Part 2 (1/2)
3. However, characteristic as it is of a.s.sent, to be thus in its nature simply one and indivisible, and thereby essentially different from Inference, which is ever varying in strength, never quite at the same pitch in any two of its acts, still it is at the same time true that it may be difficult in fact, by external tokens, to distinguish certain acts of a.s.sent from certain acts of inference. Thus, whereas no one could possibly confuse the real a.s.sent of a Christian to the fact of our Lord's crucifixion, with the notional acceptance of it, as a point of history, on the part of a philosophical heathen (so removed from each other, _toto clo_, are the respective modes of apprehending it in the two cases, though in both the a.s.sent is in its nature one and the same), nevertheless it would be easy to mistake the Stoic's notional a.s.sent, genuine though it might be, to the moral n.o.bleness of the just man ”struggling in the storms of fate,” for a mere act of inference resulting from the principles of his Stoical profession, or again for an a.s.sent merely to the inferential necessity of the n.o.bleness of that struggle. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to praise men for their consistency to their principles, whatever those principles are, that is, to praise them on an inference, without thereby implying any a.s.sent to the principles themselves.
The cause of this resemblance between acts so distinct is obvious. It exists only in cases of notional a.s.sents; when the a.s.sent is given to notions, then it is possible to hesitate in deciding whether it is a.s.sent or inference, whether the mind is merely without doubt or whether it is actually certain. And the reason is this: notional a.s.sent seems like Inference, because the apprehension which accompanies acts of inference is notional also,-because Inference is engaged for the most part on notional propositions, both premiss and conclusion. This point, which I have implied throughout, I here distinctly record, and shall enlarge upon hereafter. Only propositions about individuals are not notional, and they are seldom the matter of inference. Thus, did the Stoic infer the fact of our Lord's death instead of a.s.senting to it, the proposition would have been as much an abstraction to him as the ”Justum et tenacem,” &c; nay further, the ”Justus et tenax” was at least a notion in his mind, but ”Jesus Christ” would, in the schools of Athens or of Rome, have stood for less, for an unknown being, the x or y of a formula. Except then in some of the cases of singular conclusions, inferences are employed on notions, that is, unless they are employed on mere symbols; and, indeed, when they are symbolical, then are they clearest and most cogent, as I shall hereafter show. The next clearest are such as carry out the necessary results of previous cla.s.sifications, and therefore may be called definitions or conclusions, as we please. For instance, having divided beings into their cla.s.ses, the definition of man is inevitable.
4. We may call it then the normal state of Inference to apprehend propositions as notions:-and we may call it the normal state of a.s.sent to apprehend propositions as things. If notional apprehension is most congenial to Inference, real apprehension will be the most natural concomitant on a.s.sent. An act of Inference includes in its object the dependence of its thesis upon its premisses, that is, upon a relation, which is abstract; but an act of a.s.sent rests wholly on the thesis as its object, and the reality of the thesis is almost a condition of its unconditionality.
5. I am led on to make one remark more, and it shall be my last.
An act of a.s.sent, it seems, is the most perfect and highest of its kind, when it is exercised on propositions, which are apprehended as experiences and images, that is, which stand for things; and, on the other hand, an act of inference is the most perfect and highest of its kind, when it is exercised on propositions which are apprehended as notions, that is, which are creations of the mind. An act of inference indeed may be made with either of these modes of apprehension; so may an act of a.s.sent; but, when inferences are exercised on things, they tend to be conjectures or presentiments, without logical force; and when a.s.sents are exercised on notions, they tend to be mere a.s.sertions without any personal hold on them on the part of those who make them. If this be so, the paradox is true, that, when Inference is clearest, a.s.sent may be least forcible, and, when a.s.sent is most intense, Inference may be least distinct;-for, though acts of a.s.sent require previous acts of inference, they require them, not as adequate causes, but as _sine qua non_ conditions: and, while the apprehension strengthens a.s.sent, Inference often weakens the apprehension.
-- 1. Notional a.s.sents.
I shall consider a.s.sent made to propositions which express abstractions or notions under five heads; which I shall call Profession, Credence, Opinion, Presumption, and Speculation.
1. _Profession._
There are a.s.sents so feeble and superficial, as to be little more than a.s.sertions. I cla.s.s them all together under the head of Profession. Such are the a.s.sents made upon habit and without reflection; as when a man calls himself a Tory or a Liberal, as having been brought up as such; or again, when he adopts as a matter of course the literary or other fas.h.i.+ons of the day, admiring the poems, or the novels, or the music, or the personages, or the costume, or the wines, or the manners, which happen to be popular, or are patronized in the higher circles. Such again are the a.s.sents of men of wavering restless minds, who take up and then abandon beliefs so readily, so suddenly, as to make it appear that they had no view (as it is called) on the matter they professed, and did not know to what they a.s.sented or why.
Then, again, when men say they have no doubt of a thing, this is a case, in which it is difficult to determine whether they a.s.sent to it, infer it, or consider it highly probable. There are many cases, indeed, in which it is impossible to discriminate between a.s.sent, inference, and a.s.sertion, on account of the otiose, pa.s.sive, inchoate character of the act in question.
If I say that to-morrow will be fine, what does this enunciation mean?
Perhaps it means that it ought to be fine, if the gla.s.s tells truly; then it is the inference of a probability. Perhaps it means no more than a surmise, because it is fine to-day, or has been so for the week past. And perhaps it is a compliance with the word of another, in which case it is sometimes a real a.s.sent, sometimes a polite a.s.sertion or a wish.
Many a disciple of a philosophical school, who talks fluently, does but a.s.sert, when he seems to a.s.sent to the _dicta_ of his master, little as he may be aware of it. Nor is he secured against this self-deception by knowing the arguments on which those _dicta_ rest, for he may learn the arguments by heart, as a careless schoolboy gets up his Euclid. This practice of a.s.serting simply on authority, with the pretence and without the reality of a.s.sent, is what is meant by formalism. To say ”I do not understand a proposition, but I accept it on authority,” is not formalism, but faith; it is not a direct a.s.sent to the proposition, still it _is_ an a.s.sent to the authority which enunciates it; but what I here speak of is professing to understand without understanding. It is thus that political and religious watchwords are created; first one man of name and then another adopts them, till their use becomes popular, and then every one professes them, because every one else does. Such words are ”liberality,”
”progress,” ”light,” ”civilization;” such are ”justification by faith only,” ”vital religion,” ”private judgment,” ”the Bible and nothing but the Bible.” Such again are ”Rationalism,” ”Gallicanism,” ”Jesuitism,”
”Ultramontanism”-all of which, in the mouths of conscientious thinkers, have a definite meaning, but are used by the mult.i.tude as war-cries, nicknames, and s.h.i.+bboleths, with scarcely enough of the scantiest grammatical apprehension of them to allow of their being considered really more than a.s.sertions.
Thus, instances occur now and then, when, in consequence of the urgency of some fas.h.i.+onable superst.i.tion or popular delusion, some eminent scientific authority is provoked to come forward, and to set the world right by his ”ipse dixit.” He, indeed, himself knows very well what he is about; he has a right to speak, and his reasonings and conclusions are sufficient, not only for his own, but for general a.s.sent, and, it may be, are as simply true and impregnable, as they are authoritative; but an intelligent hold on the matter in dispute, such as he has himself, cannot be expected in the case of men in general. They, nevertheless, one and all, repeat and retail his arguments, as suddenly as if they had not to study them, as heartily as if they understood them, changing round and becoming as strong antagonists of the error which their master has exposed, as if they had never been its advocates. If their word is to be taken, it is not simply his authority that moves them, which would be sensible enough and suitable in them, both apprehension and a.s.sent being in that case grounded on the maxim ”Cuique in arte sua credendum,” but so far forth as they disown this motive, and claim to judge in a scientific question of the worth of arguments which require some real knowledge, they are little better, not of course in a very serious matter, than pretenders and formalists.
Not only Authority, but Inference also may impose on us a.s.sents which in themselves are little better than a.s.sertions, and which, so far as they are a.s.sents, can only be notional a.s.sents, as being a.s.sents, not to the propositions inferred, but to the truth of those propositions. For instance, it can be proved by irrefragable calculations, that the stars are not less than billions of miles distant from the earth; and the process of calculation, upon which such statements are made, is not so difficult as to require authority to secure our acceptance of both it and of them; yet who can say that he has any real, nay, any notional apprehension of a billion or a trillion? We can, indeed, have some notion of it, if we a.n.a.lyze it into its factors, if we compare it with other numbers, or if we ill.u.s.trate it by a.n.a.logies or by its implications; but I am speaking of the vast number in itself. We cannot a.s.sent to a proposition of which it is the predicate; we can but a.s.sent to the truth of it.
This leads me to the question, whether belief in a mystery can be more than an a.s.sertion. I consider it can be an a.s.sent, and my reasons for saying so are as follows:-A mystery is a proposition conveying incompatible notions, or is a statement of the inconceivable. Now we can a.s.sent to propositions (and a mystery is a proposition), provided we can apprehend them; therefore we can a.s.sent to a mystery, for, unless we in some sense apprehended it, we should not recognize it to be a mystery, that is, a statement uniting incompatible notions. The same act, then, which enables us to discern that the words of the proposition express a mystery, capacitates us for a.s.senting to it. Words which make nonsense, do not make a mystery. No one would call Warton's line-”Revolving swans proclaim the welkin near”-an inconceivable a.s.sertion. It is equally plain, that the a.s.sent which we give to mysteries, as such, is notional a.s.sent; for, by the supposition, it is a.s.sent to propositions which we cannot conceive, whereas, if we had had experience of them, we should be able to conceive them, and without experience a.s.sent is not real.
But the question follows, Can processes of inference end in a mystery?
that is, not only in what is incomprehensible, that the stars are billions of miles from each other, but in what is inconceivable, in the co-existence of (seeming) incompatibilities? For how, it may be asked, can reason carry out notions into their contradictories? since all the developments of a truth must from the nature of the case be consistent both with it and with each other. I answer, certainly processes of inference, however accurate, can end in mystery; and I solve the objection to such a doctrine thus:-our notion of a thing may be only partially faithful to the original; it may be in excess of the thing, or it may represent it incompletely, and, in consequence, it may serve for it, it may stand for it, only to a certain point, in certain cases, but no further. After that point is reached, the notion and the thing part company; and then the notion, if still used as the representative of the thing, will work out conclusions, not inconsistent with itself, but with the thing to which it no longer corresponds.
This is seen most familiarly in the use of metaphors. Thus, in an Oxford satire, which deservedly made a sensation in its day, it is said that Vice ”from its hardness takes a polish too.”(1) Whence we might argue, that, whereas Caliban was vicious, he was therefore polished; but politeness and Caliban are incompatible notions. Or again, when some one said, perhaps to Dr. Johnson, that a certain writer (say Hume) was a clear thinker, he made answer, ”All shallows are clear.” But supposing Hume to be in fact both a clear and a deep thinker, yet supposing clearness and depth are incompatible in their literal sense, which the objection seems to imply, and still in their full literal sense were to be ascribed to Hume, then our reasoning about his intellect has ended in the mystery, ”Deep Hume is shallow;” whereas the contradiction lies, not in the reasoning, but in the fancying that inadequate notions can be taken as the exact representations of things.
Hence in science we sometimes use a definition or a _formula_, not as exact, but as being sufficient for our purpose, for working out certain conclusions, for a practical approximation, the error being small, till a certain point is reached. This is what in theological investigations I should call an economy.
A like contrast between notions and the things which they represent is the principle of suspense and curiosity in those enigmatical sayings which were frequent in the early stage of human society. In them the problem proposed to the acuteness of the hearers, is to find some real thing which may unite in itself certain conflicting notions which in the question are attributed to it: ”Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness;” or, ”What creature is that, which in the morning goes on four legs, at noon on two, and on three in the evening?” The answer, which names the thing, interprets and thereby limits the notions under which it has been represented.
Let us take an example in algebra. Its calculus is commonly used to investigate, not only the relations of quant.i.ty generally, but geometrical facts in particular. Now it is at once too wide and too narrow for such a purpose, fitting on to the doctrine of lines and angles with a bad fit, as the coat of a short and stout man might serve the needs of one who was tall and slim. Certainly it works well for geometrical purposes up to a certain point, as when it enables us to dispense with the c.u.mbrous method of proof in questions of ratio and proportion, which is adopted in the fifth book of Euclid; but what are we to make of the fourth power of _a_, when it is to be translated into geometrical language? If from this algebraical expression we determined that s.p.a.ce admitted of four dimensions, we should be enunciating a mystery, because we should be applying to s.p.a.ce a notion which belongs to quant.i.ty. In this case algebra is in excess of geometrical truth. Now let us take an instance in which it falls short of geometry,-What is the meaning of the square root of _minus a_? Here the mystery is on the side of algebra; and, in accordance with the principle which I am ill.u.s.trating, it has sometimes been considered as an abortive effort to express, what is really beyond the capacity of algebraical notation, the direction and position of lines in the third dimension of s.p.a.ce, as well as their length upon a plane. When the calculus is urged on by the inevitable course of the working to do what it cannot do, it stops short as if in resistance, and protests by an absurdity.
Our notions of things are never simply commensurate with the things themselves; they are aspects of them, more or less exact, and sometimes a mistake _ab initio_. Take an instance from arithmetic:-We are accustomed to subject all that exists to numeration; but, to be correct, we are bound first to reduce to some level of possible comparison the things which we wish to number. We must be able to say, not only that they are ten, twenty, or a hundred, but so many definite somethings. For instance, we could not without extravagance throw together Napoleon's brain, ambition, hand, soul, smile, height, and age at Marengo, and say that there were seven of them, though there are seven words; nor will it even be enough to content ourselves with what may be called a negative level, viz. that these seven were an un-English or are a departed seven. Unless numeration is to issue in nonsense, it must be conducted on conditions. This being the case, there are, for what we know, collections of beings, to whom the notion of number cannot be attached, except _catachrestically_, because, taken individually, no positive point of real agreement can be found between them, by which to call them. If indeed we can denote them by a plural noun, then we can measure that plurality; but if they agree in nothing, they cannot agree in bearing a common name, and to say that they amount to a thousand these or those, is not to number them, but to count up a certain number of names or words which we have written down.
Thus, the Angels have been considered by divines to have each of them a species to himself; and we may fancy each of them so absolutely _sui similis_ as to be like nothing else, so that it would be as untrue to speak of a thousand Angels as of a thousand Hannibals or Ciceros. It will be said, indeed, that all beings but One at least will come under the notion of creatures, and are dependent upon that One; but that is true of the brain, smile, and height of Napoleon, which no one would call three creatures. But, if all this be so, much more does it apply to our speculations concerning the Supreme Being, whom it may be unmeaning, not only to number with other beings, but to subject to number in regard to His own intrinsic characteristics. That is, to apply arithmetical notions to Him may be as unphilosophical as it is profane. Though He is at once Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the word ”Trinity” belongs to those notions of Him which are forced on us by the necessity of our finite conceptions, the real and immutable distinction which exists between Person and Person implying in itself no infringement of His real and numerical Unity. And if it be asked how, if we cannot properly speak of Him as Three, we can speak of Him as One, I reply that He is not One in the way in which created things are severally units; for one, as applied to ourselves, is used in contrast to two or three and a whole series of numbers; but of the Supreme Being it is safer to use the word ”monad” than unit, for He has not even such relation to His creatures as to allow, philosophically speaking, of our contrasting Him with them.
Coming back to the main subject, which I have ill.u.s.trated at the risk of digression, I observe, that an alleged fact is not therefore impossible because it is inconceivable; for the incompatible notions, in which consists its inconceivableness, need not each of them really belong to it in that fulness which involves their being incompatible with each other.
It is true indeed that I deny the possibility of two straight lines enclosing a s.p.a.ce, on the ground of its being inconceivable; but I do so because a straight line is a notion and nothing more, and not a thing, to which I may have attached a notion more or less unfaithful. I have defined a straight line in my own way at my own pleasure; the question is not one of facts at all, but of the consistency with each other of definitions and of their logical consequences.