An Essay In Aid Of A Grammar Of Assent Part 8

Our first a.s.sents, right or wrong, are often little more than prejudices.

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

Of course these reflex acts may be repeated in a series. As I p.r.o.nounce that "Great Britain is an island," and then p.r.o.nounce "That 'Great Britain is an island' has a claim on my a.s.sent," or is to "be a.s.sented-to," or to be "accepted as true," or to be "believed," or simply "is true" (these predicates being equivalent), so I may proceed, "The proposition 'that _Great-Britain-is-an-island_ is to be believed,' is to be believed," &c., &c., and so on to _ad infinitum_. But this would be trifling. The mind is like a double mirror, in which reflexions of self within self multiply themselves till they are undistinguishable, and the first reflexion contains all the rest. At the same time, it is worth while to notice two other reflex propositions:-"That 'Great Britain is an island' is probable"

is true;-and "That 'Great Britain is an island' is uncertain" is true:-for the former of these is the expression of Opinion, and the latter of formal or theological Doubt, as I have already determined.

I have one step farther to make:-let the proposition to which the a.s.sent is given be as absolutely true as the reflex act p.r.o.nounces it to be, that is, objectively true as well as subjectively:-then the a.s.sent may be called a _perception_, the conviction a _cert.i.tude_, the proposition or truth a _certainty_, or thing known, or a matter of _knowledge_, and to a.s.sent to it is to _know_.

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

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

1. Cert.i.tude, as I have said, is the perception of a truth with the perception that it is a truth, or the consciousness of knowing, as expressed in the phrase, "I know that I know," or "I know that I know that I know,"-or simply "I know;" for one reflex a.s.sertion of the mind about self sums up the series of self-consciousnesses without the need of any actual evolution of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Now to consider what Cert.i.tude positively is, as a matter of experience.

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

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

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

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

(2.) Again, the Pursuit of knowledge has its own pleasure,-as distinct from the pleasures of knowledge, as it is distinct from that of consciously possessing it. This will be evident at once, if we consider what a vacuity and depression of mind sometimes comes upon us on the termination of an inquiry, however successfully terminated, compared with the interest and spirit with which we carried it on. The pleasure of a search, like that of a hunt, lies in the searching, and ends at the point at which the pleasure of Cert.i.tude begins. Its elements are altogether foreign to those which go to compose the serene satisfaction of Cert.i.tude.

First, the successive steps of discovery, which attend on an investigation, are continual and ever-extending informations, and pleasurable, not only as such, but also as the evidence of past efforts, and the earnest of success at the last. Next, there is the interest which attaches to a mystery, not yet removed, but tending to removal,-the complex pleasure of wonder, expectation, sudden surprises, suspense, and hope, of advances fitful, yet sure, to the unknown. And there is the pleasure which attaches to the toil and conflict of the strong, the consciousness and successive evidences of power, moral and intellectual, the pride of ingenuity and skill, of industry, patience, vigilance, and perseverance.

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

(3.) Are there pleasures of Doubt, as well as of Inference and of a.s.sent?

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

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

Chapter VII. Cert.i.tude.

-- 1. a.s.sent and Cert.i.tude Contrasted.

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

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

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

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

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

2. Next, I observe, that, of the two modes of apprehending propositions, notional and real, a.s.sent, as I have already said, has closer relations with real than with notional. Now a simple a.s.sent need not be notional; but the reflex or confirmatory a.s.sent of cert.i.tude always is given to a notional proposition, viz. to the truth, necessity, duty, &c., of our a.s.sent to the simple a.s.sent and to its proposition. Its predicate is a general term, and cannot stand for a fact, whereas the original proposition, included in it, may, and often does, express a fact. Thus, "The cholera is in the midst of us" is a real proposition; but "That 'the cholera is in the midst of us' is beyond all doubt" is a notional. Now a.s.sent to a real proposition is a.s.sent to an imagination, and an imagination, as supplying objects to our emotional and moral nature, is adapted to be a principle of action: accordingly, the simple a.s.sent to "The cholera is among us," is more emphatic and operative, than the confirmatory a.s.sent, "It is beyond reasonable doubt that 'the cholera is among us.' " The confirmation gives momentum to the complex act of the mind, but the simple a.s.sent gives it its edge. The simple a.s.sent would still be operative in its measure, though the reflex a.s.sent was, not "It is undeniable," but "It is probable" that "the cholera is among us;"

whereas there would be no operative force in the mental act at all, though the reflex a.s.sent was to the truth, not to the probability of the fact, if the fact which was the object of the simple a.s.sent was nothing more than "The cholera is in China." The reflex a.s.sent then, which is the characteristic of cert.i.tude, does not immediately touch us; it is purely intellectual, and, taken by itself, has scarcely more force than the recording of a conclusion.

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

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

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

As even Saints may suffer from imaginations in which they have no part, so the shreds and tatters of former controversies, and the litter of an argumentative habit, may beset and obstruct the intellect,-questions which have been solved without their solutions, chains of reasoning with missing links, difficulties which have their roots in the nature of things, and which are necessarily left behind in a philosophical inquiry because they cannot be removed, and which call for the exercise of good sense and for strength of will to put them down with a high hand, as irrational or preposterous. Whence comes evil? why are we created without our consent?

how can the Supreme Being have no beginning? how can He need skill, if He is omnipotent? if He is omnipotent, why does He permit suffering? If He permits suffering, how is He all-loving? if He is all-loving, how can He be just? if He is infinite, what has He to do with the finite? how can the temporary be decisive of the eternal?-these, and a host of like questions, must arise in every thoughtful mind, and, after the best use of reason, must be deliberately put aside, as beyond reason, as (so to speak) no-thoroughfares, which, having no outlet themselves, have no legitimate power to divert us from the King's highway, and to hinder the direct course of religious inquiry from reaching its destination. A serious obstruction, however, they will be now and then to particular minds, enfeebling the faith which they cannot destroy,-being parallel to the uncomfortable, a.s.sociations with which sometimes we regard one whom we have fallen-in with, acquaintance or stranger, arising from some chance word, look, or action of his which we have witnessed, and which prejudices him in our imagination, though we are angry with ourselves that it should do so.

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

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

So, too, was it in some sense with the Apostles after our Lord's resurrection.

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

4. There is another characteristic of Cert.i.tude, in contrast with a.s.sent, which it is important to insist upon, and that is, its persistence.