My object in the foregoing pages has been, not to form a theory which
may account for those phenomena of the intellect of which they treat,
viz. those which characterize inference and assent, but to ascertain
what is the matter of fact as regards them, that is, when it is that
assent is given to propositions which are inferred, and under what
circumstances. I have never had the thought of an attempt which would
be ambitious in me, and which has failed in the hands of others, if
that attempt may not unfairly be called unsuccessful, which, though
made by the acutest minds, has not succeeded in convincing opponents.
Especially have I found myself unequal to antecedent reasonings in
the instance of a matter of fact. There are those, who, arguing _à
priori_, maintain, that, since experience leads by syllogism only to
probabilities, certitude is ever a mistake. There are others, who,
while they deny this conclusion, grant the _à priori_ principle assumed
in the argument, and in consequence are obliged, in order to vindicate
the certainty of our knowledge, to have recourse to the hypothesis of
intuitions, intellectual forms, and the like, which belong to us by
nature, and may be considered to elevate our experience into something
more than it is in itself. Earnestly maintaining, as I would, with this
latter school of philosophers, the certainty of knowledge, I think it
enough to appeal to the common voice of mankind in proof of it. That is
to be accounted a normal operation of our nature, which men in general
do actually instance. That is a law of our minds, which is exemplified
in action on a large scale, whether _à priori_ it ought to be a law or
no. Our hoping is a proof that hope, as such, is not an extravagance;
and our possession of certitude is a proof that it is not a weakness or
an absurdity to be certain. How it comes about that we can be certain
is not my business to determine; for me it is sufficient that certitude
is felt. This is what the schoolmen, I believe, call treating a subject
_in facto esse_, in contrast with _in fieri_. Had I attempted the
latter, I should have been falling into metaphysics; but my aim is of a
practical character, such as that of Butler in his _Analogy_, with this
difference, that he treats of probability, doubt, expedience, and duty,
whereas in these pages, without excluding, far from it, the question of
duty, I would confine myself to the truth of things, and to the mind’s
certitude of that truth.
Certitude is a mental state: certainty is a quality of propositions.
Those propositions I call certain, which are such that I am certain of
them. Certitude is not a passive impression made upon the mind from
without, by argumentative compulsion, but in all concrete questions
(nay, even in abstract, for though the reasoning is abstract, the
mind which judges of it is concrete) it is an active recognition of
propositions as true, such as it is the duty of each individual himself
to exercise at the bidding of reason, and, when reason forbids, to
withhold. And reason never bids us be certain except on an absolute
proof; and such a proof can never be furnished to us by the logic of
words, for as certitude is of the mind, so is the act of inference
which leads to it. Every one who reasons, is his own centre; and no
expedient for attaining a common measure of minds can reverse this
truth;—but then the question follows, is there any _criterion_ of the
accuracy of an inference, such as may be our warrant that certitude
is rightly elicited in favour of the proposition inferred, since our
warrant cannot, as I have said, be scientific? I have already said that
the sole and final judgment on the validity of an inference in concrete
matter is committed to the personal action of the ratiocinative
faculty, the perfection or virtue of which I have called the Illative
Sense, a use of the word “sense” parallel to our use of it in “good
sense,” “common sense,” a “sense of beauty,” &c.;—and I own I do not
see any way to go farther than this in answer to the question. However,
I can at least explain my meaning more fully; and therefore I will now
speak, first of the sanction of the Illative Sense, next of its nature,
and then of its range.
§ 1. The Sanction of the Illative Sense.
We are in a world of facts, and we use them; for there is nothing else
to use. We do not quarrel with them, but we take them as they are, and
avail ourselves of what they can do for us. It would be out of place
to demand of fire, water, earth, and air their credentials, so to
say, for acting upon us, or ministering to us. We call them elements,
and turn them to account, and make the most of them. We speculate on
them at our leisure. But what we are still less able to doubt about
or annul, at our leisure or not, is that which is at once their
counterpart and their witness, I mean, ourselves. We are conscious of
the objects of external nature, and we reflect and act upon them, and
this consciousness, reflection, and action we call our rationality.
And as we use the (so called) elements without first criticizing
what we have no command over, so is it much more unmeaning in us to
criticize or find fault with our own nature, which is nothing else than
we ourselves, instead of using it according to the use of which it
ordinarily admits. Our being, with its faculties, mind and body, is a
fact not admitting of question, all things being of necessity referred
to it, not it to other things.
If I may not assume that I exist, and in a particular way, that is,
with a particular mental constitution, I have nothing to speculate
about, and had better let speculation alone. Such as I am, it is my
all; this is my essential stand-point, and must be taken for granted;
otherwise, thought is but an idle amusement, not worth the trouble.
There is no medium between using my faculties, as I have them, and
flinging myself upon the external world according to the random impulse
of the moment, as spray upon the surface of the waves, and simply
forgetting that I am.
I am what I am, or I am nothing. I cannot think, reflect, or judge
about my being, without starting from the very point which I aim at
concluding. My ideas are all assumptions, and I am ever moving in
a circle. I cannot avoid being sufficient for myself, for I cannot
make myself anything else, and to change me is to destroy me. If I do
not use myself, I have no other self to use. My only business is to
ascertain what I am, in order to put it to use. It is enough for the
proof of the value and authority of any function which I possess, to
be able to pronounce that it is natural. What I have to ascertain is
the laws under which I live. My first elementary lesson of duty is
that of resignation to the laws of my nature, whatever they are; my
first disobedience is to be impatient at what I am, and to indulge an
ambitious aspiration after what I cannot be, to cherish a distrust of
my powers, and to desire to change laws which are identical with myself.
Truths such as these, which are too obvious to be called irresistible,
are illustrated by what we see in universal nature. Every being is
in a true sense sufficient for itself, so as to be able to fulfil
its particular needs. It is a general law that, whatever is found as
a function or an attribute of any class of beings, or is natural to
it, is in its substance suitable to it, and subserves its existence,
and cannot be rightly regarded as a fault or enormity. No being could
endure, of which the constituent parts were at war with each other. And
more than this; there is that principle of vitality in every being,
which is of a sanative and restorative character, and which brings
all its parts and functions together into one whole, and is ever
repelling and correcting the mischiefs which befall it, whether from
within or without, while showing no tendency to cast off its belongings
as if foreign to its nature. The brute animals are found severally
with limbs and organs, habits, instincts, appetites, surroundings,
which play together for the safety and welfare of the whole; and,
after all exceptions, may be said each of them to have, after its
own kind, a perfection of nature. Man is the highest of the animals,
and more indeed than an animal, as having a mind; that is, he has a
complex nature different from theirs, with a higher aim and a specific
perfection; but still the fact that other beings find their good in the
use of their particular nature, is a reason for anticipating that to
use duly our own is our interest as well as our necessity.
What is the peculiarity of our nature, in contrast with the inferior
animals around us? It is that, though man cannot change what he is
born with, he is a being of progress with relation to his perfection
and characteristic good. Other beings are complete from their first
existence, in that line of excellence which is allotted to them; but
man begins with nothing realized (to use the word), and he has to
make capital for himself by the exercise of those faculties which are
his natural inheritance. Thus he gradually advances to the fulness of
his original destiny. Nor is this progress mechanical, nor is it of
necessity; it is committed to the personal efforts of each individual
of the species; each of us has the prerogative of completing his
inchoate and rudimental nature, and of developing his own perfection
out of the living elements with which his mind began to be. It is his
gift to be the creator of his own sufficiency; and to be emphatically
self-made. This is the law of his being, which he cannot escape; and
whatever is involved in that law he is bound, or rather he is carried
on, to fulfil.
And here I am brought to the bearing of these remarks upon my subject.
For this law of progress is carried out by means of the acquisition of
knowledge, of which inference and assent are the immediate instruments.
Supposing, then, the advancement of our nature, both in ourselves
individually and as regards the human family, is, to every one of us
in his place, a sacred duty, it follows that that duty is intimately
bound up with the right use of these two main instruments of fulfilling
it. And as we do not gain the knowledge of the law of progress by any
_à priori_ view of man, but by looking at it as the interpretation
which is provided by himself on a large scale in the ordinary action of
his intellectual nature, so too we must appeal to himself, as a fact,
and not to any antecedent theory, in order to find what is the law of
his mind as regards the two faculties in question. If then such an
appeal does bear me out in deciding, as I have done, that the course of
inference is ever more or less obscure, while assent is ever distinct
and definite, and yet that what is in its nature thus absolute does,
in fact follow upon what in outward manifestation is thus complex,
indirect, and recondite, what is left to us but to take things as they
are, and to resign ourselves to what we find? that is, instead of
devising, what cannot be, some sufficient science of reasoning which
may compel certitude in concrete conclusions, to confess that there is
no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony born to truth by the
mind itself, and that this phenomenon, perplexing as we may find it, is
a normal and inevitable characteristic of the mental constitution of a
being like man on a stage such as the world. His progress is a living
growth, not a mechanism; and its instruments are mental acts, not the
formulas and contrivances of language.
We are accustomed in this day to lay great stress upon the harmony
of the universe; and we have well learned the maxim so powerfully
inculcated by our own English philosopher, that in our inquiries into
its laws, we must sternly destroy all idols of the intellect, and
subdue nature by co-operating with her. Knowledge is power, for it
enables us to use eternal principles which we cannot alter. So also is
it in that microcosm, the human mind. Let us follow Bacon more closely
than to distort its faculties according to the demands of an ideal
optimism, instead of looking out for modes of thought proper to our
nature, and faithfully observing them in our intellectual exercises.
Of course I do not stop here. As the structure of the universe speaks
to us of Him who made it, so the laws of the mind are the expression,
not of mere constituted order, but of His will. I should be bound by
them even were they not His laws; but since one of their very functions
is to tell me of Him, they throw a reflex light upon themselves, and,
for resignation to my destiny, I substitute a cheerful concurrence in
an overruling Providence. We may gladly welcome such difficulties as
there are in our mental constitution, and in the interaction of our
faculties, if we are able to feel that He gave them to us, and He can
overrule them for us. We may securely take them as they are, and use
them as we find them. It is He who teaches us all knowledge; and the
way by which we acquire it is His way. He varies that way according to
the subject-matter; but whether He has set before us in our particular
pursuit the way of observation or of experiment, of speculation or of
research, of demonstration or of probability, whether we are inquiring
into the system of the universe, or into the elements of matter and of
life, or into the history of human society and past times, if we take
the way proper to our subject-matter, we have His blessing upon us, and
shall find, besides abundant matter for mere opinion, the materials in
due measure of proof and assent.
And especially, by this disposition of things, shall we learn, as
regards religious and ethical inquiries, how little we can effect,
however much we exert ourselves, without that Blessing; for, as if on
set purpose, He has made this path of thought rugged and circuitous
above other investigations, that the very discipline inflicted on
our minds in finding Him, may mould them into due devotion to Him
when He is found. “Verily Thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel,
the Saviour,” is the very law of His dealings with us. Certainly we
need a clue into the labyrinth which is to lead us to Him; and who
among us can hope to seize upon the true starting-points of thought
for that enterprise, and upon all of them, who is to understand their
right direction, to follow them out to their just limits, and duly to
estimate, adjust, and combine the various reasonings in which they
issue, so as safely to arrive at what it is worth any labour to secure,
without a special illumination from Himself? Such are the dealings
of Wisdom with the elect soul. “She will bring upon him fear, and
dread, and trial; and She will torture him with the tribulation of Her
discipline, till She try him by Her laws, and trust his soul. Then She
will strengthen him, and make Her way straight to him, and give him
joy.”
§ 2. The Nature of the Illative Sense.
It is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings,
not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of
judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative
Sense, and I shall best illustrate it by referring to parallel
faculties, which we commonly recognize without difficulty.
For instance, how does the mind fulfil its function of supreme
direction and control, in matters of duty, social intercourse,
and taste? In all of these separate actions of the intellect, the
individual is supreme, and responsible to himself, nay, under
circumstances, may be justified in opposing himself to the judgment
of the whole world; though he uses rules to his great advantage, as
far as they go, and is in consequence bound to use them. As regards
moral duty, the subject is fully considered in the well-known ethical
treatises of Aristotle.(31) He calls the faculty which guides the mind
in matters of conduct, by the name of _phronesis_, or judgment. This is
the directing, controlling, and determining principle in such matters,
personal and social. What it is to be virtuous, how we are to gain the
just idea and standard of virtue, how we are to approximate in practice
to our own standard, what is right and wrong in a particular case, for
the answers in fulness and accuracy to these and similar questions, the
philosopher refers us to no code of laws, to no moral treatise, because
no science of life, applicable to the case of an individual, has been
or can be written. Such is Aristotle’s doctrine, and it is undoubtedly
true. An ethical system may supply laws, general rules, guiding
principles, a number of examples, suggestions, landmarks, limitations,
cautions, distinctions, solutions of critical or anxious difficulties;
but who is to apply them to a particular case? whither can we go,
except to the living intellect, our own, or another’s? What is written
is too vague, too negative for our need. It bids us avoid extremes;
but it cannot ascertain for us, according to our personal need, the
golden mean. The authoritative oracle, which is to decide our path, is
something more searching and manifold than such jejune generalizations
as treatises can give, which are most distinct and clear when we least
need them. It is seated in the mind of the individual, who is thus his
own law, his own teacher, and his own judge in those special cases of
duty which are personal to him. It comes of an acquired habit, though
it has its first origin in nature itself, and it is formed and matured
by practice and experience; and it manifests itself, not in any breadth
of view, any philosophical comprehension of the mutual relations of
duty towards duty, or any consistency in its teachings, but it is a
capacity sufficient for the occasion, deciding what ought to be done
here and now, by this given person, under these given circumstances. It
decides nothing hypothetical, it does not determine what a man should
do ten years hence, or what another should do at this time. It may
indeed happen to decide ten years hence as it does now, and to decide a
second case now as it now decides a first; still its present act is for
the present, not for the distant or the future.
State or public law is inflexible, but this mental rule is not only
minute and particular, but has an elasticity, which, in its application
to individual cases, is, as I have said, not studious to maintain the
appearance of consistency. In old times the mason’s rule which was
in use at Lesbos was, according to Aristotle, not of wood or iron,
but of lead, so as to allow of its adjustment to the uneven surface
of the stones brought together for the work. By such the philosopher
illustrates the nature of equity in contrast with law, and such is that
_phronesis_, from which the science of morals forms its rules, and
receives its complement.
In this respect of course the law of truth differs from the law of
duty, that duties change, but truths never; but, though truth is ever
one and the same, and the assent of certitude is immutable, still
the reasonings which carry us on to truth and certitude are many and
distinct, and vary with the inquirer; and it is not with assent, but
with the controlling principle in inferences that I am comparing
_phronesis_. It is with this drift that I observe that the rule of
conduct for one man is not always the rule for another, though the rule
is always one and the same in the abstract, and in its principle and
scope. To learn his own duty in his own case, each individual must have
recourse to his own rule; and if his rule is not sufficiently developed
in his intellect for his need, then he goes to some other living,
present authority, to supply it for him, not to the dead letter of a
treatise or a code. A living, present authority, himself or another,
is his immediate guide in matters of a personal, social, or political
character. In buying and selling, in contracts, in his treatment of
others, in giving and receiving, in thinking, speaking, doing, and
working, in toil, in danger, in his recreations and pleasures, every
one of his acts, to be praiseworthy, must be in accordance with this
practical sense. Thus it is, and not by science, that he perfects the
virtues of justice, self-command, magnanimity, generosity, gentleness,
and all others. _Phronesis_ is the regulating principle of every one of
them.
These last words lead me to a further remark. I doubt whether it
is correct, strictly speaking, to consider this _phronesis_ as a
general faculty, directing and perfecting all the virtues at once. So
understood, it is little better than an abstract term, including under
it a circle of analogous faculties, severally proper to the separate
virtues. Properly speaking, there are as many kinds of _phronesis_
as there are virtues; for the judgment, good sense, or tact which
is conspicuous in a man’s conduct in one subject-matter, is not
necessarily traceable in another. As in the parallel cases of memory
and reasoning, he may be great in one aspect of his character, and
little-minded in another. He may be exemplary in his family, yet commit
a fraud on the revenue; he may be just and cruel, brave and sensual,
imprudent and patient. And if this be true of the moral virtues, it
holds good still more fully when we compare what is called his private
character with his public. A good man may make a bad king; profligates
have been great statesmen, or magnanimous political leaders.
So, too, I may go on to speak of the various callings and professions
which give scope to the exercise of great talents, for these talents
also are matured, not by mere rule, but by personal skill and sagacity.
They are as diverse as pleading and cross-examining, conducting a
debate in Parliament, swaying a public meeting, and commanding an
army; and here, too, I observe that, though the directing principle
in each case is called by the same name,—sagacity, skill, tact, or
prudence,—still there is no one ruling faculty leading to eminence in
all these various lines of action in common, but men will excel in one
of them, without any talent for the rest.
The parallel may be continued in the case of the Fine Arts, in which,
though true and scientific rules may be given, no one would therefore
deny that Phidias or Rafael had a far more subtle standard of taste and
a more versatile power of embodying it in his works, than any which he
could communicate to others in even a series of treatises. And here
again genius is indissolubly united to one definite subject-matter; a
poet is not therefore a painter, or an architect a musical composer.
And so, again, as regards the useful arts and personal accomplishments,
we use the same word “skill,” but proficiency in engineering or in
ship-building, or again in engraving, or again in singing, in playing
instruments, in acting, or in gymnastic exercises, is as simply
one with its particular subject-matter, as the human soul with its
particular body, and is, in its own department, a sort of instinct or
inspiration, not an obedience to external rules of criticism or of
science.
It is natural, then, to ask the question, why ratiocination should
be an exception to a general law which attaches to the intellectual
exercises of the mind; why it is held to be commensurate with logical
science; and why logic is made an instrumental art sufficient for
determining every sort of truth, while no one would dream of making any
one formula, however generalized, a working rule at once for poetry,
the art of medicine, and political warfare?
This is what I have to remark concerning the Illative Sense, and in
explanation of its nature and claims; and on the whole, I have spoken
of it in four respects,—as viewed in itself, in its subject-matter, in
the process it uses, and in its function and scope.
First, viewed in its exercise, it is one and the same in all concrete
matters, though employed in them in different measures. We do not
reason in one way in chemistry or law, in another in morals or
religion; but in reasoning on any subject whatever, which is concrete,
we proceed, as far indeed as we can, by the logic of language, but we
are obliged to supplement it by the more subtle and elastic logic of
thought; for forms by themselves prove nothing.
Secondly, it is in fact attached to definite subject-matters, so that
a given individual may possess it in one department of thought, for
instance, history, and not in another, for instance, philosophy.
Thirdly, in coming to its conclusion, it proceeds always in the same
way, by a method of reasoning, which is the elementary principle of
that mathematical calculus of modern times, which has so wonderfully
extended the limits of abstract science.
Fourthly, in no class of concrete reasonings, whether in experimental
science, historical research, or theology, is there any ultimate test
of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness
of the Illative Sense that gives them its sanction; just as there
is no sufficient test of poetical excellence, heroic action, or
gentleman-like conduct, other than the particular mental sense, be it
genius, taste, sense of propriety, or the moral sense, to which those
subject-matters are severally committed. Our duty in each of these is
to strengthen and perfect the special faculty which is its living rule,
and in every case as it comes to do our best. And such also is our duty
and our necessity, as regards the Illative Sense.
§ 3. The Range of the Illative Sense.
Great as are the services of language in enabling us to extend the
compass of our inferences, to test their validity, and to communicate
them to others, still the mind itself is more versatile and vigorous
than any of its works, of which language is one, and it is only
under its penetrating and subtle action that the margin disappears,
which I have described as intervening between verbal argumentation
and conclusions in the concrete. It determines what science cannot
determine, the limit of converging probabilities and the reasons
sufficient for a proof. It is the ratiocinative mind itself, and no
trick of art, however simple in its form and sure in operation, by
which we are able to determine that a moving body left to itself will
never stop, and that no man can live without eating.
Nor, again, is it by any diagram that we are able to scrutinize, sort,
and combine the many premisses which must be first run together before
we answer duly a given question. It is to the living mind that we must
look for the means of using correctly principles of whatever kind,
facts or doctrines, experiences or testimonies, true or probable,
and of discerning what conclusion from these is necessary, suitable,
or expedient, when they are taken for granted; and this, either by
means of a natural gift, or from mental formation and practice and
a long familiarity with those various starting-points. Thus, when
Laud said that he did not see his way to come to terms with the Holy
See, “till Rome was other than she was,” no Catholic would admit the
sentiment: but any Catholic may understand that this is just the
judgment consistent with Laud’s actual condition of thought and cast
of opinions, his ecclesiastical position, and the existing state of
England.
Nor, lastly, is an action of the mind itself less necessary in
relation to those first elements of thought which in all reasoning
are assumptions, the principles, tastes, and opinions, very often of
a personal character, which are half the battle in the inference with
which the reasoning is to terminate. It is the mind itself that detects
them in their obscure recesses, illustrates them, establishes them,
eliminates them, resolves them into simpler ideas, as the case may
be. The mind contemplates them without the use of words, by a process
which cannot be analyzed. Thus it was that Bacon separated the physical
system of the world from the theological; thus that Butler connected
together the moral system with the religious. Logical formulas could
never have sustained the reasonings involved in such investigations.
Thus the Illative Sense, that is, the reasoning faculty, as exercised
by gifted, or by educated or otherwise well-prepared minds, has its
function in the beginning, middle, and end of all discussion and
inquiry, and in every step of the process. It is a rule to itself,
and appeals to no judgment beyond its own; and attends upon the whole
course of thought from antecedents to consequents, with a minute
diligence and unwearied presence, which is impossible to a cumbrous
apparatus of verbal reasoning, though, in communicating with others,
words are the only instrument we possess, and a serviceable, though
imperfect instrument.
One function indeed there is of Logic, to which I have referred in
the preceding sentence, which the Illative Sense does not and cannot
perform. It supplies no common measure between mind and mind, as being
nothing else than a personal gift or acquisition. Few there are, as I
said above, who are good reasoners on all subject-matters. Two men, who
reason well each in his own province of thought, may, one or both of
them, fail and pronounce opposite judgments on a question belonging to
some third province. Moreover, all reasoning being from premisses, and
those premisses arising (if it so happen) in their first elements from
personal characteristics, in which men are in fact in essential and
irremediable variance one with another, the ratiocinative talent can do
no more than point out where the difference between them lies, how far
it is immaterial, when it is worth while continuing an argument between
them, and when not.
Now of the three main occasions of the exercise of the Illative Sense,
which I have been insisting on, and which are the measure of its range,
the start, the course, and the issue of an inquiry, I have already,
in treating of Informal Inference, shown the place it holds in the
final resolution of concrete questions. Here then it is left to me
to illustrate its presence and action in relation to the elementary
premisses, and, again, to the conduct of an argument. And first of the
latter.
1.
There has been a great deal written of late years on the subject of
the state of Greece and Rome during the pre-historic period; let us
say before the Olympiads in Greece, and the war with Pyrrhus in the
annals of Rome. Now, in a question like this, it is plain that the
inquirer has first of all to decide on the point from which he is to
start in the presence of the received accounts; on what side, from what
quarter he is to approach them; on what principles his discussion is
to be conducted; what he is to assume, what opinions or objections he
is summarily to put aside as nugatory, what arguments, and when, he
is to consider as apposite, what false issues are to be avoided, when
the state of his arguments is ripe for a conclusion. Is he to commence
with absolutely discarding all that has hitherto been received; or to
retain it in outline; or to make selections from it; or to consider
and interpret it as mythical, or as allegorical; or to hold so much to
be trustworthy, or at least of _primâ facie_ authority, as he cannot
actually disprove; or never to destroy except in proportion as he can
construct? Then, as to the kind of arguments suitable or admissible,
how far are tradition, analogy, isolated monuments and records, ruins,
vague reports, legends, the facts or sayings of later times, language,
popular proverbs, to tell in the inquiry? what are marks of truth, what
of falsehood, what is probable, what suspicious, what promises well for
discriminating facts from fictions? Then, arguments have to be balanced
against each other, and then lastly the decision is to be made, whether
any conclusion at all can be drawn, or whether any before certain
issues are tried and settled, or whether a probable conclusion or a
certain. It is plain how incessant will be the call here or there for
the exercise of a definitive judgment, how little that judgment will be
helped on by logic, and how intimately it will be dependent upon the
intellectual complexion of the writer.
This might be illustrated at great length, were it necessary, from
the writings of any of those able men, whose names are so well known
in connexion with the subject I have instanced; such as Niebuhr, Mr.
Clinton, Sir George Lewis, Mr. Grote, and Colonel Mure. These authors
have severally views of their own on the period of history which they
have selected for investigation, and they are too learned and logical
not to know and to use to the utmost the testimonies by which the facts
which they investigate are to be ascertained. Why then do they differ
so much from each other, whether in their estimate of those testimonies
or of those facts? Because that estimate is simply their own, coming of
their own judgment; and that judgment coming of assumptions of their
own, explicit or implicit; and those assumptions spontaneously issuing
out of the state of thought respectively belonging to each of them; and
all these successive processes of minute reasoning superintended and
directed by an intellectual instrument far too subtle and spiritual to
be scientific.
What was Niebuhr’s idea of the office he had undertaken? I suppose it
was to accept what he found in the historians of Rome, to interrogate
it, to take it to pieces, to put it together again, to re-arrange and
interpret it. Prescription together with internal consistency was
to him the evidence of fact, and if he pulled down he felt he was
bound to build up. Very different is the spirit of another school of
writers, with whom prescription is nothing, and who will admit no
evidence which has not first proved its right to be admitted. “We are
able,” says Niebuhr, “to trace the history of the Roman constitution
back to the beginning of the Commonwealth, as accurately as we wish,
and even more perfectly than the history of many portions of the
middle ages.” But, “we may rejoice,” says Sir George Lewis, “that the
ingenuity or learning of Niebuhr should have enabled him to advance
many noble hypotheses and conjectures respecting the form of the early
constitution of Rome, but, unless he can support those hypotheses by
sufficient evidence, they are not entitled to our belief.” “Niebuhr,”
says a writer nearly related to myself, “often expresses much contempt
for mere incredulous criticism and negative conclusions; ... yet wisely
to disbelieve is our first grand requisite in dealing with materials of
mixed worth.” And Sir George Lewis again, “It may be said that there is
scarcely any of the leading conclusions of Niebuhr’s work which has not
been impugned by some subsequent writer.”
Again, “It is true,” says Niebuhr, “that the Trojan war belongs to the
region of fable, yet undeniably it has an historical foundation.” But
Mr. Grote writes, “If we are asked whether the Trojan war is not a
legend ... raised upon a basis of truth, ... our answer must be, that,
as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality
of it be affirmed.” On the other hand, Mr. Clinton lays down the
general rule, “We may acknowledge as real persons, all those whom there
is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favour of the early
tradition, if no argument can be brought to overthrow it.” Thus he
lodges the _onus probandi_ with those who impugn the received accounts;
but Mr. Grote and Sir George Lewis throw it upon those who defend them.
“Historical evidence,” says the latter, “is founded on the testimony of
credible witnesses.” And again, “It is perpetually assumed in practice,
that historical evidence is different in its nature from other sorts of
evidence. This laxity seems to be justified by the doctrine of taking
the best evidence which can be obtained. The object of [my] inquiry
will be to apply to the early Roman history the same rules of evidence
which are applied by common consent to modern history.” Far less
severe is the judgment of Colonel Mure: “Where no positive historical
proof is affirmable, the balance of historical probability must reduce
itself very much to a reasonable indulgence to the weight of national
conviction, and a deference to the testimony of the earliest native
authorities.” “Reasonable indulgence” to popular belief, “deference” to
ancient tradition, are principles of writing history abhorrent to the
judicial temper of Sir George Lewis. He considers the words “reasonable
indulgence” to be “ambiguous,” and observes that “the very point which
cannot be taken for granted, and in which writers differ, is, as to the
extent to which contemporary attestation may be presumed without direct
and positive proof, ... the extent to which the existence of a popular
belief concerning a supposed matter of fact authorizes the inference
that it grew out of authentic testimony.” And Mr. Grote observes to the
same effect: “The word _tradition_ is an equivocal word, and begs the
whole question. It is tacitly understood to imply a tale descriptive
of some real matter of fact, taking rise at the time when the fact
happened, originally accurate, but corrupted by oral transmission.” And
Lewis, who quotes the passage, adds, “This _tacit understanding_ is the
key-stone of the whole argument.”
I am not contrasting these various opinions of able men, who have given
themselves to historical research, as if it were any reflection on them
that they differ from each other. It is the cause of their differing
on which I wish to insist. Taking the facts by themselves, probably
these authors would come to no conclusion at all; it is the “tacit
understandings” which Mr. Grote speaks of, the vague and impalpable
notions of “reasonableness” on his own side as well as on that of
others, which both make conclusions possible, and are the pledge of
their being contradictory. The conclusions vary with the particular
writer, for each writes from his own point of view and with his own
principles, and these admit of no common measure.
This in fact is their own account of the matter: “The results of
speculative historical inquiry,” says Colonel Mure, “can rarely
amount to more than fair presumption of the reality of the events in
question, as limited to their general substance, not as extending to
their details. Nor can there consequently be expected in the minds
of different inquirers any such unity regarding the precise degree
of reality, as may frequently exist in respect to events attested by
documentary evidence.” Mr. Grote corroborates this decision by the
striking instance of the diversity of existing opinions concerning the
Homeric Poems. “Our means of knowledge,” he says, “are so limited,
that no one can produce arguments sufficiently cogent to contend
against opposing preconceptions, and it creates a painful sensation
of diffidence, when we read the expressions of equal and absolute
persuasion with which the two opposite conclusions have both been
advanced.” And again, “There is a difference of opinion among the
best critics, which is probably not destined to be adjusted, since so
much depends partly upon critical feeling, partly upon the general
reasonings in respect to ancient epical unity, with which a man sits
down to the study.” Exactly so; every one has his own “critical
feeling,” his antecedent “reasonings,” and in consequence his own
“absolute persuasion,” coming in fresh and fresh at every turn of the
discussion; and who, whether stranger or friend, is to reach and affect
what is so intimately bound up with the mental constitution of each?
Hence the categorical contradictions between one writer and another,
which abound. Colonel Mure appeals in defence of an historical thesis
to the “fact of the Hellenic confederacy combining for the adoption of
a common national system of chronology in 776 B.C.” Mr. Grote replies:
“Nothing is more at variance with my conception,”—he just now spoke of
the preconceptions of others,—“of the state of the Hellenic world in
776 B.C., than the idea of a combination among all the members of the
race for any purpose, much more for the purpose of adopting a common
national system of chronology.” Colonel Mure speaks of the “bigoted
Athenian public;” Mr. Grote replies that “no public ever less deserved
the epithet of ‘bigoted’ than the Athenian,” Colonel Mure also speaks
of Mr. Grote’s “arbitrary hypothesis;” and again (in Mr. Grote’s
words), of his “unreasonable scepticism.” He cannot disprove by mere
argument the conclusions of Mr. Grote; he can but have recourse to a
personal criticism. He virtually says, “We differ in our personal view
of things.” Men become personal when logic fails; it is their mode
of appealing to their own primary elements of thought, and their own
illative sense, against the principles and the judgment of another.
I have already touched upon Niebuhr’s method of investigation, and
Sir George Lewis’s dislike of it: it supplies us with as apposite an
instance of a difference in first principles as is afforded by Mr.
Grote and Colonel Mure. “The main characteristic of his history,” says
Lewis, “is the extent to which he relies upon internal evidence, and
upon the indications afforded by the narrative itself, independently
of the testimony of its truth.” And, “Ingenuity and labour can produce
nothing but hypotheses and conjectures, which may be supported by
analogies, but can never rest upon the solid foundation of proof.” And
it is undeniable, that, rightly or wrongly, disdaining the scepticism
of the mere critic, Niebuhr does consciously proceed by the high path
of divination. “For my own part,” he says, “I _divine_ that, since
the censorship of Fabius and Decius falls in the same year, that Cn.
Flavius became mediator between his own class and the higher orders.”
Lewis considers this to be a process of guessing; and says, “Instead
of employing those tests of credibility which are consistently
applied to modern history,” Niebuhr, and his followers, and most of
his opponents, “attempt to guide their judgment by the indication of
internal evidence, and assume that the truth is discovered by an occult
faculty of historical divination.” Niebuhr defends himself thus: “The
real geographer has a tact which determines his judgment and choice
among different statements. He is able from isolated statements to
draw inferences respecting things that are unknown, which are closely
approximate to results obtained from observation of facts, and may
supply their place. He is able with limited data to form an image of
things which no eyewitness has described.” He applies this to himself.
The principle set forth in this passage is obviously the same as I
should put forward myself; but Sir George Lewis, though not simply
denying it as a principle, makes little account of it, when applied to
historical research. “It is not enough,” he says, “for an historian to
claim the possession of a retrospective second-sight, which is denied
to the rest of the world—of a mysterious doctrine, revealed only to the
initiated.” And he pronounces, that “the history of Niebuhr has opened
more questions than it has closed, and it has set in motion a large
body of combatants, whose mutual variances are not at present likely to
be settled by deference to a common principle.(32)”
We see from the above extracts how a controversy, such as that to which
they belong, is carried on from starting-points, and with collateral
aids, not formally proved, but more or less assumed, the process of
assumption lying in the action of the Illative Sense, as applied to
primary elements of thought respectively congenial to the disputants.
Not that explicit argumentation on these minute or minor, though
important, points is not sometimes possible to a certain extent;
but, as I had said, it is too unwieldy an expedient for a constantly
recurring need, even when it is tolerably exact.
2.
And now secondly, as to the first principles themselves. In
illustration, I will mention under separate heads some of those
elementary contrarieties of opinion, on which the Illative Sense has to
act, discovering them, following them out, defending or resisting them,
as the case may be.
1. As to the statement of the case. This depends on the particular
aspect under which we view a subject, that is, on the abstraction which
forms our representative notion of what it is. Sciences are only so
many distinct aspects of nature; sometimes suggested by nature itself,
sometimes created by the mind. (1) One of the simplest and broadest
aspects under which to view the physical world, is that of a system of
final causes, or, on the other hand, of initial or effective causes.
Bacon, having it in view to extend our power over nature, adopted the
latter. He took firm hold of the idea of causation (in the common
sense of the word) as contrasted with that of design, refusing to
mix up the two ideas in one inquiry, and denouncing such traditional
interpretations of facts, as did but obscure the simplicity of the
aspect necessary for his purpose. He saw what others before him might
have seen in what they saw, but who did not see as he saw it. In this
achievement of intellect, which has been so fruitful in results, lie
his genius and his fame.
(2) So again, to refer to a very different subject-matter, we often
hear of the exploits of some great lawyer, judge or advocate, who is
able in perplexed cases, when common minds see nothing but a hopeless
heap of facts, foreign or contrary to each other, to detect the
principle which rightly interprets the riddle, and, to the admiration
of all hearers, converts a chaos into an orderly and luminous
whole. This is what is meant by originality, in thinking: it is the
discovery of an aspect of a subject-matter, simpler, perhaps, and more
intelligible than any hitherto taken.
(3) On the other hand, such aspects are often unreal, as being mere
exhibitions of ingenuity, not of true originality of mind. This is
especially the case in what are called philosophical views of history.
Such seems to me the theory advocated in a work of great learning,
vigour, and acuteness, Warburton’s “Divine Legation of Moses.” I do
not call Gibbon merely ingenious; still his account of the rise of
Christianity is the mere subjective view of one who could not enter
into its depth and power.
(4) The aspect under which we view things is often intensely personal;
nay, even awfully so, considering that, from the nature of the case,
it does not bring home its idiosyncrasy either to ourselves or to
others. Each of us looks at the world in his own way, and does not know
that perhaps it is characteristically his own. This is the case even
as regards the senses. Some men have little perception of colours;
some recognize one or two; to some men two contrary colours, as red
and green, are one and the same. How poorly can we appreciate the
beauties of nature, if our eyes discern, on the face of things, only an
Indian-ink or a drab creation!
(5) So again, as regards form: each of us abstracts the relation of
line to line in his own personal way,—as one man might apprehend a
curve as convex, another as concave. Of course, as in the case of a
curve, there may be a limit to possible aspects; but still, even when
we agree together, it is not perhaps that we learn one from another, or
fall under any law of agreement, but that our separate idiosyncrasies
happen to concur. I fear I may seem trifling, if I allude to an
illustration which has ever had a great force with me, and that for the
very reason it is so trivial and minute. Children, learning to read,
are sometimes presented with the letters of the alphabet turned into
the figures of men in various attitudes. It is curious to observe from
such representations, how differently the shape of the letters strikes
different minds. In consequence I have continually asked the question
in a chance company, which way certain of the great letters look, to
the right or to the left; and whereas nearly every one present had his
own clear view, so clear that he could not endure the opposite view,
still I have generally found that one half of the party considered the
letters in question to look to the left, while the other half thought
they looked to the right.
(6) This variety of interpretation in the very elements of outlines
seems to throw light upon other cognate differences between one man
and another. If they look at the mere letters of the alphabet so
differently, we may understand how it is they form such distinct
judgments upon handwriting; nay, how some men may have a talent for
decyphering from it the intellectual and moral character of the writer,
which others have not. Another thought that occurs is, that perhaps
here lies the explanation why it is that family likenesses are so
variously recognized, and how mistakes in identity may be dangerously
frequent.
(7) If we so variously apprehend the familiar objects of sense, still
more various, we may suppose, are the aspects and associations attached
by us, one with another, to intellectual objects. I do not say we
differ in the objects themselves, but that we may have interminable
differences as to their relations and circumstances. I have heard
say (again to take a trifling matter) that at the beginning of this
century, it was a subject of serious, nay, of angry controversy,
whether it began with January 1800, or January 1801. Argument,
which ought, if in any case, to have easily brought the question to
a decision, was but sprinkling water upon a flame. I am not clear
that, if it could be fairly started now, it would not lead to similar
results; certainly I know those who studiously withdraw from giving
an opinion on the subject, when it is accidentally mooted, from
their experience of the eager feeling which it is sure to excite in
some one or other who is present. This eagerness can only arise from
an overpowering sense that the truth of the matter lies in the one
alternative, and not in the other.
These instances, because they are so casual, suggest how it comes to
pass, that men differ so widely from each other in religious and moral
perceptions. Here, I say again, it does not prove that there is no
objective truth, because not all men are in possession of it; or that
we are not responsible for the associations which we attach, and the
relations which we assign, to the objects of the intellect. But this it
does suggest to us, that there is something deeper in our differences
than the accident of external circumstances; and that we need the
interposition of a Power greater than human teaching and human argument
to make our beliefs true and our minds one.
2. Next I come to the implicit assumption of definite propositions
in the first start of a course of reasoning, and the arbitrary
exclusion of others, of whatever kind. Unless we had the right, when
we pleased, of ruling that propositions were irrelevant or absurd, I
do not see how we could conduct an argument at all; our way would be
simply blocked up by extravagant principles and theories, gratuitous
hypotheses, false issues, unsupported statements, and incredible
facts. There are those who have treated the history of Abraham as an
astronomical record, and have spoken of our Adorable Saviour as the
sun in _Aries_. Arabian Mythology has changed Solomon into a mighty
wizard. Noah has been considered the patriarch of the Chinese people.
The ten tribes have been pronounced still to live in their descendants,
the Red Indians; or to be the ancestors of the Goths and Vandals, and
thereby of the present European races. Some have conjectured that the
Apollos of the Acts of the Apostles was Apollonius Tyaneus. Able men
have reasoned out, almost against their will, that Adam was a negro.
These propositions, and many others of various kinds, we should think
ourselves justified in passing over, if we were engaged in a work on
sacred history; and there are others, on the contrary, which we should
assume as true by our own right and without notice, and without which
we could not set about or carry on our work.
(1) However, the right of making assumptions has been disputed; but,
when the objections are examined, I think they only go to show that
we have no right in argument to make any assumption we please. Thus,
in the historical researches which just now came before us, it seems
fair to say that no testimony should be received, except such as comes
from competent witnesses, while it is not unfair to urge, on the other
side, that tradition, though unauthenticated, being (what is called)
in possession, has a prescription in its favour, and may, _primâ
facie_, or provisionally, be received. Here are the materials of a fair
dispute; but there are writers who seem to have gone far beyond this
reasonable scepticism, laying down as a general proposition that we
have no right in philosophy to make any assumption whatever, and that
we ought to begin with a universal doubt. This, however, is of all
assumptions the greatest, and to forbid assumptions universally is to
forbid this one in particular. Doubt itself is a positive state, and
implies a definite habit of mind, and thereby necessarily involves a
system of principles and doctrines all its own. Again, if nothing is to
be assumed, what is our very method of reasoning but an assumption? and
what our nature itself? The very sense of pleasure and pain, which is
one of the most intimate portions of ourselves, inevitably translates
itself into intellectual assumptions.
Of the two, I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin
with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that
it is our duty to doubt of everything. The former, indeed, seems the
true way of learning. In that case, we soon discover and discard what
is contradictory to itself; and error having always some portion of
truth in it, and the truth having a reality which error has not, we may
expect, that when there is an honest purpose and fair talents, we shall
somehow make our way forward, the error falling off from the mind, and
the truth developing and occupying it. Thus it is that the Catholic
religion is reached, as we see, by inquirers from all points of the
compass, as if it mattered not where a man began, so that he had an eye
and a heart for the truth.
(2) An argument has been often put forward by unbelievers, I think by
Paine, to this effect, that “a revelation, which is to be received as
true, ought to be written on the sun.” This appeals to the common-sense
of the many with great force, and implies the assumption of a
principle which Butler, indeed, would not grant, and would consider
unphilosophical, and yet I think something may be said in its favour.
Whether abstractedly defensible or not, Catholic populations would
not be averse, _mutatis mutandis_, to admitting it. Till these last
centuries, the Visible Church was, at least to her children, the light
of the world, as conspicuous as the sun in the heavens; and the Creed
was written on her forehead, and proclaimed through her voice, by
a teaching as precise as it was emphatical; in accordance with the
text, “Who is she that looketh forth at the dawn, fair as the moon,
bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” It was not,
strictly speaking, a miracle, doubtless; but in its effect, nay, in
its circumstances, it was little less. Of course I would not allow
that the Church fails in this manifestation of the truth now, any more
than in former times, though the clouds have come over the sun; for
what she has lost in her appeal to the imagination, she has gained in
philosophical cogency, by the evidence of her persistent vitality.
So far is clear, that if Paine’s aphorism has a _primâ facie_ force
against Christianity, it owes this advantage to the miserable deeds of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
(3) Another conflict of first principles or assumptions, which have
often been implicit on either side, has been carried through in
our day, and relates to the end and scope of civil society, that
is, whether government and legislation ought to be of a religious
character, or not; whether the state has a conscience; whether
Christianity is the law of the land; whether the magistrate, in
punishing offenders, exercises a retributive office or a corrective;
or whether the whole structure of society is raised upon the basis of
secular expediency. The relation of philosophy and the sciences to
theology comes into the question. The old time-honoured theory has,
during the last forty years, been vigorously contending with the new;
and the new is in the ascendant.
(4) There is another great conflict of first principles, and that among
Christians, which has occupied a large space in our domestic history,
during the last thirty or forty years, and that is the controversy
about the Rule of Faith. I notice it as affording an instance of an
assumption so deeply sunk into the popular mind, that it is a work
of great difficulty to obtain from its maintainers an acknowledgment
that it is an assumption. That Scripture is the Rule of Faith is in
fact an assumption so congenial to the state of mind and course of
thought usual among Protestants, that it seems to them rather a truism
than a truth. If they are in controversy with Catholics on any point
of faith, they at once ask, “Where do you find it in Scripture?” and
if Catholics reply, as they must do, that it is not necessarily in
Scripture in order to be true, nothing can persuade them that such
an answer is not an evasion, and a triumph to themselves. Yet it is
by no means self-evident that all religious truth is to be found in
a number of works, however sacred, which were written at different
times, and did not always form one book; and in fact it is a doctrine
very hard to prove. So much so, that years ago, when I was considering
it from a Protestant point of view, and wished to defend it to the
best of my power, I was unable to give any better account of it than
the following, which I here quote from its appositeness to my present
subject.
“It matters not,” I said, speaking of the first Protestants, “whether
or not they only happened to come right on what, in a logical point
of view, are faulty premisses. They had no time for theories of any
kind; and to require theories at their hand argues an ignorance of
human nature, and of the ways in which truth is struck out in the
course of life. Common sense, chance, moral perception, genius, the
great discoverers of principles do not reason. They have no arguments,
no grounds, they see the truth, but they do not know how they see
it; and if at any time they attempt to prove it, it is as much a
matter of experiment with them, as if they had to find a road to a
distant mountain, which they see with the eye; and they get entangled,
embarrassed, and perchance overthrown in the superfluous endeavour. It
is the second-rate men, though most useful in their place, who prove,
reconcile, finish, and explain. Probably, the popular feeling of the
sixteenth century saw the Bible to be the Word of God, so as nothing
else is His Word, by the power of a strong sense, by a sort of moral
instinct, or by a happy augury.(33)”
That is, I considered the assumption an act of the Illative Sense;—I
should now add, the Illative Sense, acting on mistaken elements of
thought.
3. After the aspects in which a question is to be viewed, and the
principles on which it is to be considered, come the arguments by which
it is decided; among these are antecedent reasons, which are especially
in point here, because they are in great measure made by ourselves and
belong to our personal character, and to them I shall confine myself.
Antecedent reasoning, when negative, is safe. Thus no one would
say that, because Alexander’s rash heroism is one of the leading
characteristics of his history, therefore we are justified, except in
writing a romance, in asserting that at a particular time and place,
he distinguished himself by a certain exploit about which history
is altogether silent; but, on the other hand, his notorious bravery
would be almost decisive against any charge against him of having on a
particular occasion acted as a coward.
In like manner, good character goes far in destroying the force of even
plausible charges. There is indeed a degree of evidence in support of
an allegation, against which reputation is no defence; but it must be
singularly strong to overcome an established antecedent probability
which stands opposed to it. Thus historical personages or great
authors, men of high and pure character, have had imputations cast
upon them, easy to make, difficult or impossible to meet, which are
indignantly trodden under foot by all just and sensible men, as being
as anti-social as they are inhuman. I need not add what a cruel and
despicable part a husband or a son would play, who readily listened to
a charge against his wife or his father. Yet all this being admitted,
a great number of cases remain which are perplexing, and on which we
cannot adjust the claims of conflicting and heterogeneous arguments
except by the keen and subtle operation of the Illative Sense.
Butler’s argument in his _Analogy_ is such a presumption used
negatively. Objection being brought against certain characteristics of
Christianity, he meets it by the presumption in their favour derived
from their parallels as discoverable in the order of nature, arguing
that they do not tell against the Divine origin of Christianity, unless
they tell against the Divine origin of the natural system also. But he
could not adduce it as a positive and direct proof of the Divine origin
of the Christian doctrines that they had their parallels in nature, or
at the utmost as more than a recommendation of them to the religious
inquirer.
Unbelievers use the antecedent argument from the order of nature
against our belief in miracles. Here, if they only mean that the fact
of that system of laws, by which physical nature is governed, makes it
antecedently improbable that an exception should occur in it, there is
no objection to the argument; but if, as is not uncommon, they mean
that the fact of an established order is absolutely fatal to the very
notion of an exception, they are using a presumption as if it were a
proof. They are saying,—What has happened 999 times one way cannot
possibly happen on the 1000th time another way, _because_ what has
happened 999 times one way is likely to happen in the same way on the
1000th. If, however, they mean that the order of nature constitutes a
physical necessity, and that a law is an unalterable fate, this is to
assume the very point in debate, and is much more than its antecedent
probability.
Facts cannot be proved by presumptions, yet it is remarkable that in
cases where nothing stronger than presumption was even professed,
scientific men have sometimes acted as if they thought this kind of
argument, taken by itself, decisive of a fact which was in debate. In
the controversy about the Plurality of worlds, it has been considered,
on purely antecedent grounds, as far as I see, to be so necessary that
the Creator should have filled with living beings the luminaries which
we see in the sky, and the other cosmical bodies which we imagine
there, that it almost amounts to a blasphemy to doubt it.
Theological conclusions, it is true, have often been made on antecedent
reasoning; but then it must be recollected that theological reasoning
professes to be sustained by a more than human power, and to be
guaranteed by a more than human authority. It may be true, also, that
conversions to Christianity have often been made on antecedent reasons;
yet, even admitting the fact, which is not quite clear, a number of
antecedent probabilities, confirming each other, may make it a duty in
the judgment of a prudent man, not only to act as if a statement were
true, but actually to accept and believe it. This is not unfrequently
instanced in our dealings with others, when we feel it right, in spite
of our misgivings, to oblige ourselves to believe their honesty. And in
all these delicate questions there is constant call for the exercise of
the Illative Sense.