, both as regards its
evidences and its contents, to minds which are in the normal condition
of human nature, as believing in God and in a future judgment.
Such minds it addresses both through the intellect and through the
imagination; creating a certitude of its truth by arguments too various
for enumeration, too personal and deep for words, too powerful and
concurrent for refutation. Nor need reason come first and faith second
(though this is the logical order), but one and the same teaching is in
different aspects both object and proof, and elicits one complex act
both of inference and of assent. It speaks to us one by one, and it is
received by us one by one, as the counterpart, so to say, of ourselves,
and is real as we are real.

In the sacred words of its Divine Author and Object concerning Himself,
“I am the Good Shepherd, and I know mine, and Mine know Me. My sheep
hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them
everlasting life, and they shall never perish; and no man shall pluck
them out of My hand.”




NOTE.


1. On the first publication of this volume, a Correspondent did me
the favour of marking for me a list of passages in Chillingworth’s
celebrated work, besides that which I had myself quoted, in which the
argument was more or less brought forward, on which I have animadverted
in ch. vii. § 2, p. 226. He did this with the purpose of showing, that
Chillingworth’s meaning, when carefully inquired into, would be found
to be in substantial agreement with the distinction I had myself made
between infallibility and certitude; those inaccuracies of language
into which he fell, being necessarily involved in the _argumentum
ad hominem_, which he was urging upon his opponent, or being the
accidental result of the peculiar character of his intellect, which,
while full of ideas, was wanting in the calmness and caution which are
conspicuous in Bishop Butler. Others more familiar with Chillingworth
than I am must decide on this point; but I can have no indisposition to
accept an explanation, which deprives controversialists of this day of
the authority of a vigorous and acute mind in their use of an argument,
which is certainly founded on a great confusion of thought.

I subjoin the references with which my Correspondent has supplied me:—


    (1.) Passages tending to show an agreement of Chillingworth’s
    opinion on the distinction between certitude and infallibility
    with that laid down in the foregoing essay:—

    1. “Religion of Protestants,” ch. ii. § 121 (vol. i. p. 243, Oxf.
    ed. 1838), “For may not a private man,” &c.

    2. _Ibid._ § 152 (p. 265). The last sentence, however, after “when
    they thought they dreamt,” is a fall into the error which he had
    been exposing.

    3. _Ibid._ § 160 (p. 275).

    4. Ch. iii. § 26 (p. 332), “Neither is your argument,” &c.

    5. _Ibid._ § 36 (p. 346).

    6. _Ibid._ § 50 (p. 363), “That Abraham,” &c.

    7. Ch. v. § 63 (vol ii. p. 215).

    8. _Ibid._ § 107 (p. 265).

    9. Ch vii. § 13 (p. 452). _Vide_ also vol. i. pp. 115, 121, 196,
    236, 242, 411.

    (2.) Passages inconsistent with the above:—

    1. Ch. ii. § 25 (vol. i. p. 177). _An argumentum ad hominem._

    2. _Ibid._ § 28 (p. 180).

    3. _Ibid._ § 45 (p. 189). _An argumentum ad hominem._

    4. _Ibid._ § 149 (p. 263). _An argumentum ad hominem._

    5. _Ibid._ § 154 (p. 267). Quoted in the text, p. 226.

    6. Ch. v. § 45 (vol. ii. p. 391). He is arguing on his opponent’s
    principles.


2. Also, I have to express my obligation to another Correspondent,
who called my attention to a passage of Hooker (“Eccles. Pol.” ii.
7) beginning “An earnest desire,” &c., which seemed to anticipate
the doctrine of Locke about certitude. It is so difficult to be sure
of the meaning of a writer whose style is so foreign to that of our
own times, that I am shy of attempting to turn this passage into
categorical statements. Else, I should ask, does not Hooker here assume
the absolute certainty of the inspiration and divine authority of
Scripture, and believe its teaching as the very truth unconditionally
and without any admixture of doubt? Yet what had he but probable
evidence as a warrant for such a view of it? Again, did he receive the
Athanasian Creed on any logical demonstration that its articles were in
Scripture? Yet he felt himself able without any misgiving to say aloud
in the congregation, “Which faith except every one do keep whole and
undefiled, _without doubt_ he shall perish everlastingly.” In truth it
is the happy inconsistency of his school to be more orthodox in their
conclusions than in their premisses; to be sceptics in their paper
theories, and believers in their own persons.

3. Also, a friend sends me word, as regards the controversy on the
various readings of Shakespeare to which I have referred (_supra_,
ch. viii. §1, p. 271) in illustration of the shortcomings of Formal
Inference, that, since the date of the article in the magazine,
of which I have there availed myself, the verdict of critics has
been unfavourable to the authority and value of the Annotated
Copy, discovered twenty years ago. I may add, that, since my first
edition, I have had the pleasure of reading Dr. Ingleby’s interesting
dissertation on the “Traces of the Authorship of the Works attributed
to Shakespeare.”




FOOTNOTES


  1 “The Oxford Spy,” 1818; by J. S. Boone, p. 107.

  2 Vide “Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects,” art. 4.

  3 On the Formation of Images, _vide supr._ ch. iii. 1, pp. 27, 28.

  4 Liberty of Prophesying, § 2.

  5 This passage is already quoted in my “Essay on Development of
    Doctrine,” vi. 1, § 2.

  6 Gambier on Moral Evidence, p. 6.

  7 “Supernaturalis mentis assensus, rebus fidei exhibitus, cùm præcipuè
    dependeat à gratiâ Dei intrinsecus mentem illuminante et commovente,
    potest esse, et est, major quocunque assensu certitudini naturali
    præstito, seu ex motivis naturalibus orto,” &c.—Dmouski, Instit. t.
    i. p. 28.

  8 “Hoc [viz. multo certior est homo de eo quod audit à Deo qui falli
    non potest, quàm de eo quod videt propriâ ratione quâ falli potest]
    intelligendum est de certitudine fidei secundum appretiationem, non
    secundum intentionem; nam sæpe contingit, ut scientia clariùs
    percipiatur ab intellectu, atque ut connexio scientiæ cum veritate
    magis appareat, quàm connexio fidei cum eâdem; cognitiones enim
    naturales, utpote captui nostro accommodatæ, magis animum quietant,
    delectant, et veluti. satiant.”—Scavini, Theol. Moral. t. ii. p.
    428.

  9 “Suppono enim, veritatem fidei non esse certiorem veritate
    metaphysicâ aut geometricâ quoad modum assensionis, sed tantum quoad
    modum adhæsionis; quia utrinque intellectus absolutè sine modo
    limitante assentitur. Sola autem adhæsio voluntatis diversa est;
    quia in actu fidei gratia seu habitus infusus roborat intellectum et
    voluntatem, ne tam facilè mutentur aut perturbentur.”—Amort, Theol.
    t. i. p. 312.

    “Hæc distinctio certitudinis [ex diversitate motivorum] extrinsecam
    tantum differentiam importat, cùm omnis naturalis certitudo,
    formaliter spectata, sit æqualis; debet enim essentialiter erroris
    periculum amovere, exclusio autem periculi erroris in indivisibili
    consistit; aut enim babetur aut non habetur.”—Dmouski, ibid. p. 27.

 10 “Fides est certior omni veritate naturali, etiam geometricè aut
    metaphysicè certâ; idque non solum certitudine adhæsionis sed etiam
    assentionis.... Intellectus sentit se in multis veritatibus etiam
    metaphysicè certis posse per objectiones perturbari, e. g. si legat
    scepticos.... E contrà circa ea, quæ constat esse revelata à Deo,
    nullus potest perturbari.”—Amort, ibid. p. 367.

 11 ii. n. 154. _Vide_ Note at the end of the volume.

 12 I have assumed throughout this Section that all verbal argumentation
    is ultimately syllogistic; and in consequence that it ever requires
    universal propositions and comes short of concrete fact. A friend
    refers me to the dispute between Des Cartes and Gassendi, the latter
    maintaining against the former that “Cogito ergo sum” implies the
    universal “All who think exist.” I should deny this with Des Cartes;
    but I should say (as indeed he said), that his dictum was not an
    argument, but was the expression of a ratiocinative instinct, as I
    explain below under the head of “Natural Logic.”

    As to the instance “Brutes are not men; therefore men are not
    brutes,” there seems to me no consequence here, neither a _præter_
    nor a _propter_, but a tautology. And as to “It was either Tom or
    Dick that did it; it was not Dick, ergo,” this may be referred to
    the one great principle on which all logical reasoning is founded,
    but really it ought not to be accounted an inference any more than
    if I broke a biscuit, flung half away, and then said of the other
    half, “This is what remains.” It does but state a fact. So, when the
    1st, 2nd, or 3rd proposition of Euclid II. is put before the eyes in
    a diagram, a boy, before he yet has learned to reason, sees with his
    eyes the fact of the thesis, and this _seeing_ it even makes it
    difficult for him to master the mathematical proof. Here, then, a
    _fact_ is stated in the form of an _argument_.

    However, I have inserted parentheses at pp. 277 and 283, in order to
    say “transeat” to the question.

 13 “Aids to Reflection,” p. 59, ed. 1839.

 14 Taylor’s Translation, p. 131.

 15 Ibid. pp. 108-110.

 16 Ibid. pp. 429-436.

 17 “North and South.”

 18 Serm. xi. init.

 19 Vide supr._ ch. v. § 1, pp. 109, 113.

 20 Pp. 84, 85.

 21 “Analogy,” pp. 329, 330, ed. 1836.

 22 Ibid. p. 278.

 23 “Mechanics,” p. 31.

 24 Phillipps’ “Law of Evidence,” vol. i. p. 456.

 25 “Orley Farm.”

  26 Guardian_, June 28, 1865.

 27 History, vol. x. pp. 286, 287.

 28 “Peveril of the Peak.”

 29 “Life of Mother Margaret M. Hallahan,” p. vii.

 30 Eth. Nicom. vi. 11, fin.

 31 Though Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, speaks of φρόνησις as
    the virtue of the δοξαστικὸν generally, and as being concerned
    generally with contingent matter (vi. 4), or what I have called the
    concrete, and of its function being, as regards that matter,
    ἀληθεύειν τῷ καταφάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι (_ibid._ 3), he does not treat of
    it in that work in its general relation to truth and the affirmation
    of truth, but only as it bears upon τὰ πρακτά.

 32 Niebuhr, “Roman History,” vol. i. p. 177; vol. iii. pp. 262. 318.
    322. “Lectures,” vol. iii. App. p. xxii. Lewis, “Roman History,”
    vol. i. pp. 11-17; vol. ii. pp. 489-492. F. W. Newman, “Regal Rome,”
    p. v. Grote, “Greece,” vol. ii. pp. 67, 68. 218. 630-639. Mure,
    “Greece,” vol. iii. p. 503; vol. iv. p. 318. Clinton, ap. Grote,
    suprà.

 33 “Prophetical Office of the Church,” pp. 347, 348, ed. 1837.

 34 Supra_, p. 105, &c. _Vide_ also Univ. Serm. ii. 7-13.

 35 Penny Cyclopædia_, art. “Atonement” (abridged).

 36 On these various subjects I have written in “University Sermons”
    (Oxford), No. vi. “Idea of the University,” Disc. viii. “History of
    Turks,” ch. iv. “Development of Doctrine,” ch. i. sect. 3.

 37 Vide_ “Apologia,” p. 241.

 38 Vide_ “Callista,” ch. xix.

 39 “Analogy,” Pt. ii. ch. 5 (abridged).

 40 “Scopus operis est, planiorem Protestantibus aperire viam ad veram
    Ecclesiam. Cùm enim hactenus Polemici nostri insudarint toti in
    demonstrandis singulis Religionis Catholicæ articulis, in id ego
    unum incumbo, ut hæc tria evincam. Primo: Articulos fundamentales
    Religionis Catholicæ esse evidenter credibiliores oppositis, &c.
    &c.... Demonstratio autem hujus novæ, modestæ, ac facilis viæ, quâ
    ex articulis fundamentalibus solùm probabilioribus adstruitur summa
    Religionis certitudo, hæc est: Deus, cùm sit sapiens ac providus,
    tenetur, Religionem à se revelatam reddere evidenter credibiliorem
    religionibus falsis. Imprudenter enim vellet, suam Religionem ab
    hominibus recipi, nisi eam redderet evidenter credibiliorem
    religionibus cæteris. Ergo illa religio, quæ est evidenter
    credibilior cæteris, est ipsissima religio a Deo revelata, adeoque
    certissimè vera, seu demonstrata. Atqui, &c.... Motivum aggrediendi
    novam hanc, modestam, ac facilem viam illud præcipuum est, quòd
    observem, Protestantium plurimos post innumeros concertationum
    fluctus, in iis tandem consedisse syrtibus, ut credant, nullam dari
    religionem undequaque demonstratam, &c.... Ratiociniis denique
    opponunt ratiocinia; præjudiciis præjudicia ex majoribus sua,” &c.

 41 “Docet naturalis ratio, Deum, ex ipsâ naturâ bonitatis ac
    providentiæ suæ, si velit in mundo habere religionem puram, eamque
    instituere ac conservare usque in finem mundi, teneri ad eam
    religionem reddendam evidenter credibiliorem ac verisimiliorem
    cæteris, &c. &c.... Ex hoc sequitur ulterius; certitudinem moralem
    de verâ Ecclesiâ elevari posse ad certitudinem metaphysicam, si homo
    advertat, certitudinem moralem absolutè fallibilem substare in
    materiâ religionis circa ejus constitutiva fundamentalia speciali
    providentiæ divinæ, præservatrici ab omni errore.... Itaque homo
    semel ex serie historicâ actorum perductus ad moralem certitudinem
    de auctore, fundatione, propagatione, et continuatione Ecclesiæ
    Christianæ, per reflexionem ad existentiam certissimam providentiæ
    divinæ in materiâ religionis, à priori lumine naturæ certitudine
    metaphysicâ notam, eo ipso eadem infallibili certitudine intelliget,
    argumenta de auctore,” &c.—Amort. Ethica Christiana, p. 252.

 42 “De hac damnatorum saltem hominum respiratione, nihil adhuc certi
    decretum est ab Ecclesiâ Catholicâ: ut propterea non temerè, tanquam
    absurda, sit explodenda sanctissimorum Patrum hæc opinio: quamvis à
    communi sensu Catholicorum hoc tempore sit aliena.”—Petavius de
    Angelis, fin.

 43 Vide supra_, p. 302.

 44 Vide_ the author’s Occasional Sermons, No. 5.

 45 Vide supra_, p. 84.

 46 History, vol. viii.

 47 Before and apart from Christianity, the Samaritan Version reads,
    “donec veniat Pacificus, et ad ipsum congregabuntur populi.” The
    Targum, “donec veniat Messias, cujus est regnum, et obedient
    populi.” The Septuagint, “donec veniant quæ reservata sunt illi” (or
    “donec veniat cui reservatum est”), “et ipse expectatio gentium.”
    And so again the Vulgate, “donec veniat qui mittendus est, et ipse
    erit expectatio gentium.”

    The ingenious translation of some learned men (“donec venerit Juda
    Siluntem,” i. e. “the tribe-sceptre shall not depart from Judah till
    Judah comes to Shiloh”), with the explanation that the tribe of
    Judah had the leadership in the war against the Canaanites, _vide_
    Judges i. 1, 2; xx. 18 (i. e. after Joshua’s _death_), and that
    possibly, and for what we know, the tribe gave up that war-command
    at Shiloh, _vide_ Joshua xviii. 1 (i. e. in Joshua’s _life-time_),
    labours under three grave difficulties: 1. That the patriarchal
    sceptre is a temporary war-command. 2. That this command belonged to
    Judah at the very time that it belonged to Joshua. And 3. That it
    was finally lost to Judah (Joshua living) before it had been
    committed to Judah (Joshua dead).

 48 He appeals to the prophecies in evidence of His Divine mission, in
    addressing the Nazarites (Luke iv. 18), St. John’s disciples (Matt.
    xi. 5), and the Pharisees (Matt. xxi. 42, and John v. 39), but not
    in details. The appeal to details He reserves for His disciples.
    _Vide_ Matt. xi. 10; xxvi. 24, 31, 54: Luke xxii. 37; xxiv. 27, 46.

 49 Vide supra, pp. 341, 375, 413-416.

 50 Vide supra.

 51 Had my limits allowed it, I ought, as a third subject, to have
    described the existing system of impure idolatry, and the wonderful
    phenomenon of such multitudes, who had been slaves to it, escaping
    from it by the power of Christianity,—under the guidance of the
    great work (“On the Gentile and the Jew”) of Dr. Döllinger.

 52 On the subjects which follow, _vide_ Lami, _De Eruditione
    Apostolorum_; Mamachius, _Origines Christ._; Ruinart, _Act. Mart._;
    Lardner, _Credibility_, &c.; Fleury, _Eccles. Hist._; Kortholt,
    _Calumn. Pagan._; and _De Morib. Christ._, &c.

 53 Ep. ad Diognet.

 54 Essay on Development of Doctrine, ch. iv. § 1.

 55 Fr. Lacordaire and M. Nicolas.

 56 Occas. Serm., pp. 49-51.





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