Part 9 (1/2)

a.s.sents may and do change; cert.i.tudes endure. This is why religion demands more than an a.s.sent to its truth; it requires a cert.i.tude, or at least an a.s.sent which is convertible into cert.i.tude on demand. Without cert.i.tude in religious faith there may be much decency of profession and of observance, but there can be no habit of prayer, no directness of devotion, no intercourse with the unseen, no generosity of self-sacrifice. Cert.i.tude then is essential to the Christian; and if he is to persevere to the end, his cert.i.tude must include in it a principle of persistence. This it has; as I shall explain in the next Section.

-- 2. Indefectibility of Cert.i.tude.

It is the characteristic of cert.i.tude that its object is a truth, a truth as such, a proposition as true. There are right and wrong convictions, and cert.i.tude is a right conviction; if it is not right with a consciousness of being right, it is not cert.i.tude. Now truth cannot change; what is once truth is always truth; and the human mind is made for truth, and so rests in truth, as it cannot rest in falsehood. When then it once becomes possessed of a truth, what is to dispossess it? but this is to be certain; therefore once cert.i.tude, always cert.i.tude. If cert.i.tude in any matter be the termination of all doubt or fear about its truth, and an unconditional conscious adherence to it, it carries with it an inward a.s.surance, strong though implicit, that it shall never fail. Indefectibility almost enters into its very idea, enters into it at least so far as this, that its failure, if of frequent occurrence, would prove that cert.i.tude was after all and in fact an impossible act, and that what looked like it was a mere extravagance of the intellect. Truth would still be truth, but the knowledge of it would be beyond us and unattainable. It is of great importance then to show, that, as a general rule, cert.i.tude does not fail; that failures of what was taken for cert.i.tude are the exception; that the intellect, which is made for truth, can attain truth, and, having attained it, can keep it, can recognize it, and preserve the recognition.

This is on the whole reasonable; yet are the stipulations, thus obviously necessary for an act or state of cert.i.tude, ever fulfilled? We know what conjecture is, and what opinion, and what a.s.sent is, can we point out any specific state or habit of thought, of which the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark is unchangeableness? On the contrary, any conviction, false as well as true, may last; and any conviction, true as well as false, may be lost. A conviction in favour of a proposition may be exchanged for a conviction of its contradictory; and each of them may be attended, while they last, by that sense of security and repose, which a true object alone can legitimately impart. No line can be drawn between such real cert.i.tudes as have truth for their object, and apparent cert.i.tudes. No distinct test can be named, sufficient to discriminate between what may be called the false prophet and the true. What looks like cert.i.tude always is exposed to the chance of turning out to be a mistake. If our intimate, deliberate conviction may be counterfeit in the case of one proposition, why not in the case of another? if in the case of one man, why not in the case of a hundred? Is cert.i.tude then ever possible without the attendant gift of infallibility? can we know what is right in one case, unless we are secured against error in any? Further, if one man is infallible, why is he different from his brethren? unless indeed he is distinctly marked out for the prerogative. Must not all men be infallible by consequence, if any man is to be considered as certain?

The difficulty, thus stated argumentatively, has only too accurate a response in what actually goes on in the world. It is a fact of daily occurrence that men change their cert.i.tudes, that is, what they consider to be such, and are as confident and well-established in their new opinions as they were once in their old. They take up forms of religion only to leave them for their contradictories. They risk their fortunes and their lives on impossible adventures. They commit themselves by word and deed, in reputation and position, to schemes which in the event they bitterly repent of and renounce; they set out in youth with intemperate confidence in prospects which fail them, and in friends who betray them, ere they come to middle age; and they end their days in cynical disbelief of truth and virtue any where;-and often, the more absurd are their means and their ends, so much the longer do they cling to them, and then again so much the more pa.s.sionate is their eventual disgust and contempt of them. How then can cert.i.tude be theirs, how is cert.i.tude possible at all, considering it is so often misplaced, so often fickle and inconsistent, so deficient in available criteria? And, as to the feeling of finality and security, ought it ever to be indulged? Is it not a mere weakness or extravagance, a deceit, to be eschewed by every clear and prudent mind?

With the countless instances, on all sides of us, of human fallibility, with the constant exhibitions of antagonist cert.i.tudes, who can so sin against modesty and sobriety of mind, as not to be content with probability, as the true guide of life, renouncing ambitious thoughts, which are sure either to delude him, or to disappoint?

This is what may be objected: now let us see what can be said in answer, particularly as regards religious cert.i.tude.

1.

First, as to fallibility and infallibility. It is very common, doubtless, especially in religious controversy, to confuse infallibility with cert.i.tude, and to argue that, since we have not the one, we have not the other, for that no one can claim to be certain on any point, who is not infallible about all; but the two words stand for things quite distinct from each other. For example, I remember for certain what I did yesterday, but still my memory is not infallible; I am quite clear that two and two makes four, but I often make mistakes in long addition sums. I have no doubt whatever that John or Richard is my true friend, but I have before now trusted those who failed me, and I may do so again before I die. A cert.i.tude is directed to this or that particular proposition; it is not a faculty or gift, but a disposition of mind relatively to a definite case which is before me. Infallibility, on the contrary, is just that which cert.i.tude is not; it is a faculty or gift, and relates, not to some one truth in particular, but to all possible propositions in a given subject-matter. We ought in strict propriety, to speak, not of infallible acts, but of acts of infallibility. A belief or opinion as little admits of being called infallible, as a deed can correctly be called immortal. A deed is done and over; it may be great, momentous, effective, anything but immortal; it is its fame, it is the work which it brings to pa.s.s, which is immortal, not the deed itself. And as a deed is good or bad, but never immortal, so a belief, opinion, or cert.i.tude is true or false, but never infallible. We cannot speak of things which exist or things which once were, as if they were something _in posse_. It is persons and rules that are infallible, not what is brought out into act, or committed to paper. A man is infallible, whose words are always true; a rule is infallible, if it is unerring in all its possible applications. An infallible authority is certain in every particular case that may arise; but a man who is certain in some one definite case, is not on that account infallible.

I am quite certain that Victoria is our Sovereign, and not her father, the late Duke of Kent, without laying any claim to the gift of infallibility; as I may do a virtuous action, without being impeccable. I may be certain that the Church is infallible, while I am myself a fallible mortal; otherwise, I cannot be certain that the Supreme Being is infallible, until I am infallible myself. It is a strange objection, then, which is sometimes urged against Catholics, that they cannot prove and a.s.sent to the Church's infallibility, unless they first believe in their own.

Cert.i.tude, as I have said, is directed to one or other definite concrete proposition. I am certain of proposition one, two, three, four, or five, one by one, each by itself. I may be certain of one of them, without being certain of the rest; that I am certain of the first makes it neither likely nor unlikely that I am certain of the second; but were I infallible, then I should be certain, not only of one of them, but of all, and of many more besides, which have never come before me as yet.

Therefore we may be certain of the infallibility of the Church, while we admit that in many things we are not, and cannot be, certain at all.

It is wonderful that a clear-headed man, like Chillingworth, sees this as little as the run of every-day objectors to the Catholic religion; for in his celebrated ”Religion of Protestants” he writes as follows:-”You tell me they cannot be saved, unless they believe in your proposals with an infallible faith. To which end they must believe also your propounder, the Church, to be simply infallible. Now how is it possible for them to give a rational a.s.sent to the Church's infallibility, _unless they have some infallible means to know that she is infallible_? Neither can they infallibly know the infallibility of this means, but by some other; and so on for ever, unless they can dig so deep, as to come at length to the Rock, that is, to settle all upon something evident of itself, which is not so much as pretended.(11)”

Now what is an ”infallible means”? It is a means of coming at a fact without the chance of mistake. It is a proof which is sufficient for cert.i.tude in the particular case, or a proof that is certain. When then Chillingworth says that there can be no ”rational a.s.sent to the Church's infallibility” without ”some infallible means of knowing that she is infallible,” he means nothing else than some means which is certain; he says that for a rational a.s.sent to infallibility there must be an absolutely valid or certain proof. This is intelligible; but observe how his argument will run, if worded according to this interpretation: ”The doctrine of the Church's infallibility requires a proof that is certain; and that certain proof requires another previous certain proof, and that again another, and so on _ad infinitum_, unless indeed we dig so deep as to settle all upon something evident of itself.” What is this but to say that nothing in this world is certain but what is self-evident? that nothing can be absolutely proved? Can he really mean this? What then becomes of physical truth? of the discoveries in optics, chemistry, and electricity, or of the science of motion? Intuition by itself will carry us but a little way into that circle of knowledge which is the boast of the present age.

I can believe then in the infallible Church without my own personal infallibility. Cert.i.tude is at most nothing more than infallibility _pro hac vice_, and promises nothing as to the truth of any proposition beside its own. That I am certain of this proposition to-day, is no ground for thinking that I shall have a right to be certain of that proposition to-morrow; and that I am wrong in my convictions about to-day's proposition, does not hinder my having a true conviction, a genuine cert.i.tude, about to-morrow's proposition. If indeed I claimed to be infallible, one failure would s.h.i.+ver my claim to pieces; but I may claim to be certain of the truth to which I have already attained, though I should arrive at no new truths in addition as long as I live.

2.

Let us put aside the word ”infallibility;” let us understand by cert.i.tude, as I have explained it, nothing more than a relation of the mind towards given propositions:-still, it may be urged, it involves a sense of security and of repose, at least as regards these in particular. Now how can this security be mine,-without which cert.i.tude is not,-if I know, as I know too well, that before now I have thought myself certain, when I was certain after all of an untruth? Is not the very possibility of cert.i.tude lost to me for ever by that one mistake? What happened once, may happen again. All my cert.i.tudes before and after are henceforth destroyed by the introduction of a reasonable doubt, underlying them all. _Ipso facto_ they cease to be cert.i.tudes,-they come short of unconditional a.s.sents by the measure of that counterfeit a.s.surance. They are nothing more to me than opinions or antic.i.p.ations, judgments on the verisimilitude of intellectual views, not the possession and enjoyment of truths. And who has not thus been balked by false cert.i.tudes a hundred times in the course of his experience? and how can cert.i.tude have a legitimate place in our mental const.i.tution, when it thus manifestly ministers to error and to scepticism?

This is what may be objected, and it is not, as I think, difficult to answer. Certainly, the experience of mistakes in the a.s.sents which we have made are to the prejudice of subsequent ones. There is an antecedent difficulty in our allowing ourselves to be certain of something to-day, if yesterday we had to give up our belief of something else, of which we had up to that time professed ourselves to be certain. This is true; but antecedent objections to an act are not sufficient of themselves to prohibit its exercise; they may demand of us an increased circ.u.mspection before committing ourselves to it, but may be met with reasons more than sufficient to overcome them.

It must be recollected that cert.i.tude is a deliberate a.s.sent given expressly after reasoning. If then my cert.i.tude is unfounded, it is the reasoning that is in fault, not my a.s.sent to it. It is the law of my mind to seal up the conclusions to which ratiocination has brought me, by that formal a.s.sent which I have called a cert.i.tude. I could indeed have withheld my a.s.sent, but I should have acted against my nature, had I done so when there was what I considered a proof; and I did only what was fitting, what was inc.u.mbent on me, upon those existing conditions, in giving it. This is the process by which knowledge acc.u.mulates and is stored up both in the individual and in the world. It has sometimes been remarked, when men have boasted of the knowledge of modern times, that no wonder we see more than the ancients, because we are mounted upon their shoulders. The conclusions of one generation are the truths of the next.

We are able, it is our duty, deliberately to take things for granted which our forefathers had a duty to doubt about; and unless we summarily put down disputation on points which have been already proved and ruled, we shall waste our time, and make no advances. Circ.u.mstances indeed may arise, when a question may legitimately be revived, which has already been definitely determined; but a re-consideration of such a question need not abruptly unsettle the existing cert.i.tude of those who engage in it, or throw them into a scepticism about things in general, even though eventually they find they have been wrong in a particular matter. It would have been absurd to prohibit the controversy which has lately been held concerning the obligations of Newton to Pascal; and supposing it had issued in their being established, the partisans of Newton would not have thought it necessary to renounce their cert.i.tude of the law of gravitation itself, on the ground that they had been mistaken in their cert.i.tude that Newton discovered it.

If we are never to be certain, after having been once certain wrongly, then we ought never to attempt a proof because we have once made a bad one. Errors in reasoning are lessons and warnings, not to give up reasoning, but to reason with greater caution. It is absurd to break up the whole structure of our knowledge, which is the glory of the human intellect, because the intellect is not infallible in its conclusions. If in any particular case we have been mistaken in our inferences and the cert.i.tudes which followed upon them, we are bound of course to take the fact of this mistake into account, in making up our minds on any new question, before we proceed to decide upon it. But if, while weighing the arguments on one side and the other and drawing our conclusion, that old mistake has already been allowed for, or has been, to use a familiar mode of speaking, discounted, then it has no outstanding claim against our acceptance of that conclusion, after it has actually been drawn. Whatever be the legitimate weight of the fact of that mistake in our inquiry, justice has been done to it, before we have allowed ourselves to be certain again. Suppose I am walking out in the moonlight, and see dimly the outlines of some figure among the trees;-it is a man. I draw nearer,-it is still a man; nearer still, and all hesitation is at an end,-I am certain it is a man. But he neither moves, nor speaks when I address him; and then I ask myself what can be his purpose in hiding among the trees at such an hour. I come quite close to him, and put out my arm.

Then I find for certain that what I took for a man is but a singular shadow, formed by the falling of the moonlight on the interstices of some branches or their foliage. Am I not to indulge my second cert.i.tude, because I was wrong in my first? does not any objection, which lies against my second from the failure of my first, fade away before the evidence on which my second is founded?

Or again: I depose on my oath in a court of justice, to the best of my knowledge and belief, that I was robbed by the prisoner at the bar. Then, when the real offender is brought before me, I am obliged, to my great confusion, to retract. Because I have been mistaken in my cert.i.tude, may I not at least be certain that I have been mistaken? And further, in spite of the shock which that mistake gives me, is it impossible that the sight of the real culprit may give me so luminous a conviction that at length I have got the right man, that, were it decent towards the court, or consistent with self-respect, I may find myself prepared to swear to the ident.i.ty of the second, as I have already solemnly committed myself to the ident.i.ty of the first? It is manifest that the two cert.i.tudes stand each on its own basis, and the antecedent objection to the admission of a truth which was brought home to me second, drawn from a hallucination which came first, is a mere abstract argument, impotent when directed against good evidence lying in the concrete.

3.

If in the criminal case which I have been supposing, the second cert.i.tude, felt by a witness, was a legitimate state of mind, so was the first. An act, viewed in itself, is not wrong, because it is done wrongly. False cert.i.tudes are faults because they are false, not because they are (so-called) cert.i.tudes. They are, or may be, the attempts and the failures of an intellect insufficiently trained, or off its guard. a.s.sent is an act of the mind, congenial to its nature; and it, as other acts, may be made both when it ought to be made, and when it ought not. It is a free act, a personal act for which the doer is responsible, and the actual mistakes in making it, be they ever so numerous or serious, have no force whatever to prohibit the act itself. We are accustomed in such cases, to appeal to the maxim, ”Usum non tollit abusus;” and it is plain that, if what may be called functional disarrangements of the intellect are to be considered fatal to the recognition of the functions themselves, then the mind has no laws whatever and no normal const.i.tution. I just now spoke of the growth of knowledge; there is also a growth in the use of those faculties by which knowledge is acquired. The intellect admits of an education; man is a being of progress; he has to learn how to fulfil his end, and to be what facts show that he is intended to be. His mind is in the first instance in disorder, and runs wild; his faculties have their rudimental and inchoate state, and are gradually carried on by practice and experience to their perfection. No instances then whatever of mistaken cert.i.tude are sufficient to const.i.tute a proof, that cert.i.tude itself is a perversion or extravagance of his nature.

We do not dispense with clocks, because from time to time they go wrong, and tell untruly. A clock, organically considered, may be perfect, yet it may require regulating. Till that needful work is done, the moment-hand may mark the half-minute, when the minute-hand is at the quarter-past, and the hour hand is just at noon, and the quarter-bell strikes the three-quarters, and the hour-bell strikes four, while the sun-dial precisely tells two o'clock. The sense of cert.i.tude may be called the bell of the intellect; and that it strikes when it should not is a proof that the clock is out of order, no proof that the bell will be untrustworthy and useless, when it comes to us adjusted and regulated from the hands of the clock-maker.

Our conscience too may be said to strike the hours, and will strike them wrongly, unless it be duly regulated for the performance of its proper function. It is the loud announcement of the principle of right in the details of conduct, as the sense of cert.i.tude is the clear witness to what is true. Both cert.i.tude and conscience have a place in the normal condition of the mind. As a human being, I am unable, if I were to try, to live without some kind of conscience; and I am as little able to live without those landmarks of thought which cert.i.tude secures for me; still, as the hammer of a clock may tell untruly, so may my conscience and my sense of cert.i.tude be attached to mental acts, whether of consent or of a.s.sent, which have no claim to be thus sanctioned. Both the moral and the intellectual sanction are liable to be bia.s.sed by personal inclinations and motives; both require and admit of discipline; and, as it is no disproof of the authority of conscience that false consciences abound, neither does it destroy the importance and the uses of cert.i.tude, because even educated minds, who are earnest in their inquiries after the truth, in many cases remain under the power of prejudice or delusion.

To this deficiency in mental training a wider error is to be attributed,-the mistaking for conviction and cert.i.tude states and frames of mind which make no pretence to the fundamental condition on which conviction rests as distinct from a.s.sent. The mult.i.tude of men confuse together the probable, the possible, and the certain, and apply these terms to doctrines and statements almost at random. They have no clear view what it is they know, what they presume, what they suppose, and what they only a.s.sert. They make little distinction between credence, opinion, and profession; at various times they give them all perhaps the name of cert.i.tude, and accordingly, when they change their minds, they fancy they have given up points of which they had a true conviction. Or at least bystanders thus speak of them, and the very idea of cert.i.tude falls into disrepute.