§ 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.