An Essay In Aid Of A Grammar Of Assent Part 12

I am led on by these reflections to make another remark. If it is difficult to explain how a man knows that he shall die, is it not more difficult for him to satisfy himself how he knows that he was born? His knowledge about himself does not rest on memory, nor on distinct testimony, nor on circ.u.mstantial evidence. Can he bring into one focus of proof the reasons which make him so sure? I am not speaking of scientific men, who have diverse channels of knowledge, but of an ordinary individual, as one of ourselves.

Answers doubtless may be given to some of these questions; but, on the whole, I think it is the fact that many of our most obstinate and most reasonable cert.i.tudes depend on proofs which are informal and personal, which baffle our powers of a.n.a.lysis, and cannot be brought under logical rule, because they cannot be submitted to logical statistics. If we must speak of Law, this recognition of a correlation between cert.i.tude and implicit proof seems to me a law of our minds.

2.

I said just now that an object of sense presents itself to our view as one whole, and not in its separate details: we take it in, recognize it, and discriminate it from other objects, all at once. Such too is the intellectual view we take of the _momenta_ of proof for a concrete truth; we grasp the full tale of premisses and the conclusion, _per modum unius_,-by a sort of instinctive perception of the legitimate conclusion in and through the premisses, not by a formal juxta-position of propositions; though of course such a juxta-position is useful and natural, both to direct and to verify, just as in objects of sight our notice of bodily peculiarities, or the remarks of others may aid us in establis.h.i.+ng a case of disputed ident.i.ty. And, as this man or that will receive his own impression of one and the same person, and judge differently from others about his countenance, its expression, its moral significance, its physical contour and complexion, so an intellectual question may strike two minds very differently, may awaken in them distinct a.s.sociations, may be invested by them in contrary characteristics, and lead them to opposite conclusions;-and so, again, a body of proof, or a line of argument, may produce a distinct, nay, a dissimilar effect, as addressed to one or to the other.

Thus in concrete reasonings we are in great measure thrown back into that condition, from which logic proposed to rescue us. We judge for ourselves, by our own lights, and on our own principles; and our criterion of truth is not so much the manipulation of propositions, as the intellectual and moral character of the person maintaining them, and the ultimate silent effect of his arguments or conclusions upon our minds.

It is this distinction between ratiocination as the exercise of a living faculty in the individual intellect, and mere skill in argumentative science, which is the true interpretation of the prejudice which exists against logic in the popular mind, and of the animadversions which are levelled against it, as that its formulas make a pedant and a _doctrinaire_, that it never makes converts, that it leads to rationalism, that Englishmen are too practical to be logical, that an ounce of common-sense goes farther than many cartloads of logic, that Laputa is the land of logicians, and the like. Such maxims mean, when a.n.a.lyzed, that the processes of reasoning which legitimately lead to a.s.sent, to action, to cert.i.tude, are in fact too multiform, subtle, omnigenous, too implicit, to allow of being measured by rule, that they are after all personal,-verbal argumentation being useful only in subordination to a higher logic. It is this which was meant by the Judge who, when asked for his advice by a friend, on his being called to important duties which were new to him, bade him always lay down the law boldly, but never give his reasons, for his decision was likely to be right, but his reasons sure to be unsatisfactory. This is the point which I proceed to ill.u.s.trate.

1. I will take a question of the present moment. "We shall have a European war, _for_ Greece is audaciously defying Turkey." How are we to test the validity of the reason, implied, not expressed, in the word "for"? Only the judgment of diplomatists, statesmen, capitalists, and the like, founded on experience, strengthened by practical and historical knowledge, controlled by self-interest, can decide the worth of that "for" in relation to accepting or not accepting the conclusion which depends on it.

The argument is from concrete fact to concrete fact. How will mere logical inferences, which cannot proceed without general and abstract propositions, help us on to the determination of this particular case? It is not the case of Switzerland attacking Austria, or of Portugal attacking Spain, or of Belgium attacking Prussia, but a case without parallels. To draw a scientific conclusion, the argument must run somewhat in this way:-"All audacious defiances of Turkey on the part of Greece must end in a European war; these present acts of Greece are such: ergo;"-where the major premiss is more difficult to accept than the conclusion, and the proof becomes an "obscurum per obscurius." But, in truth, I should not betake myself to some one universal proposition to defend my view of the matter; I should determine the particular case by its particular circ.u.mstances, by the combination of many uncatalogued experiences floating in my memory, of many reflections, variously produced, felt rather than capable of statement; and if I had them not, I should go to those who had. I a.s.sent in consequence of some such complex act of judgment, or from faith in those who are capable of making it, and practically syllogism has no part, even verificatory, in the action of my mind.

I take this instance at random in ill.u.s.tration; now let me follow it up by more serious cases.

2. Leighton says, "What a full confession do we make of our dissatisfaction with the objects of our bodily senses, that in our attempts to express what we conceive of the best of beings and the greatest of felicities to be, we describe by the exact contraries of all that we experience here,-the one as infinite, incomprehensible, immutable, &c.; the other as incorruptible, undefiled, and that pa.s.seth not away. At all events, this coincidence, say rather ident.i.ty of attributes, is sufficient to apprise us that, to be inheritors of bliss, we must become the children of G.o.d." Coleridge quotes this pa.s.sage, and adds, "Another and more fruitful, perhaps more solid, inference from the facts would be, that there is something in the human mind which makes it know that in all finite quant.i.ty, there is an infinite, in all measures of time an eternal; that the latter are the basis, the substance, of the former; and that, as we truly are only as far as G.o.d is with us, so neither can we truly possess, that is, enjoy our being or any other real good, but by living in the sense of His holy presence.(13)"

What is this an argument for? how few readers will enter into either premiss or conclusion! and of those who understand what it means, will not at least some confess that they understand it by fits and starts, not at all times? Can we ascertain its force by mood and figure? Is there any royal road by which we may indolently be carried along into the acceptance of it? Does not the author rightly number it among his "aids" for our "reflection," not instruments for our compulsion? It is plain that, if the pa.s.sage is worth anything, we must secure that worth for our own use by the personal action of our own minds, or else we shall be only professing and a.s.serting its doctrine, without having any ground or right to a.s.sert it. And our preparation for understanding and making use of it will be the general state of our mental discipline and cultivation, our own experiences, our appreciation of religious ideas, the perspicacity and steadiness of our intellectual vision.

3. It is argued by Hume against the actual occurrence of the Jewish and Christian miracles, that, whereas "it is experience only which gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experience which a.s.sures us of the laws of nature," therefore, "when these two kinds of experience are contrary" to each other, "we are bound to subtract the one from the other;" and, in consequence, since we have no experience of a violation of natural laws, and much experience of the violation of truth, "we may establish it as a maxim that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion."

I will accept the general proposition, but I resist its application.

Doubtless it is abstractedly more likely that men should lie than that the order of nature should be infringed; but what is abstract reasoning to a question of concrete fact? To arrive at the fact of any matter, we must eschew generalities, and take things as they stand, with all their circ.u.mstances. _a priori_, of course the acts of men are not so trustworthy as the order of nature, and the pretence of miracles is in fact more common than the occurrence. But the question is not about miracles in general, or men in general, but definitely, whether these particular miracles, ascribed to the particular Peter, James, and John, are more likely to have been or not; whether they are unlikely, supposing that there is a Power, external to the world, who can bring them about; supposing they are the only means by which He can reveal Himself to those who need a revelation; supposing He is likely to reveal Himself; that He has a great end in doing so; that the professed miracles in question are like His natural works, and such as He is likely to work, in case He wrought miracles; that great effects, otherwise unaccountable, in the event followed upon the acts said to be miraculous; that they were from the first accepted as true by large numbers of men against their natural interests; that the reception of them as true has left its mark upon the world, as no other event ever did; that, viewed in their effects, they have-that is, the belief of them has-served to raise human nature to a high moral standard, otherwise unattainable: these and the like considerations are parts of a great complex argument, which so far can be put into propositions, but which, even between, and around, and behind these, still is implicit and secret, and cannot by any ingenuity be imprisoned in a formula, and packed into a nut-sh.e.l.l. These various conditions may be decided in the affirmative or in the negative. That is a further point; here I only insist upon the nature of the argument, if it is to be philosophical. It must be no smart ant.i.thesis which may look well on paper, but the living action of the mind on a great problem of fact; and we must summon to our aid all our powers and resources, if we would encounter it worthily, and not as if it were a literary essay.

4. "Consider the establishment of the Christian religion," says Pascal in his "Thoughts." "Here is a religion contrary to our nature, which establishes itself in men's minds with so much mildness, as to use no external force; with so much energy, that no tortures could silence its martyrs and confessors; and consider the holiness, devotion, humility of its true disciples; its sacred books, their superhuman grandeur, their admirable simplicity. Consider the character of its Founder; His a.s.sociates and disciples, unlettered men, yet possessed of wisdom sufficient to confound the ablest philosopher; the astonis.h.i.+ng succession of prophets who heralded Him; the state at this day of the Jewish people who rejected Him and His religion; its perpetuity and its holiness; the light which its doctrines shed upon the contrarieties of our nature;-after considering these things, let any man judge if it be possible to doubt about its being the only true one.(14)"

This is an argument parallel in its character to that by which we ascribe the cla.s.sics to the Augustan age. We urge, that, though we cannot draw the line definitely between what the monks could do in literature, and what they could not, anyhow Virgil's "aeneid" and the Odes of Horace are far beyond the highest capacity of the medieval mind, which, however great, was different in the character of its endowments. And in like manner we maintain, that, granting that we cannot decide how far the human mind can advance by its own unaided powers in religious ideas and sentiments, and in religious practice, still the facts of Christianity, as they stand, are beyond what is possible to man, and betoken the presence of a higher intelligence, purpose, and might.

Many have been converted and sustained in their faith by this argument, which admits of being powerfully stated; but still such statement is after all only intended to be a vehicle of thought, and to open the mind to the apprehension of the facts of the case, and to trace them and their implications in outline, not to convince by the logic of its mere wording.

Do we not think and muse as we read it, try to master it as we proceed, put down the book in which we find it, fill out its details from our own resources, and then resume the study of it? And, when we have to give an account of it to others, should we make use of its language, or even of its thoughts, and not rather of its drift and spirit? Has it never struck us what different lights different minds throw upon the same theory and argument, nay, how they seem to be differing in detail when they are professing, and in reality showing, a concurrence in it? Have we never found, that, when a friend takes up the defence of what we have written or said, that at first we are unable to recognize in his statement of it what we meant it to convey? It will be our wisdom to avail ourselves of language, as far as it will go, but to aim mainly by means of it to stimulate, in those to whom we address ourselves, a mode of thinking and trains of thought similar to our own, leading them on by their own independent action, not by any syllogistic compulsion. Hence it is that an intellectual school will always have something of an esoteric character; for it is an a.s.semblage of minds that think; their bond is unity of thought, and their words become a sort of _tessera_, not expressing thought, but symbolizing it.

Recurring to Pascal's argument, I observe that, its force depending upon the a.s.sumption that the facts of Christianity are beyond human nature, therefore, according as the powers of nature are placed at a high or low standard, that force will be greater or less; and that standard will vary according to the respective dispositions, opinions, and experiences, of those to whom the argument is addressed. Thus its value is a personal question; not as if there were not an objective truth and Christianity as a whole not supernatural, but that, when we come to consider where it is that the supernatural presence is found, there may be fair differences of opinion, both as to the fact and the proof of what is supernatural. There is a mult.i.tude of facts, which, taken separately, may perhaps be natural, but, found together, must come from a source above nature; and what these are, and how many are necessary, will be variously determined. And while every inquirer has a right to determine the question according to the best exercise of his judgment, still whether he so determine it for himself, or trust in part or altogether to the judgment of those who have the best claim to judge, in either case he is guided by the implicit processes of the reasoning faculty, not by any manufacture of arguments forcing their way to an irrefragable conclusion.

5. Pascal writes in another place, "He who doubts, but seeks not to have his doubts removed, is at once the most criminal and the most unhappy of mortals. If, together with this, he is tranquil and self-satisfied, if he be vain of his tranquillity, or makes his state a topic of mirth and self-gratulation, I have not words to describe so insane a creature. Truly it is to the honour of religion to have for its adversaries men so bereft of reason; their opposition, far from being formidable, bears testimony to its most distinguis.h.i.+ng truths; for the great object of the Christian religion is to establish the corruption of our nature, and the redemption by Jesus Christ.(15)" Elsewhere he says of Montaigne, "He involves everything in such universal, unmingled scepticism, as to doubt of his very doubts. He was a pure Pyrrhonist. He ridicules all attempts at certainty in anything. Delighted with exhibiting in his own person the contradictions that exist in the mind of a free-thinker, it is all one to him whether he is successful or not in his argument. The virtue he loved was simple, sociable, gay, sprightly, and playful; to use one of his own expressions, 'Ignorance and incuriousness are two charming pillows for a sound head.'(16)"

Here are two celebrated writers in direct opposition to each other in their fundamental view of truth and duty. Shall we say that there is no such thing as truth and error, but that anything is truth to a man which he troweth? and not rather, as the solution of a great mystery, that truth there is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in upon us through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual being; and that in consequence that perception of its first principles which is natural to us is enfeebled, obstructed, perverted, by allurements of sense and the supremacy of self, and, on the other hand, quickened by aspirations after the supernatural; so that at length two characters of mind are brought out into shape, and two standards and systems of thought,-each logical, when a.n.a.lyzed, yet contradictory of each other, and only not antagonistic because they have no common ground on which they can conflict?

6. Montaigne was endowed with a good estate, health, leisure, and an easy temper, literary tastes, and a sufficiency of books: he could afford thus to play with life, and the abysses into which it leads us. Let us take a case in contrast.

"I think," says the poor dying factory-girl in the tale, "if this should be the end of all, and if all I have been born for is just to work my heart and life away, and to sicken in this dree place, with those mill-stones in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for them to stop and let me have a little piece of quiet, and with the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath of the clear air, and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles,-I think, if this life is the end, and that there is no G.o.d to wipe away all tears from all eyes, I could go mad!(17)"

Here is an argument for the immortality of the soul. As to its force, be it great or small, will it make a figure in a logical disputation, carried on _secundum artem_? Can any scientific common measure compel the intellects of Dives and Lazarus to take the same estimate of it? Is there any test of the validity of it better than the _ipse dixit_ of private judgment, that is, the judgment of those who have a right to judge, and next, the agreement of many private judgments in one and the same view of it?

7. "In order to prove plainly and intelligibly," says Dr. Samuel Clarke, "that G.o.d is a Being, which must of necessity be endued with perfect knowledge, 'tis to be observed that knowledge is a perfection, without which the foregoing attributes are no perfections at all, and without which those which follow can have no foundation. Where there is no Knowledge, Eternity and Immensity are as nothing, and Justice, Goodness, Mercy, and Wisdom can have no place. The idea of eternity and omnipresence, devoid of knowledge, is as the notion of darkness compared with that of light. 'Tis as a notion of the world without the sun to illuminate it; 'tis as the notion of inanimate matter (which is the atheist's supreme cause) compared with that of light and spirit. And as for the following attributes of Justice, Goodness, Mercy, and Wisdom, 'tis evident that without knowledge there could not possibly be any such things as these at all.(18)"

The argument here used in behalf of the Divine Attribute of Knowledge comes under the general proposition that the attributes imply each other, for the denial of one is the denial of the rest. To some minds this thesis is self-evident; others are utterly insensible to its force. Will it bear bringing out into words throughout the whole series of its argumentative links? for if it does, then either those who maintain it or those who reject it, the one or the other, will be compelled by logical necessity to confess that they are in error. "G.o.d is wise, if He is eternal; He is good, if He is wise; He is just, if He is good." What skill can so arrange these propositions, so add to them, so combine them, that they may be able, by the force of their juxta-position, to follow one from the other, and become one and the same by an inevitable correlation. That is not the method by which the argument becomes a demonstration. Such a method, used by a Theist in controversy against men who are unprepared personally for the question, will but issue in his retreat along a series of major propositions, farther and farther back, till he and they find themselves in a land of shadows, "where the light is as darkness."

To feel the true force of an argument like this, we must not confine ourselves to abstractions, and merely compare notion with notion, but we must contemplate the G.o.d of our conscience as a Living Being, as one Object and Reality, _under_ the aspect of this or that attribute. We must patiently rest in the thought of the Eternal, Omnipresent, and All-knowing, rather than of Eternity, Omnipresence, and Omniscience; and we must not hurry on and force a series of deductions, which, if they are to be realized, must distil like dew into our minds, and form themselves spontaneously there, by a calm contemplation and gradual understanding of their premisses. Ordinarily speaking, such deductions do not flow forth, except according as the Image,(19) presented to us through conscience, on which they depend, is cherished within us with the sentiments which, supposing it be, as we know it is, the truth, it necessarily claims of us, and is seen reflected, by the habit of our intellect, in the appointments and the events of the external world. And, in their manifestation to our inward sense, they are a.n.a.logous to the knowledge which we at length attain of the details of a landscape, after we have selected the right stand-point, and have learned to accommodate the pupil of our eye to the varying focus necessary for seeing them; have accustomed it to the glare of light, have mentally grouped or discriminated lines and shadows and given them their due meaning, and have mastered the perspective of the whole. Or they may be compared to a landscape as drawn by the pencil (unless the ill.u.s.tration seem forced), in which by the skill of the artist, amid the bold outlines of trees and rocks, when the eye has learned to take in their reverse aspects, the forms or faces of historical personages are discernible, which we catch and lose again, and then recover, and which some who look on with us are never able to catch at all.

a.n.a.logous to such an exercise of sight, must be our mode of dealing with the verbal expositions of an argument such as Clarke's. His words speak to those who understand the speech. To the mere barren intellect they are but the pale ghosts of notions; but the trained imagination sees in them the representations of things. He who has once detected in his conscience the outline of a Lawgiver and Judge, needs no definition of Him, whom he dimly but surely contemplates there, and he rejects the mechanism of logic, which cannot contain in its grasp matters so real and so recondite. Such a one, according to the strength and perspicacity of his mind, the force of his presentiments, and his power of sustained attention, is able to p.r.o.nounce about the great Sight which encompa.s.ses him, as about some visible object; and, in his investigation of the Divine Attributes, is not inferring abstraction from abstraction, but noting down the aspects and phases of that one thing on which he ever is gazing. Nor is it possible to limit the depth of meaning, which at length he will attach to words, which to the many are but definitions and ideas.

Here then again, as in the other instances, it seems clear, that methodical processes of inference, useful as they are, as far as they go, are only instruments of the mind, and need, in order to their due exercise, that real ratiocination and present imagination which gives them a sense beyond their letter, and which, while acting through them, reaches to conclusions beyond and above them. Such a living _organon_ is a personal gift, and not a mere method or calculus.

3.

That there are cases, in which evidence, not sufficient for a scientific proof, is nevertheless sufficient for a.s.sent and cert.i.tude, is the doctrine of Locke, as of most men. He tells us that belief, grounded on sufficient probabilities, "rises to a.s.surance;" and as to the question of sufficiency, that where propositions "border near on certainty," then "we a.s.sent to them as firmly as if they were infallibly demonstrated." The only question is, what these propositions are: this he does not tell us, but he seems to think that they are few in number, and will be without any trouble recognized at once by common-sense; whereas, unless I am mistaken, they are to be found throughout the range of concrete matter, and that supra-logical judgment, which is the warrant for our cert.i.tude about them, is not mere common-sense, but the true healthy action of our ratiocinative powers, an action more subtle and more comprehensive than the mere appreciation of a syllogistic argument. It is often called the "judicium prudentis viri," a standard of cert.i.tude which holds good in all concrete matter, not only in those cases of practice and duty, in which we are more familiar with it, but in questions of truth and falsehood generally, or in what are called "speculative" questions, and that, not indeed to the exclusion, but as the supplement of logic. Thus a proof, except in abstract demonstration, has always in it, more or less, an element of the personal, because "prudence" is not a const.i.tuent part of our nature, but a personal endowment.

And the language in common use, when concrete conclusions are in question, implies the presence of this personal element in the proof of them. We are considered to feel, rather than to see, its cogency; and we decide, not that the conclusion must be, but that it cannot be otherwise. We say, that we do not see our way to doubt it, that it is impossible to doubt, that we are bound to believe it, that we should be idiots, if we did not believe.

We never should say, in abstract science, that we could not escape the conclusion that 25 was a mean proportional between 5 and 125; or that a man had no right to say that a tangent to a circle at the extremity of the radius makes an acute angle with it. Yet, though our cert.i.tude of the fact is quite as clear, we should not think it unnatural to say that the insularity of Great Britain is as good as demonstrated, or that none but a fool expects never to die. Phrases indeed such as these are sometimes used to express a shade of doubt, but it is enough for my purpose if they are also used when doubt is altogether absent. What, then, they signify, is, what I have so much insisted on, that we have arrived at these conclusions-not _ex opere operato_, by a scientific necessity independent of ourselves,-but by the action of our own minds, by our own individual perception of the truth in question, under a sense of duty to those conclusions and with an intellectual conscientiousness.

This cert.i.tude and this evidence are often called moral; a word which I avoid, as having a very vague meaning; but using it here for once, I observe that moral evidence and moral cert.i.tude are all that we can attain, not only in the case of ethical and spiritual subjects, such as religion, but of terrestrial and cosmical questions also. So far, physical Astronomy and Revelation stand on the same footing. Vince, in his treatise on Astronomy, does but use the language of philosophical sobriety, when, after speaking of the proofs of the earth's rotatory motion, he says, "When these reasons, all upon different principles, are considered, they amount to a proof of the earth's rotation about its axis, which is as satisfactory to the mind as the most direct demonstration could be;" or, as he had said just before, "the mind rests equally satisfied, as if the matter was strictly proved.(20)" That is, first there is no demonstration that the earth rotates; next there is a cl.u.s.ter of "reasons on _different_ principles," that is, independent probabilities in c.u.mulation; thirdly, these "_amount_ to a proof," and "the mind" feels "_as if_ the matter was strictly proved," that is, there is the equivalent of proof; lastly, "the mind rests _satisfied_," that is, it is certain on the point. And though evidence of the fact is now obtained which was not known fifty years ago, that evidence on the whole has not changed its character.

Compare with this avowal the language of Butler, when discussing the proof of Revelation. "Probable proofs," he says, "by being added, not only increase the evidence, but multiply it. The truth of our religion, like the truth of common matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence taken together ... in like manner as, if in any common case numerous events acknowledged were to be alleged in proof of any other event disputed, the truth of the disputed event would be proved, not only if any one of the acknowledged ones did of itself clearly imply it, but though no one of them singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged events taken together could not in reason be supposed to have happened, unless the disputed one were true.(21)" Here, as in Astronomy, is the same absence of demonstration of the thesis, the same c.u.mulating and converging indications of it, the same indirectness in the proof, as being _per impossibile_, the same recognition nevertheless that the conclusion is not only probable, but true. One other characteristic of the argumentative process is given, which is unnecessary in a subject-matter so clear and simple as astronomical science, viz. the moral state of the parties inquiring or disputing. They must be "as much in earnest about religion, as about their temporal affairs, capable of being convinced, on real evidence, that there is a G.o.d who governs the world, and feel themselves to be of a moral nature and accountable creatures.(22)"

This being the state of the case, the question arises, whether, granting that the personality (so to speak) of the parties reasoning is an important element in proving propositions in concrete matter, any account can be given of the ratiocinative method in such proofs, over and above that a.n.a.lysis into syllogism which is possible in each of its steps in detail. I think there can; though I fear, lest to some minds it may appear far-fetched or fanciful; however, I will hazard this imputation. I consider, then, that the principle of concrete reasoning is parallel to the method of proof which is the foundation of modern mathematical science, as contained in the celebrated lemma with which Newton opens his "Principia." We know that a regular polygon, inscribed in a circle, its sides being continually diminished, tends to become that circle, as its limit; but it vanishes before it has coincided with the circle, so that its tendency to be the circle, though ever nearer fulfilment, never in fact gets beyond a tendency. In like manner, the conclusion in a real or concrete question is foreseen and predicted rather than actually attained; foreseen in the number and direction of acc.u.mulated premisses, which all converge to it, and approach it, as the result of their combination, more nearly than any a.s.signable difference, yet do not touch it logically, (though only not touching it,) on account of the nature of its subject-matter, and the delicate and implicit character of at least part of the reasonings on which it depends. It is by the strength, variety, or multiplicity of premisses, which are only probable, not by invincible syllogisms,-by objections overcome, by adverse theories neutralized, by difficulties gradually clearing up, by exceptions proving the rule, by unlooked-for correlations found with received truths, by suspense and delay in the process issuing in triumphant reactions,-by all these ways, and many others, the practised and experienced mind is able to make a sure divination that a conclusion is inevitable, of which his lines of reasoning do not actually put him in possession. This is what is meant by a proposition being "as good as proved," a conclusion as undeniable "as if it were proved," and by the reasons for it "amounting to a proof," for a proof is the limit of converging probabilities.

It may be added, that, whereas the logical form of this argument, is, as I have already observed, indirect, viz. that "the conclusion cannot be otherwise," and Butler says that an event is proved, if its antecedents "could not in reason be supposed to have happened _unless_ it were true,"

and law-books tell us that the principle of circ.u.mstantial evidence is the _reductio ad absurdum_, so Newton is forced to the same mode of proof for the establishment of his lemma, about prime and ultimate ratios. "If you deny that they become ultimately equal," he says, "let them be ultimately unequal;" and the consequence follows, "which is against the supposition."

Such being the character of the mental process in concrete reasoning, I should wish to adduce some good instances of it in ill.u.s.tration, instances in which the person reasoning confesses that he is reasoning on this very process, as I have been stating it; but these are difficult to find, from the very circ.u.mstance that the process from first to last is carried on as much without words as with them. However, I will set down three such.

1. First, an instance in physics. Wood, treating of the laws of motion, thus describes the line of reasoning by which the mind is certified of them. "They are not indeed self-evident, nor do they admit of accurate proof by experiment, on account of the effects of friction and the air's resistance, which cannot entirely be removed. They are, however, constantly and invariably suggested to our senses, and they agree with experiment, as far as experiment can go; and the more accurately the experiments are made, and the greater care we take to remove all those impediments which tend to render the conclusions erroneous, the more nearly do the experiments coincide with these laws.

"Their truth is also established upon a different ground: from these general principles innumerable particular conclusions have been deducted; sometimes the deductions are simple and immediate, sometimes they are made by tedious and intricate operations; yet they are all, without exception, consistent with each other and with experiment. It follows thereby, that the principles upon which the calculations are founded are true.(23)"

The reasoning of this pa.s.sage (in which the uniformity of the laws of nature is a.s.sumed) seems to me a good ill.u.s.tration of what must be considered the principle or form of an induction. The conclusion, which is its scope, is, by its own confession, not proved; but it ought to be proved, or is as good as proved, and a man would be irrational who did not take it to be virtually proved; first, because the imperfections in the proof arise out of its subject-matter and the nature of the case, so that it _is_ proved _interpretative_; and next, because in the same degree in which these faults in the subject-matter are overcome here or there, are the involved imperfections here or there of the proof remedied; and further, because, when the conclusion is a.s.sumed as an hypothesis, it throws light upon a mult.i.tude of collateral facts, accounting for them, and uniting them together in one whole. Consistency is not always the guarantee of truth; but there may be a consistency in a theory so variously tried and exemplified as to lead to belief in it, as reasonably as a witness in a court of law may, after a severe cross-examination, satisfy and a.s.sure judge, jury, and the whole court, of his simple veracity.

2. And from the courts of law shall my second ill.u.s.tration be taken.

A learned writer says, "In criminal prosecutions, the circ.u.mstantial evidence should be such, as to produce nearly the same degree of certainty as that which arises from direct testimony, and to exclude a rational probability of innocence.(24)" By degrees of certainty he seems to mean, together with many other writers, degrees of proof, or approximations towards proof, and not cert.i.tude, as a state of mind; and he says that no one should be p.r.o.nounced guilty on evidence which is not equivalent in weight to direct testimony. So far is clear; but what is meant by the expression "_rational_ probability"? for there can be no probability but what is rational. I consider that the "exclusion of a rational probability" means "the exclusion of any argument in the man's favour which has a rational claim to be called probable," or rather, "the rational exclusion of any supposition that he is innocent;" and "rational"

is used in contradistinction to argumentative, and means "resting on implicit reasons," such as we feel, indeed, but which for some cause or other, because they are too subtle or too circuitous, we cannot put into words so as to satisfy logic. If this is a correct account of his meaning, he says that the evidence against a criminal, in order to be decisive of his guilt, to the satisfaction of our conscience, must bear with it, along with the palpable arguments for that guilt, such a reasonableness, or body of implicit reasons for it in addition, as may exclude any probability, really such, that he is not guilty,-that is, it must be an evidence free from anything obscure, suspicious, unnatural, or defective, such as (in the judgment of a prudent man) to hinder that summation or coalescence of the evidence into a proof, which I have compared to the running into a limit, in the case of mathematical ratios. Just as an algebraical series may be of a nature never to terminate or admit of valuation, as being the equivalent of an irrational quant.i.ty or surd, so there may be some grave imperfections in a body of reasons, explicit or implicit, which is directed to a proof, sufficient to interfere with its successful issue or resolution, and to balk us with an irrational, that is, an indeterminate, conclusion.

So much as to the principle of conclusions made upon evidence in criminal cases; now let us turn to an instance of its application in a particular instance. Some years ago there was a murder committed, which unusually agitated the popular mind, and the evidence against the culprit was necessarily circ.u.mstantial. At the trial the Judge, in addressing the Jury, instructed them on the kind of evidence necessary for a verdict of _guilty_. Of course he could not mean to say that they must convict a man, of whose guilt they were not certain, especially in a case in which two foreign countries, Germany and the American States, were attentively looking on. If the Jury had any doubt, that is, reasonable doubt, about the man's guilt, of course they would give him the benefit of that doubt.

Nor could the cert.i.tude, which would be necessary for an adverse verdict, be merely that which is sometimes called a "practical cert.i.tude," that is, a cert.i.tude indeed, but a cert.i.tude that it was a "duty," "expedient,"

"safe," to bring in a verdict of guilty. Of course the Judge spoke of what is called a "speculative cert.i.tude," that is, a cert.i.tude of the fact that the man was guilty; the only question being, what evidence was sufficient for the proof, for the cert.i.tude of that fact. This is what the Judge meant; and these are among the remarks which, with this drift, he made upon the occasion:-

After observing that by circ.u.mstantial evidence he meant a case in which "the facts do not directly prove the actual crime, but lead to the conclusion that the prisoner committed that crime," he went on to disclaim the suggestion, made by counsel in the case, that the Jury could not p.r.o.nounce a verdict of _guilty_, unless they were as much satisfied that the prisoner did the deed as if they had seen him commit it. "That is not the certainty," he said, "which is required of you to discharge your duty to the prisoner, whose safety is in your hands." Then he stated what was the "degree of certainty," that is, of certainty or perfection of proof, which was necessary to the question, "involving as it did the life of the prisoner at the bar,"-it was such as that "with which," he said, "you decide upon and conclude your own most important transactions in life.

Take the facts which are proved before you, separate those you believe from those which you do not believe, and all the conclusions that naturally and almost necessarily result from those facts, you may confide in as much as in the facts themselves. The case on the part of the prosecution is the _story_ of the murder, told by the _different_ witnesses, who _unfold the circ.u.mstances one after another_, according to their occurrence, together with the _gradual_ discovery of some apparent connexion between the property that was lost, and the possession of it by the prisoner."

Now here I observe, that whereas the conclusion which is contemplated by the Judge, is what may be p.r.o.nounced (on the whole, and considering all things, and judging reasonably) a proved or certain conclusion, that is, a conclusion of the truth of the allegation against the prisoner, or of the fact of his guilt, on the other hand, the _motiva_ const.i.tuting this reasonable, rational proof, and this satisfactory cert.i.tude, needed not, according to him, to be stronger than those on which we prudently act on matters of important interest to ourselves, that is, probable reasons viewed in their convergence and combination. And whereas the cert.i.tude is viewed by the Judge as following on converging probabilities, which const.i.tute a real, though only a reasonable, not an argumentative, proof, so it will be observed in this particular instance, that, in ill.u.s.tration of the general doctrine which I have laid down, the process is one of "line upon line, and letter upon letter," of various details acc.u.mulating and of deductions fitting in to each other; for, in the Judge's words, there was a story-and that not told right out and by one witness, but taken up and handed on from witness to witness-gradually unfolded, and tending to a proof, which of course might have been ten times stronger than it was, but was still a proof for all that, and sufficient for its conclusion,-just as we see that two straight lines are meeting, and are certain they will meet at a given distance, though we do not actually see the junction.

3. The third instance I will take is one of a literary character, the divination of the authors.h.i.+p of a certain anonymous publication, as suggested mainly by internal evidence, as I find it in a critique written some twenty years ago. In the extract which I make from it, we may observe the same steady march of a proof towards a conclusion, which is (as it were) out of sight;-a reckoning, or a reasonable judgment, that the conclusion really is proved, and a personal cert.i.tude upon that judgment, joined with a confession that a logical argument could not well be made out for it, and that the various details in which the proof consisted were in no small measure implicit and impalpable.

"Rumour speaks uniformly and clearly enough in attributing it to the pen of a particular individual. Nor, although a cursory reader might well skim the book without finding in it anything to suggest, &c., ... will it appear improbable to the more attentive student of its internal evidence; and the improbability will decrease more and more, in proportion as the _reader is capable_ of judging and appreciating the _delicate, and at first invisible touches_, which limit, to _those who understand them_, the individuals who can have written it to a very small number indeed. The utmost scepticism as to its authors.h.i.+p (_which we do not feel ourselves_) cannot remove it farther from him than to that of some one among his most intimate friends; so that, leaving others to discuss antecedent probabilities," &c.

Here is a writer who professes to have no doubt at all about the authors.h.i.+p of a book,-which at the same time he cannot prove by mere argumentation set down in words. The reasons of his conviction are too delicate, too intricate; nay, they are in part invisible; invisible, except to those who from circ.u.mstances have an intellectual perception of what does not appear to the many. They are personal to the individual.

This again is an instance, distinctly set before us, of the particular mode in which the mind progresses in concrete matter, viz. from merely probable antecedents to the sufficient proof of a fact or a truth, and, after the proof, to an act of cert.i.tude about it.