An Essay In Aid Of A Grammar Of Assent Part 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet Locke heads one of his chapters with the t.i.tle "Degrees of a.s.sent;"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1.) We often speak of giving a modified and qualified, or a presumptive and _prima facie_ a.s.sent, or (as I have already said) a half-a.s.sent to opinions or facts; but these expressions admit of an easy explanation.

a.s.sent, upon the authority of others is often, as I have noticed, when speaking of notional a.s.sents, little more than a profession or acquiescence or inference, not a real acceptance of a proposition. I report, for instance, that there was a serious fire in the town in the past night; and then perhaps I add, that at least the morning papers say so;-that is, I have perhaps no positive doubt of the fact; still, by referring to the newspapers I imply that I do not take on myself the responsibility of the statement. In thus qualifying my apparent a.s.sent, I show that it was not a genuine a.s.sent at all. In like manner a _prima facie_ a.s.sent is an a.s.sent to an antecedent probability of a fact, not to the fact itself; as I might give a _prima facie_ a.s.sent to the Plurality of worlds or to the personality of Homer, without pledging myself to either absolutely. "Half-a.s.sent," of which I spoke above, is an inclination to a.s.sent, or again, an intention of a.s.senting, when certain difficulties are surmounted. When we speak without thought, a.s.sent has as vague a meaning as half-a.s.sent; but when we deliberately say, "I a.s.sent,"

we signify an act of the mind so definite, as to admit of no change but that of its ceasing to be.

(2.) And so, too, though we sometimes use the phrase "conditional a.s.sent,"

yet we only mean thereby to say that we will a.s.sent under certain contingencies. Of course we may, if we please, include a condition in the proposition to which our a.s.sent is given; and then, that condition enters into the matter of the a.s.sent, but not into the a.s.sent itself. To a.s.sent to-"If this man is in a consumption, his days are numbered,"-is as little a conditional a.s.sent, as to a.s.sent to-"Of this consumptive patient the days are numbered,"-which, (though without the conditional form,) is an equivalent proposition. In such cases, strictly speaking, the a.s.sent is given neither to antecedent nor consequent of the conditional proposition, but to their connexion, that is, to the enthymematic _inferentia_. If we place the condition external to the proposition, then the a.s.sent will be given to "That 'his days are numbered' is conditionally true;" and of course we can a.s.sent to the conditionality of a proposition as well as to its probability. Or again, if so be, we may give our a.s.sent not only to the _inferentia_ in a complex conditional proposition, but to each of the simple propositions, of which it is made up, besides. "There will be a storm soon, for the mercury falls;"-here, besides a.s.senting to the connexion of the propositions, we may a.s.sent also to "The mercury falls,"

and to "There will be a storm." This is a.s.senting to the premiss, _inferentia_, and thing inferred, all at once;-we a.s.sent to the whole syllogism, and to its component parts.

(3.) In like manner are to be explained the phrases, "deliberate a.s.sent,"

a "rational a.s.sent;" a "sudden," "impulsive," or "hesitating" a.s.sent.

These expressions denote, not kinds or qualities, but the circ.u.mstances of a.s.senting. A deliberate a.s.sent is an a.s.sent following upon deliberation.

It is sometimes called a conviction, a word which commonly includes in its meaning two acts, both the act of inference, and the act of a.s.sent consequent upon the inference. This subject will be considered in the next Section. On the other hand, a hesitating a.s.sent is an a.s.sent to which we have been slow and intermittent in coming; or an a.s.sent which, when given, is thwarted and obscured by external and flitting misgivings, though not such as to enter into the act itself, or essentially to damage it.

There is another sense in which we speak of a hesitating or uncertain a.s.sent; viz. when we a.s.sent in act, but not in the habit of our minds.

Till a.s.sent to a doctrine or fact is my habit, I am at the mercy of inferences contrary to it; I a.s.sent to-day, and give up my belief, or incline to disbelief, to-morrow. I may find it my duty, for instance, after the opportunity of careful inquiry and inference, to a.s.sent to another's innocence, whom I have for years considered guilty; but from long prejudice I may be unable to carry my new a.s.sent well about me, and may every now and then relapse into momentary thoughts injurious to him.

(4.) A more plausible objection to the absolute absence of all doubt or misgiving in an act of a.s.sent is found in the use of the terms firm and weak a.s.sent, or in the growth of belief and trust. Thus, we a.s.sent to the events of history, but not with that fulness and force of adherence to the received account of them with which we realize a record of occurrences which are within our own memory. And again, we a.s.sent to the praise bestowed on a friend's good qualities with an energy which we do not feel, when we are speaking of virtue in the abstract: and if we are political partisans, our a.s.sent is very cold, when we cannot refuse it, to representations made in favour of the wisdom or patriotism of statesmen whom we dislike. And then as to religious subjects we speak of "strong"

faith and "feeble" faith; of the faith which would move mountains, and of the ordinary faith "without which it is impossible to please G.o.d." And as we can grow in graces, so surely can we inclusively in faith. Again we rise from one work of Christian Evidences with our faith enlivened and invigorated; from another perhaps with the distracted father's words in our mouth, "I believe, help my unbelief."

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- 2. Complex a.s.sent.

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

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

Acts of inference are both the antecedents of a.s.sent before a.s.senting, and its usual concomitants after a.s.senting. For instance, I hold absolutely that the country which we call India exists, upon trustworthy testimony; and next, I may continue to believe it on the same testimony. In like manner, I have ever believed that Great Britain is an island, for certain sufficient reasons; and on the same reasons I may persist in the belief.

But it may happen that I forget my reasons for what I believe to be so absolutely true; or I may never have asked myself about them, or formally marshalled them in order, and have been accustomed to a.s.sent without a recognition of my a.s.sent or of its grounds, and then perhaps something occurs which leads to my reviewing and completing those grounds, a.n.a.lyzing and arranging them, yet without on that account implying of necessity any suspense, ever so slight, of a.s.sent, to the proposition that India is in a certain part of the earth, and that Great Britain is an island. With no suspense of a.s.sent at all; any more than the boy in my former ill.u.s.tration had any doubt about the answer set down in his arithmetic-book, when he began working out the question; any more than he would be doubting his eyes and his common sense, that the two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third, because he drew out the geometrical proof of it.

He does but repeat, after his formal demonstration, that a.s.sent which he made before it, and a.s.sents to his previous a.s.senting. This is what I call a reflex or complex a.s.sent.

I say, there is no necessary incompatibility between thus a.s.senting and yet proving,-for the conclusiveness of a proposition is not synonymous with its truth. A proposition may be true, yet not admit of being concluded;-it may be a conclusion and yet not a truth. To contemplate it under one aspect, is not to contemplate it under another; and the two aspects may be consistent, from the very fact that they are two _aspects_.

Therefore to set about concluding a proposition is not _ipso facto_ to doubt its truth; we may aim at inferring a proposition, while all the time we a.s.sent to it. We have to do this as a common occurrence, when we take on ourselves to convince another on any point in which he differs from us.

We do not deny our faith, because we become controversialists; and in like manner we may employ ourselves in proving what we believe to be true, simply in order to ascertain the producible evidence in its favour, and in order to fulfil what is due to ourselves and to the claims and responsibilities of our education and social position.

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

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

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

Certainly, such processes of investigation, whether in religious subjects or secular, often issue in the reversal of the a.s.sents which they were originally intended to confirm; as the boy who works out an arithmetical problem from his book may end in detecting, or thinking he detects, a false print in the answer. But the question before us is whether acts of a.s.sent and of inference are compatible; and my vague consciousness of the possibility of a reversal of my belief in the course of my researches, as little interferes with the honesty and firmness of that belief while those researches proceed, as the recognition of the possibility of my train's oversetting is an evidence of an intention on my part of undergoing so great a calamity. My mind is not moved by a scientific computation of chances, nor can any law of averages affect my particular case. To incur a risk is not to expect reverse; and if my opinions are true, I have a right to think that they will bear examining. Nor, on the other hand, does belief, viewed in its idea, imply a positive resolution in the party believing never to abandon that belief. What belief, as such, does imply is, not an intention never to change, but the utter absence of all thought, or expectation, or fear of changing. A spontaneous resolution never to change is inconsistent with the idea of belief; for the very force and absoluteness of the act of a.s.sent precludes any such resolution.

We do not commonly determine not to do what we cannot fancy ourselves ever doing. We should readily indeed make such a formal promise if we were called upon to do so; for, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness or fickleness? We have no intention whatever of being weak or fickle; so our promise is but the natural guarantee of our sincerity. It is possible then, without disloyalty to our convictions, to examine their grounds, even though in the event they are to fail under the examination, for we have no suspicion of this failure.

And such examination, as I have said, does but fulfil a law of our nature.