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.