c.
REESE LIBRARY
OF THK
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
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Accessions No.4f4 * Shelf No.
THE TESTS
VARIOUS KINDS OF TRUTH
BEING
A TREATISE OF APPLIED LOGIC
LECTURES
DELIVERED BEFORE THE OHIO WESLEYAN
UNIVERSITY
ON THE MERRICK FOUNDATION
BY
JAMES MCCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L.
Ex-President of Princeton College, N. J.
NEW YORK': HUNT & EATON
CINCINNA 77.- CRANSTON &> STOIVE
18S9
Copyright, 1889, by
HUNT* EATON,
NEW YORK.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
distinguished author of the following lectures
needs no introduction to American readers. His
eminent services as an educator, and his still more emi-
nent philosophical writings, have given him a world-
wide reputation. These lectures were especially prepared
for delivery before the faculty and students of the Ohio
Wesleyan University on the foundation indicated on
the title-page. This foundation contemplates an annual
course of at least five lectures on Experimental and
Practical Religion. A previous course, by the late Rev.
Daniel Curry, treats especially of the importance of re-
ligion in the higher institutions of learning. The pres-
ent course is deemed eminently appropriate as tending
to establish the foundations of the belief on which the
entire religious life must rest. That the lectures are
able and happily adapted to meet some of the subtle
forms of prevailing unbelief will be readily admitted by
all intelligent readers. They are given to the public in
the belief that they will be eagerly sought, and that
their wide circulation cannot fail to accomplish great
good. They are accompanied with the prayer that such
may be the result. The next course will be delivered
by an eminent divine upon some of the fundamental
principles of Experimental Religion.
OHIO WESLEYAN UNMVERSITY,
March 28, /<$?.
PREFACE.
rpHE age may be characterized as one of unsettled
opinion. Our ambitious youth are not satis-
fied with the past, its opinions, and practices. Au-
thority is not worshiped by them ; they have no
partiality for creeds and confessions. They do not
accept, without first doubting, the truths supposed
to be long established. In searching into the foun-
dation of the old temples they have raised a cloud
of dust and left lying a heap of rubbish. It is an
age out of which good and evil, either or both, may
come, according as it is guided. We may entertain
fears, for it is dancing on the edge of a precipice
down which it may fall. We may cherish hope, for
it is an inquiring age.
Every form and phase of opinion seeks to have a
philosophy, in which it may embody and express
itself and by which it maybe defended. Agnostics
is the shape or figure which the doubting and hesi-
tating spirit takes. It is not a new heresy. It has
been held by a few in every age ; it is now espoused
by many, provisionally, till something more solid or
6 Preface.
showy is propounded. It used to be called nes-
cience, which maintains that nothing can be known,
and nihilism, which holds that there is nothing to
be known. It is of little use trying to argue with
it, for it allows us no premises as a ground on which
to start, and has no body or substance that we can
attack. It is easy to show that it is suicidal. It is
an evident contradiction to affirm that we know
that we can know nothing. But when we have
demonstrated this we have not destroyed it any
more than we have killed a specter by thrusting a
spear into it ; for its defense is that all truth is con-
tradictory. The best way of dealing with it is to
allow it to dance as it may, like the shadows of the
clouds, and, meanwhile, to found and build up truth
and set it up before the mind, that it may be seen
in its own light. It is well known that when we see
a solid object through and beyond a specter the
specter melts away and disappears. So it will be
with agnosticism it will vanish when we fix our
eyes upon the truth.
But meanwhile an immense number and variety
of crude views and opinions on the most moment-
ous subjects, such as morality and religion, are set
before the young and pressed upon their accept-
ance. In consequence they often feel a difficulty in
knowing what to believe, and they may be led to
Preface. 1
believe too little or too much. In these circum-
stances it is of vast importance to provide them
with tests which may enable them to distinguish
between truth and fiction and settle them in the
truth.
This is what is attempted in this work, which is
meant for those who wish for their own satisfaction
to know on what foundations the truths on which
they are required to believe rest.
It is hoped, being a treatise on what Kant calls
applied logic, which may be quite as useful as pri-
mary or formal logic, it may be used as a text-book.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE FIRST.
PAGE
Truths to be Assumed. . n
LECTURE SECOND.
Discursive or Deductive Truth 27
LECTURE THIRD.
Inductive Truths 43
LECTURE FOURTH.
The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. The Joint In-
ductive and Deductive. Hypotheses and Verification.
Chance. Induction Cannot Give Absolute Truth. We
Know in Part 79
LECTURE FIFTH.
Testimony. Is it Sufficient to Prove the Supernatural? 107
INTRODUCION.
WE have truth when our ideas are conformed
to things. The aim of this work is to show
that there is truth, that truth can be found, and
that there are tests by which we may determine
when we have found it. We do not propose to
guide inquirers in any particular department of in-
vestigation ; this can best be done in introductions
to the books and lectures treating of the several
branches of knowledge.
Kant and the German metaphysicians have shown
again and again that there is no one absolute cri-
terion to settle all truth for us ; that will determine,
for example, at one and the same time, whether
there is a fourth dimension of space, whether the
planet Jupiter is inhabited, where the soul goes at
death, and what kind of crops we are to have next
year. But it can be shown that there are truths
which maybe ascertained and that there are criteria
which prove when they are so ; and these clear, sure,
and capable of being definitely expressed. But the
test which settles one truth for us does not neces-
10 Introduction.
sarily settle all others, or any others. It is neces-
sary to distinguish between different sorts of truth,
and we should be satisfied when we find a test of
each kind. I am convinced that historical, scien-
tific, and logical investigation has advanced so far
that we can now enunciate criteria for every kind
of truth. The aim of the criteria, it should be
noticed, is not so much to help us to discover truth
as to determine when we have found it.
LECTURE FIRST.
TRUTHS TO BE ASSUMED.
I.
r~PHE mind must start with something. There
JL are things which it knows at once. I know
pleasure and pain. I do more: I know myself as
feeling pleasure and pain. I know that I am sur-
rounded with material objects, extended and exer-
cising properties. I know, by barely contemplating
them, that these two straight lines cannot contain a
space. These are called first truths. There must
be first truths before there can be secondary ones ;
original before there can be derivative ones. Can
we discover and enunciate these ? I believe we
can.
We are not at liberty, indeed, to appeal to a first
principle when we please, or because it suits our
purpose. When we are left without evidence we
are not therefore allowed to allege that we need no
evidence. When we are defeated in argument we
are not to be permitted to escape by falling back
on what is unproved and unprovable. It is true
that we cannot prove every thing, for this would
12 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
imply an infinite chain of proofs every link of which
would hang on another, while the whole would
hang on nothing that is, be incapable of proof.
We cannot prove every thing by mediate evidence,
but we can show that we are justified in assuming
certain things. We cannot prove by any external
circumstance that two straight lines cannot inclose
a space, but we can show that we are justified in
assuming it. We are to " prove all things." But
there are some things which have their proof in
themselves. We discover it by simply looking at
the things. It is thus that we know that we exist ;
that the shortest distance between two points is a
straight line ; that hypocrisy is a sin. We need no
external evidence. The evidence is in the thing; in
the very nature of the thing. We do not require
mediate, we have immediate proof.
II.
This kind of truth is to be distinguished from two
others for which we require what is called mediate
proof. First, there are cases in which we get this
by simply thinking. A truth being allowed we in-
fer something else from it. Thus, being assured that
all men are responsible, we argue that heathens,
being men, are responsible. Secondly, in other
cases we need observation and a gathering of facts,
Truths to be Assumed. 13
that is induction ; in order to the discovery of a gen-
eral fact or law. It is thus that we have discovered
that a year consists of so many days ; thus that
Newton discovered the law of gravitation, and Dai-
ton that of definite proportions in the composition
of bodies. These two last kinds of cases, which
may be called the logical and inductive, differ from
the first, which may be called the metaphysical. In
this lecture first truths are treated of; in those that
follow, reasoned and observational truths. In all the
three our aim is to discover the tests.
III.
The evidence of the first class of truths is discov-
ered by what is called Intuition, which looks directly
on the objects ; the truth is therefore called Intui-
tive. It is also called First, or Primary, as it is the
first in the order of nature and things. It is desig-
nated as Fundamental in that it bears up other
truths. It is described as Necessary inasmuch as,
perceiving the objects directly, we cannot be made to
believe otherwise. Since the publication of Kanfs
Kritic of Pure Reason it is more frequently de-
scribed as a priori in that it is known prior to a
gathered experience, the truth discovered by which
is called a posteriori. It maybe spoken of as Origi-
nal, as opposed to what is Derived. These are not
14 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
the most prominent truths to the ordinary observer ;
they lie deep down in the soul ; they are the foun-
dation on which other truths are lajd.
They are numerous and varied. Some of them,
and these the first and original ones, are cognition
of things. Thus we all know body, with its proper-
ties, and self or spirit, with its properties. Some of
them are beliefs such as our belief in space and
time and in their continuity. From these arise
judgments, in which we compare two or more cog-
nitions and beliefs and discover a relation between
them. These judgments may be arranged under
eight heads. ) In identity, we declare that it is im-
possible to be and not to be at the same time. 3 In
comprehension, we declare that the whole is equal
to the sum of its parts. In resemblance, we affirm
that what is true of a class must be true of all the
members of the class. - We know that body is in
space. AVe know that all events happen in time.
In quantity we are sure that equals added to equals
are equals. *t In contemplating things as acting we
maintain that every property implies a substance.
When we see an effect we are sure that it has had a
cause. These are intellectual cognitions, beliefs, and
judgments. But we have also primary moral con-
victions. We know at once the distinction between
moral good and evil ; we declare love to our neigh-
Truths to be Assumed. 15
bors to be a virtue binding upon us, and we need
no one to argue with us to convince us that to tell
a lie or cheat our neighbor is evil.
IV.
These primitive convictions run through our
thoughts, ideas, and acts. Every man acts upon
them. We are sure that we exist and that we have
a body, extended, and acting on us and other objects.
We know that we are the same persons to-day that
we were yesterday. The creditor, when he receives
only part of what is owing him, tells his debtor that
this is less than the whole. When a man knows
that spring, summer, autumn, and winter make up
the seasons he expects when the three first are past
that winter is coming. A farmer does not propose
to inclose a field by two straight fences. When
we awake from sleep we are confident that we have
been alive all the time since we fell asleep. The
clerk in his calculations acts on the principle that
equals subtracted from equals are equals. When
we see a body we are convinced that it has
properties. When we see a house on fire we are
sure it has been ignited. The circumstance that all
men act upon these principles led the Scottish
school of metaphysicians to call them principles of
common sense.
16 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
V.
We may assume all such truths. They do not
need proof. A man who would seek it must be be-
side himself. He may be compared to one going
out with a taper to see the sun. These truths shine
in their own light* We may use them in all our
thoughts and inquiries and in all our arguments
with our fellow-men, provided we properly enun-
ciate them.
A man had better assume his own existence. He
might find it difficult to establish it by argument.
But if he is determined, by all means let him try it;
he will only be impressed the more with the impos-
sibility of his doing it. How will he do it? To
what will he appeal ? How will he begin ? With
the testimony of his neighbors ? He will find that
he has clearer proof of his own existence than of
that of his neighbor, and that he cannot prove the
existence of his neighbors till he first proves his
own. It is the same with all other self-evident
truths. We cannot prove them by other truths, but
we may use them to prove other truths.
VI.
Let us seek to determine precisely the nature of
these truths. They may be viewed under three
aspects aspects of one and the same thing.
Truths to be Assumed. 17
1. They are Perceptions of Things. We perceive
that body is extended, and that it exercises proper-
ties, such as resistance to our energy and to other
bodies. We are conscious of self as thinking and
feeling. We believe that space and time extend
beyond what we observe of them. We decide at
once that contradictions cannot both be true ; that
the abstract implies the concrete; that universals
imply singulars ; that we cannot be both here and
in China at the same time ; that two halves make up
the whole ; that properties imply a substance ; that
a change is produced by an adequate power. We
look on self-sacrifice, for a good cause, as good, and
treachery as an evil. All these perceptions are di-
rect, and are in consciousness.
2. They are Regulative Principles. \ do not be-
lieve that there is any such thing as innate ideas.-
Uocke exploded them forever. But the mind of
the child is not altogether a nonentity or a blank.
It has powers or capacities ready to be exercised
on the appropriate objects being presented. These
are in the mind as gravitation lies in matter, as life
remains in the seed all winter, as seeds have re-
mained, with life in them, in the tombs of Egypt for
thousands of years.
Mr. Mill has shown that all the powers in nature
are tendencies. They tend to act according to
2
18 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
their nature. Thus oxygen tends to join in definite
proportions with hydrogen to form water ; bodies
attract other bodies to them inversely according to
the square of the distance. Our ideas tend, unless
interfered with by external objects, to follow each
other in a certain order ; when two ideas have been
in the mind together, the one tends to cull the
other, and like suggests like. In much the same
way the powers of intuition abiding in the mind
ever tend to act, and are called forth by objects. In
a sense, they so far direct and control the mind. Of
the principle we are not conscious, but we are con-
scious of its exercises, which are the perceptions of
which I have been speaking under last head.
3. They may become Axioms. All the percep-
tions of which I have been discoursing are in the
first instance singular or individual, and not abstract
or general. We do not say of every two straight
lines that they cannot inclose space, but of these
two straight lines before us that they cannot in-
close a space. We do not at first announce that all
men are responsible, but of ourselves or some other
person that he is responsible. I do not formally
proclaim the metaphysical principle, every effect has
a cause, but of this particular effect, the burning of a
rick of hay, that it has had a cause. But then we
can generalize our individual perceptions. We see
Truths to be Assumed. 19
that what is true of the object or case before us is
true of the same object or cases every-where and
in all places. We now reach general maxims true
of the objects at all times and in all circumstances.
Fraud cannot be good on the planet Earth, or the
planet Jupiter, or the dog-star Sirius. Parallel
lines, we see, will never meet in earth, or star, or
the space beyond. We have now such axioms as
those of Euclid. We have moral maxims such as
the Ten Commandments, and the precepts in the
Sermon on the Mount.
VII.
But what we have specially to do here is to
enumerate the criteria by which such truths may
be tried, and which will settle for us whether we are
entitled to assume without any mediate proof
what may be presented to us by ourselves or others
for our acceptance.
SELF-EVIDENCE is the primary test of that kind
of truth which we are entitled to assume without
mediate proof. We perceive the object to exist by
simply looking at it. The truth shines in its own
light, and, in order to see, we do not require light to
shine upon it from any other quarter. We are
conscious, directly, of self as understanding, as think-
ing, or as feeling, and we need no indirect evidence.
20 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
Thus, too, we perceive by the eye a colored surface,
and by the muscular touch a resisting object, and
by the moral sense the evil of hypocrisy. The
proof is seen by the contemplative mind in the
things themselves. We are convinced that we need
no other proof. A proffered probation from any
other quarter would not add to the strength of our
conviction. We do not seek any external proof,
and if any were pressed upon us we would feel it to
be unnecessary nay, to be an encumbrance, and
almost an insult to our understanding.
But let us properly understand the nature of this
self-evidence. It has constantly been misunder-
stood and misrepresented. It is not a mere feel-
ing or an emotion belonging to the sensitive part
of our nature. It is not blind instinct, or a belief
in what we cannot see. It is not above reason or
below reason ; it is an exercise of primary reason
prior, in the nature of things, to any derivative ex-
ercises. It is not, as Kant represents it, of the
nature of a form in the mind imposed on objects
contemplated and giving them a shape and color.
It is a perception, it is an intuition of the object.
We inspect these two straight lines, and perceive
them to be such in their nature that they cannot
inclose a space. If two straight lines go on for an
inch without coming nearer each other, we are sure
Truths to be Assumed. 21
they will be no nearer if lengthened millions of
miles as straight lines. On contemplating deceit
we perceive the act to be wrong in its very nature.
It is not a mere sentiment such as we feel on the
contemplation of pleasure and pain ; it is a knowl-
edge of an object. It is not the mind imposing or
superinducing on the thing what is not in the thing ;
it is simply the mind perceiving what is in the
thing. It is not merely subjective, it is also object-
ive to use phrases very liable to be misunder-
stood ; or, to speak clearly, the perceiving mind
(subject) perceives the thing (object). This is the
most satisfactory of all evidence ; and this because
in it we are immediately cognizant of the thing.
There is no evidence so ready to carry conviction.
We cannot so much as conceive or imagine any
evidence stronger.
NECESSITY is a secondary criterion. It has been
represented by Leibnitz and many metaphysicians
as the first and the essential test. This I regard as
a mistake. Self-evidence comes first, and the other
follows and is derived from it. We perceive an ob-
ject before us and know so much of its nature ; and
we cannot be made to believe that there is no
such object, or that it is not what we know it to be.
I demur to the idea so often pressed upon us that
we are to believe a certain proposition because we
22 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
are necessitated to believe in it. This sounds too
much like fatality to be agreeable to the free spirit
of man. It is because we are conscious of self
that we cannot be made to believe that we do not
exist. The account given of the principle by Her-
bert Spencer is a perverted and a vague one : all
propositions are to be accepted as unquestionable
whose negative is inconceivable. This does not
give us a direct criterion as self-evidence does, and
the word inconceivable is very ambiguous. But
necessity, while it is not the primary is a potent
secondary test. The self-evidence convinces us ;
the necessity prevents us from holding any different
conviction.
CATHOLICITY or Universality is the tertiary test.
By this is meant that it is believed by all men. It
is the argument from catholicity, or common con-
sent the sensus communis. All men are found to
assent to the particular truth when it is fairly laid
before them, as, for instance, that the shortest dis-
tance between two points is a straight line. It
would not be wise nor safe to make this the primary
test, as some of the ancients did. For, in the com-
plexity of thought, in the constant actual mixing
up of experiential with immediate evidence, it is
difficult to determine what all men believe. It is
even conceivable that all men might be deceived
Truths to be Assumed. 23
by reason of the deceitfulness of the faculties and
the illusive nature of things. But this tertiary
comes in to corroborate the primary test, or rather
to show that the proposition can stand the primary
test which proceeds on the observation of the very
thing, in which it is satisfactory to find that all
men are agreed.
Combine these and we have a perfect means of
determining what are first truths. The first gives
us a personal assurance of which we can never be
deprived ; the second secures that we cannot con-
quer it ; the third, that we can appeal to all men as
having the same conviction. The first makes known
realities ; the second restrains us from breaking off
from them ; the third shows us that we are sur-
rounded with a community of beings to whom we
can address ourselves in the assurance of meeting
with a response. The first is the most satisfactory,
as it brings us closest to things. The second is the
most definite and decisive, as it admits of no denial.
The third brings us into closest relationship with our
fellow men and gives us confidence in addressing
them. The three constitute a treble cord which
cannot be broken.
It should be noticed that these tests apply not only
to our primitive knowledge but to our primitive
beliefs. We have such beliefs. We believe in the
24 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
existence of things which we cannot know by the
senses, which we cannot see or hear, smell or taste
or touch. We believe in space and time as stretching
away beyond our ken. We believe in the infinite,
though we may not be able fully to comprehend it.
Our beliefs require to be tested fully and as much as
our knowledge. A large number of men and women,
even some who are shrewd and wise, are apt to
cherish fancies which have no realities correspond-
ing to them. There are classes of people who are
particularly addicted to such visions. You hear
them say, " I feel this to be true. I must believe
it." A more cultivated set of people tell you this is
so interesting that I must cleave to it. There are
numbers thus led into great extravagances of cre-
dence which expose them to ridicule or land them
in folly, or, it may be, in very serious errors or
mistakes.
Now there is a method of keeping people from
being allured into bogs by these will-o'- wisps. We
are to try the spirits whether they are of God. We
have a reliable means of trying them. We may,
we should, inquire whether what we are invited to
assume is self-evident truth and not a mere fancy ;
whether we are necessitated to believe it as we look
at the things, or whether we may not be led to
adopt or reject it by the wishes of the heart ;
Truths to be Assumed. 25
whether it is held by man as man, or merely by
people with idiosyncrasies and prejudices. Our
feelings were never meant to be the tests of truth,
though they may prompt us to seek it, may irradi-
ate it so as to make it more attractive, and instil
life into the soul and thereby prompt to action.
It is to be admitted that there is a mysticism
which is very fascinating and at times elevating, as,
for instance, in the pages of Thomas a Kempis. But
it may be delusive, and the error may be accepted
along with the truth. We may, by the criteria I
have announced, get all the good without the ac-
companying evil ; we may root out the weeds, that
the flower and fruit-bearing plants may flourish the
better. The tests clear away the mists that we may
have a full view of the beauties of the sky and
landscape.
It will be understood that what is offered in this
lecture does not profess to be the whole of knowl-
edge ; it is only primary knowledge. A far greater
number and variety of truths are reached in other
ways than by intuition, while, however, they always
presuppose it. Yet only the foundation-stones have
been laid I hope, as the Free Masons say, that
" this foundation is well laid," that it is " a sure
foundation." The mature tree is not yet before
us ; only a few seeds have been sown and some
26 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
roots planted, which are well "rooted and grounded."
These primitive truths, like the granite rocks, go
down deepest into the earth and mount the highest
toward heaven. They bind and guarantee all other
truths. They give us what no other powers can,
which sense cannot give nor understanding give
eternal truths and eternal morality. They look as
if they were the very footstool of God, before which
we bow and put up our petitions for further instruc-
tion to him who sitteth upon the throne.
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 27
LECTURE SECOND.
DISCURSIVE OR DEDUCTIVE TRUTH.
I.
WE have seen what are the truths with which
every mind starts. We are now to view it
as adding to the stock. It may do so in two ways.
It may by its own power, or by a gathered observa-
tion of facts. In this lecture I am to treat of the
first of these methods.
The process by which this end is accomplished is
discursive or deductive ; that is, we proceed from
a truth given or allowed to something else implied
in or deduced from it. It being granted that all
men are mortal, we at once conclude that this man
and that man and that we ourselves must die.
What is admitted is called the premise or prem-
ises. These may be got from one or other of
two quarters : from intuition that is, immediate
inspection of things or from induction, that is,
from a gathered collection of facts. The first of
these has been expounded in last lecture, the other
will be unfolded in the lectures which follow.
We pre-suppose, then, that the mind has got
28 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
certain facts allowed it as premises. These may be
intuitive or inductive ; one or both. In looking at
these we discover that certain truths are involved
in them and may be legitimately drawn from them.
In this lecture I am to unfold the process by which
this end is accomplished, to determine the laws,
their extent, and their limits.
The discursive process is usually described as con-
sisting of three elements the Notion, Judgment,
and Reasoning. There is the notion, which, when
expressed in language, is the term. There is judg-
ment, which, when expressed, is the proposition.
There is reasoning, which, when put in words, is
the argument. By means of each of these we reach
derivative truth, which may be rigidly tested.
Logic is the science which treats of discursive
thought. I am not, in this little work, to give a
system of logic. I use logic simply as furnishing
the criteria by which deductive truth may be tried.
The grand regulating principle of all discursive
thought is that what is drawn from the premise or
premises must be in the premises. Being there, and
being seen to be there, we draw it out. But we
must take care that what we bring out is in what
we have derived it from. This law, rigidly carried
out, will preserve us from all inconclusive reason-
ing. We cannot draw light from cucumbers, be-
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 29
cause there is no light in the cucumber. But, it
being allowed us that all men have a conscience,
we infer that this liar, though he has not obeyed it,
has a conscience. This general rule may be applied
to every kind of deduction or discursive thought,
and, taken along with other and more minute
rules founded on it, decides for us whether we are
proceeding on the laws of thought, which, being
planted or developed in our nature by God, are
always truthful and authoritative. Each of the
two great processes will be found to have its own
laws.
II.
THE NOTION OR TERM. First under this head is
the Singular notion, such as the earth, the heavens,
Homer, Shakespeare, George Washington, " sky,
mountains, rivers, winds, lake, lightnings, yea, with
clouds and thunders, and a soul to make them felt
and feeling." The singulars are always concrete;
that is, they contain an aggregate of qualities which
we call attributes ; thus, the earth has elementary
bodies and is attracted to the sun. I call such
notions Singular Concretes. Secondly, there is the
Abstract notion ; that is, notion of part of a whole,
more specially of an attribute of an object. As ex-
amples I may give, leg of table ; foot of a man ; foot
of a mountain ; gravity, beauty, honesty, human-
30 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
ity. Thirdly, there is the General notion, the uni-
versal of the schoolmen, the concept of the German,
such as stones, plants, animals, man, woman, angels.
All these contain an indefinite number of objects ;
namely, all that possess the common qualities of
the class.
Now we may derive truths from each of these
classes. Thus from singular concrete truths we
can draw abstracts; from this body before us we
can get the abstraction gravity; from this man,
manliness ; from this woman, beauty ; from Wash-
ington, patriotism. Again, from singulars we can
form generals ; by help of abstraction all can unite
things by common attributes in them, and form the
class, rose, lily, dog, horse, man, American.
Now it is of the utmost moment that we know
the nature of the notions and terms we employ. In
thinking, in reading, in speaking we should know
what sorts of terms are used ; whether they are
singular or common, concrete or abstract. In em-
ploying concretes we should ascertain, more or less
definitely, the properties possessed by them. It is
a great mistake to look upon an attribute as having
an independent existence ; gravity, for instance, has
an existence only in the bodies of which it is a
quality. In thinking, in speaking of universal or
classes we should have an idea, the clearer the
Discursive or
better, of the qualities which combine the ob-
jects.
Of all fallacies that of confusion is the most com-
mon and the most misleading, and of all fallacies
of confusion that of notions or terms is the most
injurious, being more so than those of judgment
or reasoning. When an object or a cause is placed
fairly before us we can commonly judge of it and
reason about it correctly. But when it is put in
imperfectly understood terms our thinking is apt
to be perplexed and mistaken. I believe that more
than one half of the errors of thinking arise from
confusion in our Notions. The prejudices of the
heart work on these, " the wish is father of the
thought/' and the issue is misapprehension and
error, and, it may be, sin.
There has been an immense amount of contro-
versy about abstract and general terms. It was the
grand topic of discussion among the scholastics in
the Middle Ages, and I am convinced that it is of
vast moment to clear up the subject. It is still in
a confused state. I feel no difficulty in comprehend-
ing the nature of the abstract and general notion.
The question is, What reality is there in these no-
tions ? I think it can be answered clearly and sat-
isfactorily. The abstract has no independent reality
its reality is in the things from which it is ab-
32 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
stracted ; thus honesty has a reality in the honest
man. The universal or class notion has a reality in
the objects embraced in it and in the qualities com-
bining them. The common notion, " vertebrate
animal," has a reality in the animals and in the ver-
tebrate column which they all possess.
III.
JUDGMENT; which, when expressed in language,
is the Proposition. In this we compare two no-
tions ; or, rather, the two things embraced in the
notions declaring their agreement or disagreement.
In making the comparison we have to look to the
nature of the notions and observe what is embraced
in them. The comparison we make may be viewed
under two aspects. " The bird sings." Here we
have two terms. " The bird " and " sings," or, " is
singing." The one of these is singular " the bird ; "
the other is common " is singing." In compre-
hension, that is, in regard to the qualities pos-
sessed by it, it means that it has " the attribute of
singing;" in extension, that is, in regard to the
objects in its class, it declares that the bird is
" among singing, creatures." These two are in-
volved in each other ; the one implies the other.
In forming these judgments we should attend
carefully to the nature of the two things compared,
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 33
and, as we do so, we may draw a number of infer-
ences. These have a place, and an important place,
allotted to them in all advanced works on logic.
They are called Immediate Inferences. I call them
Implied Judgments. Thus by subalternation, that
is, of things under classes, we infer that if all men
be responsible the heathen are responsible. Under
extension we say what is true of a class is true
of each member of the class ; for example, what is
true of all roses is true of the rose before us. Under
conversion we turn the subject into the predicate,
and the predicate into the subject ; thus, it being
given that all poets are men of genius, it follows
that some men of genius not necessarily all men
of genius are poets. When we have contradictory
propositions we are sure that when the one is true
the other must be false.
The following inferences have been drawn in
Thomson's Outlines of tlie Laivs of Thought from
the proposition men are responsible :
IN EXTENSION.
Every man is in the class responsible.
This man is responsible.
Some men are responsible.
Some responsible beings are men.
It is not true that no men are responsible.
It is not true that some men are not responsible, etc.
3
34 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
IN COMPREHENSION.
Man exists.
Responsibility is a real attribute.
Responsibility is an attribute of every man.
Responsibility is an attribute of this man.
Responsibility is an attribute of every tribe of men.
Responsibility is an attribute of some men.
Irresponsibility may be denied of all men.
No man is irresponsible.
Irresponsible beings are not men.
Men of wealth are responsible with their wealth.
To punish men is to punish responsible men, etc.
IV.
REASONING. This is the highest form of the
discursive processes. Every human being is em-
ploying it. The infant, the child, is using it per-
petually in drawing conclusions from what he ob-
serves ; in determining, for instance, the distances of
objects, which it has been shown he does not know
instinctively. The very fool uses it, only, however,
about insignificant objects, say, his animal wants,
as when he argues that food will satisfy his hunger.
The madman, commonly starting from mistaken
premises, from a wrong idea and belief impressed
upon his mind, often bursts forth into wonderful
displays of it. The intellectual ability of a man
(I do not say his genius) is shown in the extent and
agility with which he reasons. There is reasoning,
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 35
in a lower or higher shape, in the every-day trans-
actions of life, as when we avoid danger and seek
to secure what will gratify us. It has a neces-
sary place in all the sciences which combine in a
system the objects which present themselves to
us. Mathematics, beginning with definitions and
axioms which are self-evident, consists in reason-
ing throughout, and this often of a very deli-
cate and recondite nature, as in quaternions and
functions.
Now it is surely of vast moment, since so much
of mental activity is thus exercised, that we should
have decisive tests to determine when we are reason-
ing correctly. Now we have had this ever since the
days of Aristotle, who analyzed the reasoning pro-
cesses for us in the fourth century before Christ.
Attempts have been made once and again to set
aside his account, but all of these, after a brief ap-
parent success, are admitted to have been failures.
This analytic sets before us all the forms which
reasoning takes, and thus enables us to try every
sort of pretended argument.
The whole of reasoning is founded on one simple
law called the Dictum of Aristotle, which takes two
forms. Put in the form of extension, that is, of the
objects which the terms contain, it is, "Whatever
is true of a class is true of all the members of a
36 The Tes.ts of The Various Kinds of Truth.
class." It may also take the form of comprehen-
sion, that is, of the attributes of the class. " A
part of a part of an attribute will be part of the
whole attribute." Reasoning, when spread out,
takes the form of a syllogism, in which we have
two premises and a conclusion. First, we have two
notions given us in the premises, and we cannot,
on looking on them, say whether they do or do not
agree. We are not told in Scripture whether John
the Baptist was a priest, but we call in a third term,
son, of a priest, and we compare each of the other
two with this third term. We know that the sons
of priests were also priests, and we have the syl-
logism :
The sons of priests were priests ;
The Baptist was the son of a priest ;
Therefore he was a priest.
This type determines for us whether reasoning is
valid. If it cannot be put in this form it is invalid.
This is the Categorical form. But, being guided
by the same dictum, it may take a Hypothetical
shape :
If this man has consumption
He will soon die.
He has consumption.
He will soon die.
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 37
Or some cases may be put conveniently in the
form of a Disjunctive :
Lines are either straight or curved.
The line A B is not straight ;
It must be curved.
Or it may be best exhibited in the form of a
dilemma :
If a man can help a thing he should not fret about it.
If he cannot help a thing he should not fret about it.
But he can either help a thing or not help it.
In either case he should not fret about it.
In some cases we have a seriate or chained rea-
soning by a series of arguments.
I simply refer to these forms. I am not to
spread out their details. This is done with care
and accuracy in every Logical treatise of any value.
They can all be reduced to the form of the syllo-
gism which depends on the Dictum. These Logical
forms supply us with tests clear and certain for
every kind of reasoning, in science or in the busi-
ness of life.
Logic has at times been exposed to ridicule be-
cause of its multiplied technical rules, which, it is
alleged, rather perplex and confuse the mind, and
lead it into sophistry. Thus the great English
satirist describes Hudibras :
38 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth.
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundedly skilled in analytic ;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair twixt south and south-west side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute.
The pilot of a ship often needs to decide between
narrower distinctions than that between west and
north-west side, and if he neglects to do so his ves-
sel may be wrecked. So every man, in his voyage
through the troubled ocean of life, needs to make
more delicate distinctions than the pilot or the
geographer. Error will present itself in forms so
like the truth that it is very apt to deceive us, and
so we need rules which will accept the true and re-
ject the false. This is the use of all those formulae
which Logic has drawn out with such care. It is
intended, not to produce and foster wrangling, but
to discourage and arrest it, and to show us the way
by which certainty may be reached.
V.
We have now before us the operations of discur-
sive thought, embracing the Notion, Judgment, and
Reasoning. The scientific expression of these con-
stitutes Logic. The science can determine for us
whether the deductions drawn out by ourselves or
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 39
others are valid. Let us look for a little at the
way in which Logic accomplishes this end by the
laws which it lays down.
The formation of notions is governed by laws.
These can be ascertained and enunciated. Deduc-
tions can be drawn from them.
From the singular concrete notions we can draw
others. From an apple before us we can get the
notion of its taste, its color, its weight, its odor.
These are abstract notions. Again, from a number
of apples we can collect them into a class and affirm
of this object before us that it is an apple. Let us
understand correctly what is the nature of these
two notions, the abstract and the concrete. Take
gravitation some scientific men all but worship it."
Let me tell them that gravitation has no existence
save in the bodies which it draws toward each
other. Newton, when he discovered the law, looked
to the bodies in which it acts: to the apple falling
to the ground, to the moon drawn toward the
earth. So much for an abstraction ; it exists as an
attribute in the objects from which it is taken.
There is a class notion ; there is not only this
apple which we know by the senses, but there is
the class apple; embracing all the apples which
have ever existed, all the apples which ever shali
exist, nay, all the apples which children have
40 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
longed for in their fancies, all the apples which
poets or painters have drawn. The class has an
existence, but not an independent one ; it has an
existence simply in the objects and in the qualities
which combine them.
Now certain rules can be laid down as to these
abstract and general notions. I. The abstract im-
plies the concrete in which it exists. II. The gen-
eral implies particular things of which, under the
bond which connects them, it exists. It is asked,
what sort of existence have abstract and general
notions? You hear people say of certain notions
that they are nonentities ; they are mere abstrac-
tions. But all abstractions are not nonentities;
The love of a mother is not a nonentity it ex-
ists in the mother. Virtue, though an abstract
term, is not a fiction, it exists in all virtuous men
and women. You tell me that you know by the
senses what an apple is, but as to the class apple
it is a fiction. I ask, What makes you put all
these apples into one class and to recognize an
apple when you see it ? You must answer that all
these apples have certain common properties. This,
then, is the reality in the class. The class verte-
brate has a reality in the vertebrate column which
they all possess. III. When the object is real the
abstract is also a reality in the thing ; when the
Discursive or Deductive Truth. 41
things generalized are real the concept which binds
them is also real.
VI.
In the proposition we must carefully consider
how the two terms stand toward each other. We
must particularly inquire what is their extension
and what their comprehension. In subalternation
we must see that the species are included in the
genus. In conversion the rule is that the term be
not more extensive in the conclusion than in the
premise.
VII.
In Reasoning Logic teaches us to look to our
terms. It insists that there be three and only three
terms: two extremes and a middle which unites
them. It shows us that they can be put in the form
of a syllogism if the reasoning is valid. If they can-
not it is a proof that the reasoning is not valid.
In all these ways Logic gives us decisive tests to
show us when our conclusions follow from the
premises.
It has so often been explained that it scarcely
needs to be repeated, that Logic does not give us
the capacity of reasoning. It proceeds on the idea
that we reason naturally by the powers which God
has given us. It shows us what are the exact proc-
42 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
esses involved and thence formulates rules to guide
us to truth and save us from error.
Logic has been called the Grammar of Thought.
Logic is not the same as Grammar, but it is analo-
gous to it. Grammar does not profess to teach us
how to speak or write, but it explains the laws
involved and teaches how to speak and write cor-
rectly. So Logic does not claim to give us the
power of thinking, but it shows us how to think
accurately, and to correct false reasoning.
Grammar does not make any man an orator.
Neither does Logic make man a powerful reasoner.
But grammar will give every man of ordinary in-
telligence the power of speaking accurately. Logic
will not enable every man to reason so consecu-
tively as Aristotle or the Apostle Paul or Bishop
Butler, but it will teach every man of common un-
derstanding to reason clearly and conclusively, and
thus help him to convince his audience. It is not
needful that the orator should construe his sen-
tences as he utters them ; but it may be evident all
the while that we have the result of a grammatical
training in these well-constructed sentences. So it
is not necessary that the pleader should put his
argument in syllogistic form, but it may be seen at
every step that he is giving us the result of a
thorough logical training.
Inductive Truths. 43
LECTURE THIRD.
INDUCTIVE TRUTHS.
I.
SCATTERED FACTS.
AN eminent man is reported as saying that there
are more false facts than false theories. There
is truth in this. Facts are apt to have adjuncts to
them in the reports given by others, and even in
our own apprehensions of them, or they are so mu-
tilated that they take an entirely distorted form.
We all know how, in story-telling, additions and
subtractions are apt to be made even by honest
narrators, so as to make it more attractive and
picturesque.
The individual facts are primarily made known
by the senses. In these there may be very numer-
ous and complicated details, and any of these if left
out may so far distort our apprehensions and the
account we give of them. Besides, sensations, feel-
ings, fancies, inferences, attachments, and repug-
nances may mingle with our pure perception of
sense and cast a glow or a gloom around them. In
these sections I am showing that we have to guard
44 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
against these temptations, and that when we do so
we can arrive at positive truth.
Observation Proper and Experiment. These are
the two ways in which we obtain facts. In the
former we view objects simply as they present them-
selves ; in the latter we put them in new positions.
The advantage of Experiment over Observation
Proper (which may be so designated as Experi-
ment is, after all, a kind of Observation) is that it
enables us to perceive the proper action of the sev-
eral agencies joined in nature. We wish to know
whether bodies, whatever be their weight, fall to
the ground in equal times. Common observation
seems to show that they do not, as we see the gold
nugget and the leaf falling at very different times.
But we put the gold and the leaf into the exhausted
receiver of an air-pump and find them fall the same
instant. What we should do in all observation is
to note precisely what has occurred, and to report
it accurately without any additions, subtractions, or
coloring; we must be especially on our guard
against torturing the facts in order to make them
give a certain kind of testimony.
THE SENSES. The older Greek philosophers
adopted the common opinion that the senses de-
ceive. The skeptics took advantage of the doctrine
and argued that if the senses deceive there is
Inductive Truths. 45
nothing we can trust in. The sounder philosophers
met them by calling in reason, which corrected the
illusions of the senses and conducted to truth. Aris-
totle corrected both these forms of error, and
showed that the supposed deception arises, not from
the senses themselves, but from the use that is
made of their intimations.
To save the senses it is necessary to draw certain
distinctions. In particular we should distinguish
between our original and derived perceptions. The
former are intuitive, without any process of infer-
ence, having the sanction of the author of our con-
stitution, and never deceiving us. The latter imply
inferences from the revelations of sense perception,
and there may be errors in them.
I believe we can approximately determine what
are the original perceptions of the various senses.
By several of the senses we seem to perceive merely
the bodily organs as affected. This is the case with
taste and with smell, in which we discern simply the
palate and the nostrils with a certain sensitive ex-
pression of the palate and the nostrils. It is the
same also, I believe, with hearing and with touch
proper, or feeling, in which we know simply an affec-
tion of the ear and the periphery of the body. I
rather think that by the muscular senses and the
eye we discern more ; a body resisting our organ-
46 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
ism and a colored surface affecting us. In all these
intuitive perceptions there is no ratiocination, and
there are and can be no mistakes. But in all be-
yond there are inferences, and in these there may
be less or more of error. A person tells us that he
had mutton to dinner, whereas all he knew was that
there was a certain taste in his mouth which he
argued was that of mutton. He further lets us
know that he felt the smell of roses in a certain
garden, where he also heard a flute playing, whereas
immediately he felt only an odor in his nostrils and
a sound in his ear. He is sure that he was struck
in the dark with a man's hand, whereas the blow
was from a stick. He depones that he saw a man
strike his wife, while all he saw was an action of
one figure upon another, and it turns out that the
woman was not the man's wife. Hence arise some
of the mistakes in witness-bearing; they are not lies
of the senses, but errors in the inferences we draw
from them.
In all such cases we form a general rule out of
certain experiences, and in hasty thinking we ille-
gitimately apply it. We regard sound as coming
to our ear in a straight line from the sounding body,
but the undulations have been reflected from a wall ;
and we place the bell from which they have come
in that wall, whereas the belfry is actually in a dif-
Inductive Truths. 4Y
ferent direction. It is on this principle that the
ventriloquist proceeds when he makes a human
voice come from a post or an animal. Having laid
down the rule that when there are few observable
things between us and an object it must be near,
we look on that island seen across the sea as much
closer to us than it is.
Some other distinctions must be attended to.
Sensations and feelings of pleasure and pain, of
beauty and ugliness, associate themselves with all
our perceptions, and are apt to give a color and
even a shape to the actual things. We remember
more particulars about the objects that excite us,
whether joyously or grievously, than those that are
dull and commonplace, and we give these a large,
often an undue, place in our narrative, and thus dis-
tort them and give them a different meaning.
The rapid inferences from the intimations of the
senses may at times serve a good purpose. They
may prepare us to meet and avoid danger when
cool and correct argument would not be quick
enough. A fire-bell, the jolt of a carriage in which
we are riding, a stumble in walking, the fog-whistle
at sea may at times raise up an unnecessary alarm,
but ,the calm reflection which succeeds will soon
dissipate this, and at other times they save us from
danger.
48 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
We have abundant means of correcting the hasty
judgments. We have other senses at hand to cor-
rect the apparent deceptions of one sense. We
imagine the figures raised optically by magicians to
be real, but we can dissipate the illusion by thrust-
ing our hand into the specter. We may mistake
beef for mutton as we eat it, but it is easy to apply
to the person who prepared the food to set us right.
A diseased eye may present objects double, but the
touch will correct the mistake. In all cases we can
secure that what is told us by the senses is true by
judiciously using the means of correction at our
disposal.
SELF -CONSCIOUSNESS. Metaphysicians com-
monly maintain that the revelations of conscious-
ness are always to be trusted ; that they settle
every thing in the last resort, and are, in fact, ulti-
mate and infallible. But there are physiologists,
and, of a later date, even metaphysicians, who assert
that the acts of consciousness are variable and often
deceitful. They show us that people often misap-
prehend what their real feelings are, and give a
wrong account of them. It is alleged that there
are persons who say that they believe certain tenets
when they do not, only imagining that they do.
There are cases of persons with a " double con-
sciousness," as it is called ; remembering, in the one
Inductive Truths. , 49
state, the experience of that state, but without
any remembrance of it in the other.
But in all such cases we attribute to conscious-
ness what it is not responsible for. In regard to
the inner, as in regard to external, sense, we have
to draw distinctions if we would determine their pre-
cise testimony. It is acknowledged by all psych-
ologists that, properly speaking, we are conscious
of self only in its present state. In that state there
are various affections: there are sensations and feel-
ings and inferences along with the pure conscious-
ness, and we are apt to mix them up with each
other, and thereby breed confusion in our appre-
hensions and in the account we give of what is in
our mind. When we review our consciousness we
are dependent on our memory, and we may omit
some aspects of our experience and add associated
affections. Here, as in regard to the bodily senses,
distance is apt to lend enchantment to the view.
The hypochondriac magnifies his sorrows, and the
gay youth his pleasures in the past. People are apt
to think their youth was happier than it really was ;
they remember their joys and forget their little dis-
appointments, which were then felt to be so great
and now appear so little.
What is so called is not really " double conscious-
ness." It arises from a diseased state of the brain
4
50 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
hindering physical action. The person is unable to
recall what has been laid up in the past, and he
lives in the present and lays up a new experience,
which he uses in his new state, but which he may
lose in a later condition of his brain. The man is
not under a double consciousness, but in two states,
in each of which the consciousness may be correct.
It thus appears that man may trust in what his
consciousness really reveals. It makes known to us
self in its present state. It should be noticed that
it does not know merely a quality of self, such as
thinking or feeling ; it knows self as thinking or
feeling. This is of the nature of a first truth or an
intuition ; we perceive the very thing. This self
constitutes what we call personality ; that is, we
know ourselves as persons. On comparing the self
as presently known with the past self as then known
we declare ourselves to be the same. This is per-
sonal identity ; which is a self-evident, necessary,
and universal truth.
MEMORY. The vulgar opinion is that the mem-
ory may deceive. But it does so only as the senses
deceive. The mistakes are not in the memory
proper, but in the associated affections and the in-
ferences drawn from them. We ask a man how
long it is since he visited us. His recollection is
dim, and he makes the time longer than it is six
Inductive Truths. 51
years instead of five. It is not possible for him to
remember his continued existence during these
years, any more than it is possible for the eye to
see every point in space between us and objects five
or six miles off. In both cases he has to avail him-
self of intervening objects. The event, he remem-
bers, took place after his marriage, seven years ago,
for his wife was with him ; and before his mother's
death, four years ago, for he remembers we made
inquiries about her health. But he does not recol-
lect at what precise date between these two occur-
rences the visit was paid. The reminiscence was
dim, and he concludes that the event is more dis-
tant than it really is. Our memories in regard to
time all need such mile-stones, or rather time-
marks, to enable us to measure the distances. Now,
in all these processes there may be mistakes. It is
much the same with our recollections of the other
circumstances connected with events, such as the
shape and color of objects, their position in relation
to other things, their surroundings, their anteced-
ents and consequents. The vision is obscure and
we have to fill it up, and we do so by fancies of our
own, which so far modify the scene, perhaps per-
vert it. We are apt to join causes and consequences
with the bare occurrences. This is especially apt
to be the case with conversations, with the sentences
52 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
uttered by ourselves or by others. We recollect
how we felt, what we meant to say, what effect was
produced on us by what others said, and we con-
found these with what was actually uttered. Hence
the misunderstandings, the perversions which are so
apt to appear in the reports of conversations. In
the complicated scenes through which we have to
pass we remember those parts that have been most
vivid these, I suppose, have impressed themselves
most deeply on our organism, and the others are
feebler. The consequence is that the record has
faded in some places, and we make additions in
order to complete it. In this way we clothe our
bare memories with dresses which may make them
look sadder or more joyful than the events really
were at the time.
But it is always possible to distinguish between
our original and proper recollection and our super-
added and fictitious ones. Those who are consci-
entious will be careful not to add out of their own
stores to their memories. When the reminiscence
is dim they will at once confess it, especially in wit-
ness-bearing, and when the character of a fellow-
man may be affected. In all scenes which we wish
to remember accurately we will take care to note
the exact incidents at the time they occur. There
are events of which we are certain that they have
Inductive Truths. 53
happened. I might have treated of testimony here
as it gives us facts to be put under law, but as the
subject is to be fully treated in Lecture Fifth I re-
fer it to that place.
II.
INDUCTION.
This consists essentially in gathering facts in
order to ascertain the order that they follow, which
will be found to consist in laws which they obey.
It was known to Aristotle that the mind starts
with the singular (TO tmdarov) before it rises to the
universal (TO naBo^ov), which, as he expresses it,
may be first in the order of nature, while the singu-
lars are first in the order of time. He practiced the
method in his natural history, very specially by the
collections which were supplied by his pupil, Alex-
ander the Great. But he cannot be said to have sys-
tematically expounded induction as a method of
discovering truth. This was reserved for Francis Ba-
con, who enjoined that in observational science the
mind should begin with particulars, which are to be
collected and collated, and then rise to minor, mid-
dle, and major axioms, and thence finally to causes
and forms. All this was to be done not fler sattum,
but by gradual steps. The method has since been
made more definite by Sir John Herschel, in his
54 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
Natural Philosophy ; by Dr. Whewell, in his various
works on The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences;
specially by John S. Mill, in his Logic, and by others.
The method will become more perfected as science
advances with its observations and experiments, with
its instruments and its critical examinations. That
method has a Means and an End. The Means are
observation with analysis. The End is the dis-
covery of laws.
III.
Analysis and Synthesis. By the former we sepa-
rate a concrete or complex object into its parts. In
chemistry there is an actual separation of one ele-
ment from another ; say the oxygen from the hydro-
gen with which it is combined in water. But in
most investigations the separation is in thought.
Thus in all bodies we find both extension and en-
ergy, which cannot be separated in fact. Thus
logicians analyze discursive thought into simple ap-
prehension, judgment, and reasoning, or in the ex-
pression of these into the term, the proposition and
argument. The process is performed by abstrac-
tion, in which we contemplate in thought a part of
a whole presenting itself, more particularly an at-
tribute of an object, say gravitation. In analysis
we separate the whole into its several parts. Ab-
Inductive Truths. 55
straction can be performed on every object, as every
object has more than one quality, and we can fix
on any one of these. Analysis can be performed
only when we have such an acquaintance with an
object as to know all its parts.
The exercise of abstraction, and, when it is avail-
able, of analysis, is required in every kind of inves-
tigation. Bacon speaks of induction commencing
with "the necessary rejections and exclusions,"
that is, the separating of the matter to be investi-
gated from the extraneous objects with which it
may be associated in nature. Whately says (Logic)
that in teaching a science the analytical mode is
the more interesting, easy, and natural kind of in-
troduction, as being the form in which the first in-
vention or discovery of any kind of system must
originally have taken place. Whewell gives an apt
name to the procedure, which he recommends as
the " Decomposition of Facts." It serves not only
to separate objects from others, but to break them
down, so that we may obtain a better acquaintance
with them with their internal structure and their
several qualities. It is a process to be employed
throughout in all investigations of nature, which in
every department is full of complexities.
Analysis can scarcely be described as discovering
truth. It is rather a means or instrument toward
56 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
this end. At the same time it should be noticed
that when we abstract a part, say a quality, from
an object, the part, the quality, has a reality as well
as the whole. If the concrete be real the abstract
is also real. The abstract may not have an inde-
pendent reality ; thus gravitation has no reality ex-
cept in body, but it has a reality in body. The
criterion here is that the part be really a part of the
actual whole ; that the quality be a real attribute of
a real thing.
Analysis is a sharp, and may become a dangerous,
instrument. It may be over subtle, and dissect and
kill what should be kept alive and entire. It is ful-
filling its end only when, to use an illustration of
Plato's, it is dividing the carcass as the butcher
does, according to the joints. Among the ancient
Greek philosophers the analytic was the method
commonly employed. Down to this last age the
analytic and the synthetic were represented as
methods of discovering truth, and had large fields
allotted to them. Kant's great work, the Critique
of Pure Reason, is divided into the analytic and
synthetic parts.
In synthesis the parts are put together to show
that they make up the whole. Thus Whately de-
composes discursive thought into the term propo-
sition and argument, and then shows synthetically
Inductive Truths. 57
that these make up the whole process. Sir John
Herschel, in his Astronomy, begins with taking up
the several departments of the heavens, and then
expounds the whole science. The two, analysis
and synthesis, must continue to be used as instru-
ments, but they now do so in the methods of in-
duction and deduction.
IV.
CRITERIA. OF LAWS.
Hitherto we have had to do with individual facts,
which tell us nothing beyond themselves. We have
not as yet any means of anticipating the future
from the past, or gathering wisdom from experience.
In particular we have no science ; which consists, not
of scattered and isolated facts, but of systematized
knowledge. In the construction of science we must
o
co-ordinate the facts. In doing so we discover the
laws, and find that all mundane affairs are regulated
by laws.
But the question arises, How do we, from indi-
vidual facts, reach a law ? Or, more specifically for
our present purpose, When are we entitled to con-
clude and be satisfied that we have found a law
which may be regarded as general or universal ?
The answer of those who have not thought specially
on the subject would be, When we have observed
58 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
all the facts. But a moment's reflection shows that
in most cases, I believe in all, we cannot find out
all the facts. We assert that crows are black, but
we cannot go the round of the world and ascertain
that it is so. We may have examined millions of
cases and found all crows black, but how do we
know that a traveler may not report that he has
found a white crow in some distant island? In
science we say that all mammals are warm-blooded,
or that all matter attracts other matter inversely
according to the square of the distance ; but no one
has searched the universe and noticed every mam-
mal and every particle of matter so as to be able to
say that no mammal is cold-blooded, and no particle
of matter without the power of attraction. But
from a limited number of observations we can rise
to a law which seems to be universal. How is it
so? Mr. Mill maintains that he who can answer
this question is wiser than the ancients.
Bacon describes the method of observation by
" perfect innumeration " of cases as puerile, and in-
capable of yielding any fruitful results. In induc-
tion we have to rise from the unknown to the
known. We argue from a limited number of cases
in the past to a universal law which we hold to be
true in the future ; not only so, but in all unknown
cases, past and present. The father of inductive
Inductive Truths. 59
philosophy was aware of the difficulty of the prob-
lem, and he sought to solve it by bringing in Pre-
rogative Instances (Prerogatives Instantiarutn) which
could determine what is true of all instances. To
give only one example, that of Instantia Cruets, the
metaphor being taken from the notice put up where
two roads meet to tell which to take. It was dis-
puted whether light consists of material particles or
of vibrations in an ether. To settle this it was
maintained by Fresnel that instances can be arti-
ficially produced which are inconsistent with the
material, but not with the undulatory theory. But
we have now better tests in the Canons of Induction.
When man looks abroad on nature in a loose way
he sees a number of scattered facts. At first sight
it looks as if they have two characteristics ; they
have both irregularity and they have regularity. He
soon begins to seek for order in the midst of the
seeming disorder. He is impelled to this by his in-
tellectual powers, which prompt him to seek for the
nature and relation of things. But he is specially
led into this inquiry by finding that he cannot make
good and profitable use of nature till he knows how
it acts. He will not sow grain at one season unless
he knows that he will reap for his sustenance at an-
other season. In prosecuting such inquiries he dis-
covers that order prevails in the midst of apparent
60 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
confusion. He calls the regular proceedings by the
name of laws, believing that they are the expres-
sion of the will of a law-giver. " They continue this
day according to thine ordinances, for all are thy
servants." But it is not enough that he knows that
there are laws. In order to take advantage of them
he needs to ascertain their precise nature. He
would determine the number of days in the year,
the periods of the returns of the seasons and of the
the moon. While he is seeking after these regu-
larities he finds that there is a deeper and higher
law in nature ; there is not only a law of order, there
is a law of power. Prompted by an internal intu-
ition, confirmed by a uniform and unvarying ex-
perience, he concludes, that every event in nature
has a cause, not only in God, who works in all the
agents in nature, but in some power in nature.
The object of all science is to discover order, or,
in other words, laws. But there is great confusion
in the statement that all things are governed by laws.
This will not be cleared up till we distinguish be-
tween two kinds of laws. The Laws of Uniformity
and the Law of Causation.
V.
I. LAWS OF UNIFORMITY.
There is an order in nature, in other words, laws
in nature which we can observe and profit by with-
Inductive Truths. 61
out at all looking to the causes, though we shall see
that they have causes. They will best be under-
stood by some examples. There is the succession
of day and night. Day does not cause night nor
night cause day. Yet they follow each other in-
variably. It is the same with the seasons spring,
summer, autumn, and winter no one of which pro-
duces its successor, though it prepares for it. There
is the life of the plant the seed, the blade, the
flower, the fruit. There is the growth of the ani-
mal the germ, the birth, infancy, mature life, decay,
old age. There are periodical occurrences the
trade-winds, the gulf-strearn, the evening sea-
breezes. There are the epochs in geology the
Azoic, the Eozoic, the Silurian, the Devonian, the
Carboniferous, the Mezozoic, the Cenozoic, the Quat-
ernary, the Human. There are the eras in history
as, in Jewish history, the Antediluvian Period, the
Patriarchal, the Exodus, Government by Judges,
Government by Kings, the Captivity, the Coming of
Christ, the Dispersion of the Jews.
But there is a deeper principle involved.
VI.
II. THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT.
I believe this to be an intuitive principle, stand-
ing the tests above enunciated. I believe that
62 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
when we discover any thing beginning to be we
look for an antecedent producing it a substance
with power. But without entering at this place on
this disputed metaphysical subject, I may take it
for granted that the principle of causation is sanc-
tioned by a universal experience, and will not be
denied by any one, Many, indeed, feel that the
principle may require to be enunciated anew and
put in a better form since the discovery of the law
of the Conservation of Energy, or the Persistence
of Force, as Herbert Spencer calls it. But what-
ever be the best shape in which to put it, we assume
in all induction that causes produce their proper
effect, and that every new product or change in an
old thing has a cause. One of the aims of induct-
ive science is to discover what has caused a given
phenomenon; what has produced it in the past and
will produce it again. The principle of causation
might have reigned in all nature and yet there have
been no uniformity. All action in nature might
have as its sole cause the fiat of God. The con-
nection of all things would, in this case, be with
God, but not with one another. The spring, with
its buds and blossoms, would be produced by God,
but this would give no security that the fruits of
autumn were to follow. Or, again, there might be
constant interferences by God with the operation of
Inductive Truths. 63
natural agents ; or causal agents might work, and
yet there be no such thing as the general laws, such
as the seasons, which we observe and trust in. We
find, instead, that the agents of nature are so dis-
posed or arranged that they produce uniformities,
not the result of any one cause, but of a combina-
tion and harmony of causes ; such as the periodicity
of the heavenly bodies, the flow of the tides, the
regular return of the seasons, the plant rising from
a seed and producing a seed, and the descent of
the animal from a parent, its growth and its death.
All these imply causation, but theyjequire more
an adjusted causation.
But it is necessary to settle more definitely what
is implied in the uniformity of nature which lies at
the basis of all induction. It implies, first, that
there is a certain number of agents acting in nature ;
it is not necessary for us to settle how many. Sec-
ondly, that these are so collocated or arranged I
believe, adjusted as to produce general results,
called laws, which we observe and act upon and can
scientifically express. Thirdly, these agents con-
stitute nature, and there is no introduction of new
agents and no interference with them in ordinary
circumstances. This statement does not preclude
miracles on rare occasions ; these miracles not being
contrary to the law of causation, for they have the
64 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
power of God as a cause, but they are simply an ex-
ception to the uniformities of nature. These two
classes differ from each other, yet they are closely
connected. The laws of uniformity proceed from
the law of causality. It is the disposition of the
sun and earth that produces day and night and
the seasons. There are causes within and without
the plant and animal which produce development.
The sea and land breezes have been produced by
meteorological agencies.
CANONS OF INDUCTION. There seem to be three
grand ends which men of science have in view in
their investigations : One is to discover the com-
position of the objects around us; the second is to
discover natural classes ; the third is to discover
causes.
Canons of Decomposition. Almost all the ob-
jects we meet with in the world, whether material
or mental, are composite. It is the aim of many
departments of science, in particular of chemistry
and psychology, to analyze them. This can, so far,
be effectively done. There are certain rules to
guide us, and these may be made more and more
specific as the analytic sciences advance.
A. We must separate the object we wish to de-
compose from all other objects. If we wish to ana-
lyze water we must have pure water, separate from
Inductive Truths. 65
all other ingredients. If we wish to analyze intu-
ition or reasoning, we must separate it from all
associated observations and fancies.
B. When we have found the composition of any
piece or portion of a substance we have determined
the composition of every other part, and, indeed,
of the whole. When we have ascertained that a
pint of water is formed of hydrogen and oxygen we
have settled that water every-where is composed of
the same elements. This arises from the circum-
stance that every substance in nature has its prop-
erties, which it retains. Having detected these
properties in one case, we have found what they
are in all.
C. The elements reached are to be regarded as
being so only provisionally. We are not sure that
in any cases we have found the ultimate elements
of bodies. At present it is supposed that there are
some seventy elements, but we are not sure of any
one of these that it will never be resolved into
simpler substances. Meanwhile the chemical analy-
sis is correct so far as it goes. It will always hold
true that water is composed of oxygen and hydro-
gen, though it is possible that oxygen or hydrogen,
one or both, may be resolved into something
simpler.
Canons of Natural Classes. There are certain
66 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
sciences which are called by Whewell Classificatory.
They are such as botany, zoology, and mineralogy.
We may have two ends in view in classifying.
One may be simply to aid the memory by having
the innumerable objects of nature put into a con-
venient number of groups. For this purpose we
fix on certain obvious and convenient character-
istics and put all the objects possessing them into
one class. It was thus that Linnaeus put under one
head all plants possessing the same number of sta-
mens and pistils. This arrangement, though it
does not come up to the requisitions of a perfect
classification, is found to be very convenient. Sec-
ond, our object may be to increase our knowledge
by so arranging objects that one characteristic may
be a sign of others. In natural classification we
should always aim at securing both these ends.
There are canons which may assist us in determin-
ing when we have reached natural classes.
A. We must have observed the resemblance in
many and varied cases, say in different countries
and at different times.
B. We must be in a position to say that if there
had been exceptions we must have met them.
These two rules guard against forming a law from
a limited class of facts.
C. There are classes in nature called Kinds, in
Inductive Truths. 67
which the possession of one quality is a mark of a
number of others. All classes entitled to be called
natural are more or less of this description. Thus
mammals are so designated because they suckle
their young ; but this characteristic is a mark of a
number of others that the animals are warm-
blooded, and have four compartments in their
hearts. Reptiles are recognized as producing their
young by eggs, but they are also marked as having
three compartments in their hearts and being cold-
blooded.
Canons of Causes. The most lucid and, upon the
whole, the clearest and most satisfactory exposition
of these methods is by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his
Logic. It should be noticed that his methods re-
late to causes, and we have not had from him an
exposition of the canons of decomposition and
classes as given above. He mentions four or five
methods.
A. The Method of Agreement. In the spring
season we see innumerable buds, leaves, and blos-
soms appearing upon the plants, and we find the
common cause to be the heat of the sun shining
more directly upon the earth. The canon is, " If
two or more effects have only one antecedent in
common that antecedent is the cause, or, at least,
part of the cause." That canon is too loose to
68 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
admit of a universal application, as we may not be
sure that the point of agreement we have fixed on
is the only one. Two people take the same dis-
ease at the same time ; we conclude that the cause
is the same but it may have been different.
B. The Method of Difference. In the very middle
of the day I find the scene around me on the earth
suddenly darkened. There must be a cause. I find
that the moon has come between us and the sun,
and this seems the only difference between the two
states the one in which every thing was bright and
the other in which it is in gloom. The canon is,
" If in comparing one case in which the effect takes
place and another in which it does not take place
we find the latter to have every antecedent in com-
mon with the former except one, that one circum-
stance is the cause of the former, or, at least, part
of the cause." This method is the one employed
in cases in which experiment, with its separating
power, is available. It is the most decisive of all
tests when the circumstances admit of its applica-
tion. This canon regulates many cases in common
life. I am usually in good health, but I took rich
food yesterday and was unwell, the cause being evi-
dently the food. A man in health receives a gun-
shot wound and dies. We see at once that the
wound was the cause of the death. There are cases
Inductive Truths. 69
in which this method is not applicable when an in-
termediate one is available.
C. The Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint
Met 'hod of Agreement and Difference. The canon is,
" If two or more cases in which the phenomenon oc-
curs have only one antecedent in common, while two
or more instances in which it does not occur have
nothing in common but the absence of that anteced-
ent, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of
cases differ is the cause, or part of the cause, of the
phenomenon." The illustration given by Mr. Mill
is : " All animals which have a well-developed re-
spiratory system, and therefore aerate the blood,
perfectly agree in being warm-blooded, while those
whose respiratory system is imperfect do not main-
tain a temperature much exceeding that of the
surrounding medium ; we may argue from the two-
fold experience that the change which takes place
in the blood by respiration is the cause of animal
heat." There are two countries in much the same
condition physically, in the one of which there are
Christian agencies, and in the other none ; in the
former there is much higher refinement and civil-
ization than in the latter, and the cause is evidently
the Christian religion.
D. The Method of Concomitant Variations. We
want to know the cause of the rise of water in a
70 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
pump or of mercury in a barometer. The ancients
accounted for this by nature's horror of a vacuum,
which is inconsistent with the fact that water will
not rise above a certain number of feet in the pump.
Torricelli and Pascal gave a better explanation
when they referred the rising of the water or mer-
cury to the weight of the incumbent atmosphere,
which Pascal proved by ascending a mountain with
a barometer and finding that, as he rose higher and
higher, the mercury fell lower and lower in the
tube. Here we have the effect varying with its
alleged cause, which is an evidence that the alleged
cause is a true one. The canon is, " Whenever an
effect varies according as its alleged cause varies,
that alleged cause may be regarded as the true
cause, or, at least, as proceeding from the true
cause." In a certain town there is an increase of
crime ; at the same time there has been an increase
of drunkenness, and we at once refer the increase
of crime to the increase of drunkenness. In the far
West the manners of the first settlers, being com-
monly young men, are apt to be rough ; but they
seek out refined ladies for their wives and their
manners become refined. In the same region there
are at first few churches and schools ; these are
gradually introduced and there is an improvement
in the morals of the people.
Inductive Truths. *l\
E. The Method of Residues. A farmer knows how
much grain a particular field has yielded in the past.
He mixes fertilizers with the earth on the field and
finds he has a larger crop, and he ascribes the in-
crease to the fertilizers. He knows what the previ-
ously existing antecedents will produce, and, after
subtracting this, he ascribes the residue to the new
antecedent. The canon is, " Subtract from an
effect whatever is known to proceed from certain
antecedents, and the residue must be the effect of
the remaining antecedents." We know what are
the orbits in which the planets move, but the planet
Uranus was found by Leverrier and Adams to de-
part so far from the laws. There was a residue
which could not be accounted for, and so they
looked out for and found a new planet. We may
proceed on the same principle to argue the exist-
ence of a conscience. We have a sense of merit
and demerit ; we find that this cannot be given by
the senses or intellect, and to explain the phenome-
non we call in a moral power.
VIII.
PSYCHOLOGY.
Here, as well as in all the physical sciences, we
have to begin with the observation of facts. There
is, however, an .important difference between the
72 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
two departments. The facts in physical sciences
are obtained by the senses ; whereas in mental
science the observing agent is self-consciousness.
It is only thus we can find out what any physical
act is. An examination of the nerves and brain
may show how a mental state arises, but can give
no idea of the mental act itself, say of a sensation,
a recollection, an imagination, of moral approba-
tion, of emotion or wish. In making conscious-
ness our witness we have to allot to it a large
province. We must include in it not only immedi-
ate introspection, but also the observation of the
mental acts of others, as disclosed in their words,
their writings, and their deeds. We cannot, in-
deed, look directly into the bosoms of our fellow-
men so as to ascertain what is passing within, but
we can gather what this is by the expression of it,
which, be it observed, we can understand because we
are conscious of our own acts. History, biography,
travels, plays, novels, newspapers, and especially
conversation and familiar letters, may all show us
human nature quite as much as they do external
incidents. Without these supplements we should
have a very contracted view of the mind by inspec-
tion of our own souls.
The individual facts are made known in this
way. The criterion of consciousness is in itself; it
Inductive Truths. 73
is self-evidencing. As we observe the facts we dis-
tinguish between those that differ and co-ordinate
them into laws. The criteria of the laws are much
the same as those of physical science.
Psychology proceeds on the same two funda-
mental principles as physics. It is seeking for
causes. Without determining the question of the
freedom of the will we may confidently affirm that
causation, that the persistence of force, rules in the
mind as it does in the body. Certain antecedents
are sure to be followed by certain consequences.
The orator urges the considerations which may per-
suade those whom he is addressing and lead them
to action. The poet raises up images that please
and elevate the mind. The father and the teacher
inculcate principles which may guide the young in
all their future lives. Investigators in this depart-
ment have been seeking to discover faculties and
the rule and mode of their operation. The early
Greeks found sensation, the discursive power, and
reason. Aristotle had in the soul the nutritive
power, sensation, memory, phantasy, and, above
these, the reason, active and passive. In all ages
there has been a grand distinction drawn, in a loose
form, between the intellect and the will, the cog-
nitive and the motive powers. Every body talks of
the memory, the judgment, of reasoning, and of
H The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
sentiment and feeling, of the power of abstract-
ing, generalizing, distinguishing, of loving, and of
hating.
There seem, also, to be laws of uniformity in human
nature. It does not appear that in the association
of ideas one idea is the cause of that which succeeds ;
that when height suggests hollow and the dwarf
suggests the giant, and prosperity adversity, and a
portrait the original, that when we count up from
one to one hundred, there is a causal connection
between the ideas they are the joint effect of a
number of causes. In the science of psychology we
seek to discover these laws, such as the law of
habit, the connection between the idea and the feel-
ing raised by it, the kind of acts which conscience
approves of.
Now, there may be criteria of these laws, both of
causation and uniformity. These have not been so
carefully enunciated as those of physical science. I
believe that, mutatis mutandis, they may be con-
sidered as very much the same.
The Method of Agreement. Washington is named
and we find the mind following a certain train. We
think of his education, his training, the Revolution,
his battles, his character, all of which have been
previously in the mind together, and we reach the
law of contiguity: that when ideas have been in the
Inductive
mind at the same time, when one comes up the
others are apt to follow.
The Method of Difference. We see a portrait of
Washington lor the first time. The two, the por-
trait and Washington, were never before in the
mind together, yet the portrait calls up Washing-
ton, and the law is, things that are related, especially
things that are like, recall each other.
The Joint Method of Agreement and Difference.
There are days in which we find we can easily re-
call the things we would remember, other days in
which they will not come up. The difference is in
the time : that in the first few days our brain was
in perfect health ; in the other it is distracted.
Method of Concomitant Variations. When we
are interested in an event known to us we are apt
to think of it more frequently, and we conclude that
feeling, as a secondary law, influences our associ-
ations, and, according to the feeling with which it is
accompanied, so do ideas come up.
Method of Residues. On contemplating kind
actions we feel a pleasure which can be explained
by our social feelings ; but we find that on contem-
plating some of these we have a feeling of moral
approbation. This cannot be explained by the
mere social feeling, and we have to call in a moral
principle.
76 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
IX.
REASONING IN INDUCTION.
The question is started, Is there reasoning in in-
duction ? I am sure that there is. From what
has been ascertained by observation taken in a
wide sense we infer something else that there is a
law which enables us to predict results.
How is it that the countryman is enabled to
predict a coming storm? His father has told him,
or he himself has observed, that when the wind is
in the East, and the clouds are thick and black,
there will probably be rain or wind. Here there is
evidently inference which can be stated syllogistic-
ally by the logician, the general observation being
the major premise, the particular state of the wind
and sky the minor, and the conclusion that there
will be a storm. Every class of men, in fact all
men, do thus reason on premises implied, though
possibly not expressed. The laborer argues, in his
own way, that there should be a rise of wages ; the
merchant purchases because he concludes there will
be a demand for his goods. Before there were any
precise rules laid down on the subject scientific
men drew true and important conclusions from
common-sense principles in their own mind. The
canons of induction now expressed definitely enable
Inductive Truths. T7
us to put the reasoning in a more systematic form,
which is a great advantage. We can now use the
canons of induction (which, I believe, will become
more definite and better expressed) as our majors
in the syllogism of induction.
Major. When two or more effects have only one
antecedent in common, that antecedent is the cause.
Minor. But the budding of innumerable plants in
spring has only one common antecedent the re-
turn of the sun to a higher altitude.
Conclusion, this one antecedent is the cause.
This is the method of agreement. Let us take a
case from method of concomitant variations.
Major. Where an effect varies with its supposed
cause this is the true cause.
Minor. But the rising and falling of the mercury
in the thermometer varies with the less or greater
weight of the superincumbent atmosphere.
Conclusion, the weight of the atmosphere is there-
fore the cause of the rise or fall of the barometer.
It should be observed that the canons, with their
implied reasoning, do not guarantee to us absolute
certainty, what is called apodictic truth or dem-
onstration. None of these are certified, as first
truths are, by the law of necessity ; we can easily
conceive any one of the ordinary physical laws not
to be true universally, and we might believe so,
78 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
provided we had evidence. The evidence, after all,
is merely a probability of a lower or higher degree,
but may rise to a certainty only a little short of
being absolute, and quite sufficient to justify us to
put trust in it and act upon it in ordinary, indeed
in all, circumstances. Such, for instance, is the
proof which we have in favor of the law of gravita-
tion. It is not demonstrative, like a mathematical
truth, but it satisfies the mind and is verified by
constant observation.
The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. 79
LECTURE FOURTH.
THE JOINT DOGMATIC AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. THE
JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE. HYPOTHESES AND
VERIFICATION. CHANCE. INDUCTION CANNOT GIVE
ABSOLUTE TRUTH. WE KNOW IN PART.
I HAVE explained the three ways by which we
investigate truth ; the Intuitive, the Deductive,
and the Inductive. I am now to join these three
and explain the methods which ensue.
I.
THE JOINT DOGMATIC AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD.
In this method we assume a principle and draw
an inference from it. The principle may be a self-
evident one, or it may be obtained from a gathered
experience. The best example is found in geom-
etry, where, at the opening, there are laid down defi-
nitions of such things as triangles, circles, squares,
and also axioms or self-evident truths ; and from
these, and as involved in them, we get further truths
by deductive reasoning. We have also examples
in Formal Logic, as when the dictum of Aristotle
is assumed, that whatever is true of a class is true
80 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
of the members of the class, and from this get the
modes and figures of reasoning and innumerable
inferences. The truths thus drawn are called ap-
podictic by Aristotle, and demonstrative by the
moderns. Or the assumed principle may be ob-
tained from a collected induction, such as the law
of light that the angle of reflection is equal to the
angle of incidence, from which may be drawn a large
body of conclusions.
This method has often been applied illegiti-
mately, that is, to departments which have to deal
with scattered facts. In the seventeenth century,
when mathematics made such a start, there were
attempts to carry the geometrical method into all
branches of science. It was used by Descartes and
his extensively ramified school in philosophy, and
also in theology. Assuming the existence of
thought, of cogito, as a truth which cannot be
doubted, he thence proves his own existence, which
it would have been wise in him to assume; and
then, from the idea of the infinite and the perfect
in the mind, he argued that there must be a perfect
being existing, whose veracity guarantees our idea
of matter.
Samuel Clarke, finding that man could not get
rid of the idea of space and time, argued that, since
all things must either be substances or modes, and
The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. 81
as space and time are not substances, they must
be modes of a substance, which is God, whom, by
other considerations, he clothes with benevolence.
In these connected systems doubtful definitions
were carried out, often by right reasoning, to very
doubtful results.
I may refer particularly to the wrong applica-
tion which was made of this method by Spinoza,
the Dutch Jew designated expressively by Du-
gald Stewart " the thought-bewildered man." In
his Ethics, beginning with a formidable array of
definitions, axioms, postulates, and corollaries, he
draws out a philosophical religious system in which
God is at once extension and thought, and being
THE ALL is the moral evil in the world as well as
the good ; is, in fact, the deceit, the hypocrisy, the
adultery, as well as the true, the upright, the holy.
A number of powerful German thinkers, metaphy-
sicians, and theologians, toward the end of last
century, became greatly enamored with the panthe-
ism of Spinoza, and several of them drew out sys-
tems of much the same kind. All agreed in pro-
ceeding a priori in deducing results from favorite
principles. They all drew much from, indeed, pro-
ceeded upon, favorite fundamental principles, and
drew out imposing systems all more or less idealistic
and pantheistic. The ablest of the speculators were
6
82 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth.
Fichte, Schelling, culminating, and, it is to be hoped,
terminating, in Hegel. They have been followed
by several dozen others, such as Herbart, Lotze,
and, we may add, Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann,
all of whom adopt some new principle and carry it
out in the same way. The newest form is Neo-Kant-
ism, which, however, can never reach the truth till
it abandon certain fundamental principles of Kant,
such as that we perceive mere phenomena in the
sense of appearances, instead of things ; and that the
mind adds forms to things when it perceives them.
These systems have had their day, which, it is
hoped, is now coming to a close. It is hoped that
they will never become the prevailing philosophies
in England, France, and America. In Germany
they have buried beneath them some of the simple
truths of Scripture and natural piety. The funda-
mental objection to the method is that it is not
applicable to the sciences, which have to deal with
facts. The method is a powerful one when we have
the legitimate means of using it, that is, self-evident
truth. But it is not available when we have to observe
and co-ordinate the facts of nature within and with-
out us. Our philosophic physicists are quite aware
of this. Our metaphysicians should acknowledge
the same truth. " A clever man," says Herschel,
" shut up alone and allowed unlimited time, might
The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 83
reason out for himself all the truths of mathematics
by proceeding from those simple notions of space
and number of which he cannot divest himself
without ceasing to think. But he could never tell,
by any effort of reasoning, what would become of a
lump of sugar if immersed in water, or what im-
pression would be left on his eye by mixing the
colors of yellow and blue." (Natural Philosophy, 67.)
II.
THE JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE
METHOD.
J. S. Mill argues that more progress will now be
made, even in observational sciences, by deduction
than by induction. This may be doubted. It seems
to me that observation and experiment must always
be the surest way of advancing research. But deduc-
tion may be joined to induction. When this is done
the method may be called the Joint Inductive and
Deductive. This is, in fact, the method represented
by Mr. Mill as conducting to such fruitful results.
In this method the inquirer begins in the induct-
ive method ; that is, he observes facts with care and
with the view of discovering a law. As he pro-
ceeds he will ever be asking \vhether the law is so
and so ; that is, devising an hypothesis. In order
to determine whether this is a true law of nature
84 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
he has to examine further facts ; it may be, facts of
a different kind. As he acts thus he may find he
can apply deduction. He inquires what effects
follow from the law in his mind, and he then com-
pares these with the facts. If he finds these to
correspond he has a verification of his hypothesis.
It is by combining the two in this way that the
greater number of the established laws of nature
have been discovered. In most cases there have
been long processes, both of induction and deduc-
tion, before the law has been ascertained and ad-
justed. When the laws of nature are quantitative,
as they commonly are, mathematics may be applied
to them, and it becomes the instrument of the de-
duction ; and often a far-reaching one showing
very distant consequences which can be compared
with facts.
In the sciences of observation sometimes the in-
ductive element and sometimes the deductive
method is the more prominent ; in all cases the in-
ductive, as I reckon, is the essential. In Galileo's
researches experiment was the main instrument,
but he also used mathematics. Kepler's fertile
mind was always devising hypotheses, but he ac-
cepted them only as they were confirmed by obser-
vations. It would be wrong to say that Newton's
method was mere induction. He had before him
The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 85
the observations of Galileo and Kepler, and also a
measurement of the distance of the earth's surface
from the center, and he applied a powerful mathe-
matics, created by himself, to these facts. It is a
circumstance greatly to his credit that when, hav-
ing a wrong measurement of the distance of the
earth's circumference from its center, he found his
theory, that the moon was held in her sphere by the
same power as draws an apple to the ground, not
to be in accordance with facts he gave it up for a time,
and only resumed it when it was found, on the
proper distance of the earth's surface being ascer-
tained, that the facts corresponded. In all depart-
ments of physics or natural philosophy the deduct-
ive mingles with the inductive. In optics, in
thermotics, in theoretical astronomy, in mechanics,
the deductive or mathematical element has a con-
spicuous place ; but in all these sciences we have
always to start with observed facts. In ethics we
carry out indefinitely the laws of our moral nat-
ure; but these have been ascertained by a previous
observation of that nature. In like manner, in
logic we deduce consequences from the laws of
discursive thought, which we have found by ob-
serving how they act in the mind. In all the social
sciences there is a mixture of the two elements,
sometimes one and sometimes the other being
86 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth.
predominant. Jurisprudence is forever appealing
to fundamental principles, and inquiring how they
apply to a given case. The science of national
wealth must be constructed mainly by the observa-
tion and collection of facts in statistical and other
forms; but there are universally operating prin-
ciples ever called in. Thus it is supposed that men
are usually swayed by a desire to promote their in-
terest so far as they know it. This is certainly a
powerful motive. But there are others, such as the
desire for fame, for power, for society, for the beau-
tiful, for promoting education and religion, all
actuating individuals, and the influence may be
traced in the progress of nations. In chemistry the
laws have to be ascertained by observation, partic-
ularly by experiment; but when principles have
been discovered, such as that of affinity, they may
be carried out indefinitely. Psychology, as a science,
is constructed mainly by the observations of con-
sciousness ; but, having ascertained certain laws,
such as those of the association of ideas, we can ex-
plain how they affect our beliefs and feelings. In
pedagogics, or the science of teaching, we must
carefully observe the ways of children ; but in doing
so we discover their actuating motives, such as the
love of knowledge, the love of play, the love of ap-
probation, which have to be taken into account in
The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 87
constructing our methods of instruction and dis-
cipline. In aesthetics there are ascertained laws of
taste which must be taken along with us in the con-
struction of the science. In all departments of
natural history observation must play the most im-
portant part, but there are laws of life and of form
to guide biologists in all their investigations.
The principles from which we deduce conclusions
are of two kinds. Some are self-evident or demon-
strative. Such are moral laws and maxims. These
are assumed, and are applied extensively and con-
stantly in history and in all the social sciences ; in
all sciences which deal with motives and character.
Of this description is the maxim that men are likely
to be happy and comfortable when they are moral.
To this same class belong all mathematical propo-
sitions founded on axioms. These self-evident
truths are seldom formally enunciated ; they are
simply assumed and applied. So far as science
uses them it is very much employing the Joint Dog-
matic and Deductive Method. But there is a second
kind of principles used in deduction even more ex-
tensively ; these are acknowledged truths and wise
laws established by a large induction. For ex-
ample, any one may now assume the law of gravi-
tation. In optics it is allowed that the angle of
reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, and
88 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
from this a great many particular truths may be
drawn. In chemistry it is taken for granted that
the elements combine in certain proportions, and
from this a multitude of consequences follow.
In this joint method the induction is tested by
the canons of induction and the deduction by the
rules of reasoning.
III.
HYPOTHESES AND VERIFICATION. CONSILIENCE
OF INDUCTIONS.
" Hypotheses non fingo" said Newton, meaning,
perhaps, that he introduced no fictitious agency,
but merely vercz causa, such as existed in nature ;
or, more probably, that he accepted no truth till it
was established. Since Newton's time, especially
within the last age, hypotheses have played a very
important part in all departments in which the laws
have not been settled, as, for example, in electricity
and biology. The investigator is bent on knowing
what laws certain phenomena follow. But in nature
divers agents are mixed up with one another, and
we cannot determine what they are by a loose in-
spection. As he observes tentatively, he makes a
supposition suggested by the facts as to what the
law should be. When he notices the descent of
plants and animals he says to himself, Let us sup-
Hypotheses and Verification. 89
pose the law to be that of development or heredity.
He has now a specific end to work for, and he ob-
serves and collects facts, and inquires whether they
agree with the hypothesis he has formed. If he
finds that many of them do so he has a probability,
and is encouraged to proceed ; and if the hypothe-
sis explains a large body of events it rises to the
rank of a theory. When it takes in all the facts
bearing on the particular case, and no exceptions
can be discovered, it is regarded as a law of nature,
which, however, may require to be modified and
adjusted before it suits all the facts, and so be-
comes the true law. This process is called
The Verification of Hypotheses. When first sug-
gested the supposition may have little to support
it, and there may seem to be facts opposed to it.
But if it is the correct one there will come confir-
mations from a variety of quarters, difficulties will
disappear, and the seeming exceptions may corrob-
orate it. The hypothesis started is that light con-
sists in vibrations, not a very probable supposition
beforehand, but tken it is found to explain one set
of phenomena after another, till at last it seems to
account for every thing, and is counted as an es-
tablished law. Or the hypotheses is that of the
conservation of energy, or that the amount of
energy in the world, real and potential, cannot
90 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
be increased or diminished. On the first con-
sideration of this view obvious objections will
present themselves. We strike with a hammer
upon a piece of iron till our strength is exhausted,
and it looks as if force had been expended and lost.
But, on further inquiry, we detect the energy that
had gone out of the body to be conserved in the
molecular motion or heat of the metal.
Hypotheses, I rather think, must be resorted to
in the early stages of the investigation of every sort
of phenomena. They are simply tentatives, and
most of them may have to be abandoned. They
may or they may not be announced ; they may in
the first instance be simply guesses, and only a
few or one of them prosecuted to any great extent.
The law of gravitation was, for a time, only an hy-
pothesis, taking the erroneous form that matter
attracts other matter, not according to the square of
the distance, which is the true law, but according to
the distance. Hypotheses are necessary, but are
to be carefully watched and limited.
First. The hypothesis must be suggested by the
facts and not be feigned by the mind ; this may be
the meaning of Newton's statement.
Second. It must be regarded as a mere hypothe-
sis till it is established by the criteria applicable to
the department. We are much troubled in the
Hypotheses and Verification. 91
present day by hypotheses being represented as
established laws.
Third. The hypothesis is to be abandoned when
it is found that there are facts inconsistent with it.
It requires much courage to abandon an hypothesis
which has long been cherished, and, perhaps, pub-
lished to the \vorld.
Fourth. It is established as a law when it ex-
plains all the phenomena bearing on the subject
and is not contradicted by any known fact.
It is a powerful confirmation of an hypothesis
when it enables us to predict occurrences. If the
alleged law be the true one the facts will correspond
to it in the future as in the past, and as they fall
out will tend to prove that the hypothesis is a
sound one. Dr. Whewell has shown that the evi-
dence in favor of our induction is of a much higher
and more forcible character when it enables us to
explain and determine cases of a kind different
from those which were contemplated in the forma-
tion of our hypothesis. " Thus it was found by
Newton that the doctrine of the attraction of the
sun varying according to the inverse square of the
distance, which explained Kepler's third law, of the
proportionality of the cubes of the distances to the
squares of the periodic times of the planets, ex-
plained, also, his first and second laws, of the ellip-
92 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
tical motion of each planet, although no connection
of these laws had been visible before. Again, it
appeared that the force of universal gravitation,
which had been inferred from the perturbations of
the moon and planets by the sun and by each
other, also accounted for the fact, apparently alto-
gether dissimilar and remote, of the precession of
the equinoxes." He designates this process as the
Consilience of Inductions. He declares: " No ex-
ample can be pointed out in the whole history of
science, so far as I am aware, in which this consili-
ence of inductions has given testimony in favor of
an hypothesis afterward discovered to be false."
IV.
CHANCE.
In one sense there is and can be no such thing as
chance ; that is, an event without a cause or without a
purpose. Every occurrence has a cause in God. Not
only so, but in the ordinary affairs of this world it
has a mundane cause. Further, it falls out accord-
ing to the uniformity of nature.
But there are senses in which there is chance in
our world. The oldest definition of chance (TV%Q)
was by Anaxagoras, who makes it an event whose
cause cannot be discerned by human reason
This account needs only to be a little
Chance. 93
expanded and made more definite. There are oc-
currences of which the cause or the law is unknown,
and, in consequence, we cannot anticipate their oc-
currence. This may arise from the cause being
utterly unknown to us. More frequently it arises
from the complexity of nature, from there being a
number of agents working, or from the nature of
their operation. We may know all the agencies at
work, but we cannot tell how they are working. In
all cases the events do not recur with such regu-
larity as to constitute a law. There wa's a time
when eclipses were regarded as coming according
to no law, and men, following the law of causality,
referred them to a deity. When these causes were
discovered they were found to have periods, and
astronomers could predict their recurrence, and
they were viewed in a different light. Till lately
meteors were supposed to appear capriciously, but
now showers of them are expected at certain sea-
sons of the year, and nobody ascribes them to
chance. When we shake a die in a dice-box we
are acquainted with the mechanical law which it
obeys in its movements, but we cannot say which
side will cast up. We know, in a general way,
what physiological agencies produce death, but we
cannot predict at what precise time any man
will die.
94 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
Still, even in such cases, a certain kind and
amount of truth may be had, and this from the
circumstance that the event proceeds, after all,
from causes which operate regularly, and from there
being a limited number of causes. We find that,
given a sufficient number of trials, each side of the
die will come up the same number of times ; if any
side comes up more frequently than another we
argue that the dice have been loaded. We do not
know when any one man will die, but we can ascer-
tain what number of people will die in a given time
in a community.
In such cases we can strike an average, and we
can foretell average results and estimate the prob-
ability of a given event. When we speak of the
probability of an occurrence we are not to under-
stand this as implying the uncertainty of the occur-
rence considered in itself. The event, say the
death of a person on a certain day, may be abso-
lutely sure, owing to causes operating. We can
conceive that there are higher intelligences to
whom it would not be uncertain. We are sure that
it would not be so to the view of the Omniscient.
It is so to us because of the limited nature of our
faculties and of our knowledge of the causes oper-
ating. Were we cognizant of all the antecedent
circumstances we might, in many cases, be able to
Chance. 95
predict the result. It is because of our ignorance
that the event is uncertain to us. The probability
or improbability is not in the event, but in the
grounds which we have for expecting it ; it is sub-
jective and not objective.
In all cases we must have certain data, gained by
observation and yielding a general average. In
some departments we can express numerically the
probability or improbability of the particular oc-
currence. An event reckoned impossible may be
represented by o; an event certain to happen, by I.
All degrees of probability may be denoted by the
fractions representing value from zero to one. The
probability of an uncertain event is represented
by the number of chances favorable and unfavor-
able. Thus the casting up of ahead or a tail being
I, and the chances against it being 2, the proper
chance is one half. The tables that have been pre-
pared for life insurance companies have been very
elaborate, but need not here be given.
There is another sense in which it may be said
that there is such a thing as chance. There cannot
be an occurrence without a purpose on the part of
God, who has ordered the causes producing it. But
there may be a concurrence without a design. It
is by chance that certain rocks take the form of the
face of Napoleon or Wellington. I do not know
96 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
that there was any purpose designed or effected by
so many men of genius being born in the year 1/69,
or by Cervantes dying on the same day as Shake-
speare died. There are certain minds that take
the keenest interest in observing such coincidences,
and discover a deep meaning in what is in itself
meaningless ; for example, connecting a calamity
with the spilling of salt at a table, or from thirteen
persons meeting at that table. On the other hand,
when there is an immense congregation of agents
that are independent, to produce an evident benev-
olent end for instance, of vibrations of light, of
coats and humors, of rods and cones, to enable us
to see through the eye there is evidence of design,
the chances being all against such a concurrence.
V.
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
Attempts have been made to conduct this science
on the joint dogmatic and deductive method, but,
in my opinion, without much success. It has to
deal with facts the existence of God, and the im-
mortality of the individual soul and, therefore,
must have an inductive or observational element. I
have my doubts whether, from a mere idea or prin-
ciple in the mind, we can argue the existence of the
living God. It should proceed, I reckon, mainly in
Natural Theology. 97
the joint inductive and deductive method. It looks
at God's works within and without us, and, discover-
ing wonderful mutual fittings, means and end, traces
of love and just government, it rises to the belief in
a being of power, wisdom, benevolence, and justice.
The inductions are collected in such works as Ray's
Wisdom of God, in Paley's Natural Tkeology, in the
Rridgewater Treatises, and the ordinary works of
natural religion.
But there are deductive processes involved. The
premises here are supplied mainly by a priori prin-
ciples or by intuition, all to be justified by the cri-
teria of First Truths. In the mind of man there are
high and deep truths in the germ, all capable of
being developed and actually working in the mature
man, being called forth by the circumstances in
which he is placed. There is the principle of
causation, requiring us, on a new thing or a change
appearing, to seek for a cause. This can stand the
tests of intuition, being self-evident, necessary, uni-
versal, in our very nature and constitution ; and it
leads us to believe that where there are traces of
design there must be a designer. There is a moral
power within us, with its law and its obligations,
implying a law-giver. We have not an adequate
idea of infinity, but we believe that there is some-
thing beyond our widest idea or concept, something
98 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
to which nothing can be added, and we are led to
apply it to the powerful, the good and holy One.
We are entitled, we are required, to trust and
follow these principles. They are elements, and the
highest elements^ of the reason with which we are
endowed. We begin with trusting the senses, and
find, as we do so, constant confirmations in our daily
experience ; what appeared at first to be realities
we discover to be more real as we bring one sense
after another to bear upon them, and find that meat
nourishes us and pure air refreshes us, and the due
use of the good things of this world prolongs life.
We should confide in the same way in our higher
ideas and beliefs, and as we do so we find them ex-
panding and elevating the mind, opening grand
vistas which look beyond the seen and temporal
into the unseen and eternal. If we do not follow
our lower instincts, if we do not eat and drink, our
bodies will become feeble and die ; and if we deny
our higher reason our souls will lose their freshness,
vigor, and aspirations.
But when we would construct the argument,
indeed, in all scientific investigations and in all true
philosophy, we must be careful to ascertain the
exact nature of the intuitions or intuitive reason we
call in, and only use them accordingly. Those who
neglect this are sure to present them in an extrav-
Natural Theology. 99
agant form or make a perverted use of them. This
has been done by the mystics of the East and of
mediaeval times, indeed, of all ages. Almost always
they have got a glimpse of a reality, but they have
seen it only under partial aspects, and they have
shown it to us through a cloud, or irradiated it with
reflected light, and have represented it to us as
vision, inspiration, and ecstasy, whereas it is only
one of the higher elevations of our nature.
All our profound thinkers have seen these truths,
but have not always properly represented them. We
may hold with Plato that there is a grand, indeed,
a divine, Idea ; but I wish that idea, as in the mind,
carefully examined and its forms or law exactly de-
termined, and it is for inductive science, and not
speculation, to tell us what are the types which
represent it in nature. I hold with Aristotle that
there are formal and final, as well as material and
efficient, causes in nature ; but it is for a careful in-
duction to determine the nature of these and to
show how matter and force are made to work for
order and for ends. I am as sure as Descartes, and
as Augustine and Anselm were before him, that
there is in the mind a germ of the idea of the in-
finite and perfect; but we must show what is the
precise nature of the idea, so as to secure that we
draw only legitimate inferences from it. I discover,
100 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
as Leibnitz did, a pre-established harmony in nature,
but it consists mainly, not in things acting inde-
pendently of each other, but in the harmony pro-
duced by things acting on each other. I attach as
much importance to experience as Locke did, but I
maintain that observation discovers that the intu-
ition (which he acknowledged) looks at principles
in the mind prior to all experience. I allow to Kant
his forms, his categories, and his ideas, but their
nature is to be discovered, not by criticism, but by
induction, when they will be found not to superin-
duce qualities on things, but simply to enable us to
perceive what is in things. I believe with Schelling
in intuition (Anschauung), but it is an intuition
viewing realities. I hold with Hegel that there is
an Absolute ; but I believe that our knowledge,
after all, is finite, implying an infinite, and that the
doctrine can be enunciated so as not to issue in pan-
theism. I turn away with scornful aversion from
the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann,
but I believe they have done good by calling at-
tention to the existence of evil, to remove which is
an end worthy of the labors and suffering of the
Son of God. I believe, with Herbert Spencer, in a
vast unknown above, beneath, and around us ; but
I rejoice in a light shining in the darkness and re-
vealing the known. I believe in the gems so rich
Limits to Human Knowledge. 101
and varied which the higher poets have left us as a
rich inheritance ; but before they can enter into
philosophy they must be cut and set, and it will re-
quire a skillful hand to adjust them, and when they
are cut it must be as skillfully as diamonds are, and
this only to show more fully their form and beauty.
VI.
LIMITS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.
The aim of this treatise has been to show that the
human mind is capable of reaching knowledge, and
that it has tests to determine when it has done so.
I have faced the agnostic, but have not entered into
a wrestling with him, which would be endless,
because he refuses to take a form by which I may
lay hold of him. I have pursued a more effectual
method. I have shown objects where he assures us
that there is nothing. It is in this way we can com-
mand assent and gain assurance.
I have proceeded on the idea that there is a dif-
ference in the certitude of truths. Some I have
shown are self-evident, necessary, and universally
held, and therefore certain beyond doubt or dispute;
others are only probable, some with only a slight
balance in their favor, others rising to certainty.
This is not so much a difference in the truths as a
difference in the evidence to us. To God and to
102 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
higher beings, the one kind may be as certain as the
other. We cannot tell whether there will or will
not be a good harvest next year. But to Omniscience
it may be as certain that there is to be a good
harvest as that all the angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles. It is of vast moment that we
should know what kind of evidence we have, and
what the validity of the evidence which we have in
favor of any proposition we are required to believe,
whether it is demonstrative or merely probable, and
if only probable what the degree of probability. It is
also of moment that we should note what kind of
truth admits of apodictic and what of only probable
proof. It is vain to seek for demonstration in every
kind of investigation. We can have such, as I
reckon, only when we have self-evident truth. But,
then, it can be shown that inductive truth can rise
to certainty. I doubt much whether we have im-
mediate evidence of the existence of God as we have
of the existence of ourselves, but we have quite as
valid proof of the existence of God as we have of
the existence of our fellow-men. In both we have a
fact, the acts done, and we rise up by the principle
of causation to a cause. The criteria of truth which
I have been furnishing should assist us in all such
investigations.
Man's knowledge is increasing and must continue
Limits to Human Knowledge. 103
to increase. His generalizations widen as his
knowledge increases and take in more and more ob-
jects. He is constantly gaining more premises which
lead to farther conclusions. One discovery leads on
to another ; one chamber opened shows us the door
which opens into a second. Davy proved the cor-
relation of electric and magnetic forces ; Oersted of
electric and magnetic, and at last the grand doctrine
disclosed itself to a number of investigators, partic-
ularly to Mayer, that all the physical forces are cor-
related.
But man's power of discovering truth is, and ever
must be, limited. First, there are limits to his
mental powers. He has only five original inlets of
knowledge into the material world. Had he fifty
senses instead of five he might know vastly more.
Then, his power of working on the materials re-
quired by sense and consciousness, his memory and
his understanding are also limited. Some men can
discover more truth than others, and it is conceiv-
able that there may be higher intelligences who see
farther into the nature of things than the most far-
sighted of men. Secondly, every man's individual
experience is limited, and the same may be said of
the experience of the race it is confined within very
stringent bounds.
Man can discover a vast amount of truth, spec-
104 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
ulative and practical. We have enough revealed to
exercise our faculties, to expand and elevate the
mind, and to serve for all the purposes of the duty
we owe to God, to ourselves, and our fellow-men.
Every truth known leads however into the unknown.
But this is to tempt us to penetrate into the un-
known region that we may know it.
As we do so we shall find that there are things
beyond our ken in a region beyond, above, or
beneath us, and we must be content to allow them
to lie there. We know as much as to know that
there are truths which we cannot know. We see the
objects within our proper range of vision, but we also
see the darkness that encompasses them. " We know
in part." Yes, we know, but we know only in part.
We who dwell in a world " where day and night
alternate ;" we who go every-where accompanied by
our own shadow a shadow produced by our dark
body, but produced because there is light cannot
expect to be absolutely delivered from the darkness.
Man's faculties, exquisitely adapted to the sphere
in which he moves, were never intended to enable
him to comprehend all truth. The mind is in this
respect like the eye. The eye is so constituted as
to perceive things within a certain range, but as
objects are removed farther and farther from us they
become more indistinct, and at length are lost sight
Limits to Human Knowledge. 105
of altogether. It is the same with the intellect of
man. It can penetrate a certain distance and un-
derstand certain subjects, but as they stretch away
farther they look more and more confused, and at
length they disappear from the view. And if the
human spirit attempts to mount higher than its
limited range it will find all its flights fruitless.
The dove, to use a well-known illustration of Kant's,
may mount to a certain height in the heavens ; but
as she rises the air becomes lighter, and at length
she finds that she can no longer float upon its bosom,
and should she attempt to soar higher her pinions
flutter in emptiness and she falters and falls. So it
is with the spirit of man : it can wing its way a
very considerable distance into the expanse above
it, but there is a boundary which if it attempts to
pass it will find all its conceptions void and its
ratiocinations unconnected.
Placed as we are in the center of boundless space
and in the middle of eternal ages, we can see only
a few objects immediately around us, and all others
fade in outline as they are removed from us by
distance, till at length they lie altogether beyond
our vision. And this remark holds true not only of
the more ignorant, of those whose eye can penetrate
the least distance, it is true also of the learned it
is perhaps true of all created beings that there is a
106 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
bounding sphere of darkness surrounding the space
rendered clear by the torch of science. Nay, it
almost looks as if the wider the boundaries of science
are pushed, and the greater the space illuminated
by it, the greater in proportion the bounding sphere
of darkness into which no rays penetrate ; just as (to
use a very old comparison) when we strike up a
light in the midst of darkness, in very proportion as
the light becomes stronger so does also that surface
dark and black which is rendered visible.
Testimony. 107
LECTURE FIFTH.
TESTIMONY. IS IT SUFFICIENT TO PROVE THE SUPER-
NATURAL ?
I.
IT is not necessary to suppose, with some of the
Scottish metaphysicians in their answers to
Hume's argument against miracles, that there is an
original instinct or principle of common sense leading
us to trust in testimony. I believe, indeed, that
there is a social instinct in all of us inclining us to
have an affection for, and trust in, those we meet
with, especially in father and mother, brothers and
sisters, and leading us to believe in what they say.
But the belief in testimony is the result of experi-
ence, and is modified by experience ; we trust in
certain testimonies, but not in others. There is a
conscience in every man which disposes him, if he
does not resist it, to speak truly ; even selfishness
prompts him not to lose the confidence of his fel-
low men by deceiving them. Hence the great
body of mankind speak the truth when they are
not led to act otherwise by a desire to excuse them-
selves, or by malignity toward their neighbor, or
108 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth.
some other like motive. We can reach truth by
means of testimony. It was in his haste that
David said, "All men are liars."'
The testimony of one man is often sufficient, be-
cause of his character, known otherwise, and be-
cause he has no motive to deceive. We lay down
rules for our guidance in judging of testimony, as
that it is a good sign if the statements are direct
and unartificial. In most cases we seek to have the
testimony of one man confirmed by another, that
in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word
may be established, it being shown that there has
been no collusion or conspiracy. There are com-
monly circumstances which corroborate or detract
from the testimony, Circumstantial evidence is at
times sufficient to prove that a prisoner has been
guilty when there is no direct evidence of the act.
In witness-bearing, books of law and judges on the
bench lay down rules which may guide the jury in
the verdict which they bring in,
History* Here the evidence is mainly that of
written testimony, which, however, may be con-
firmed by original historical documents, such as
monuments, inscriptions, coins, and ancient charters.
Laplace, misled by a false analogy derived from the
diminution of light when reflected successively from
a number of surfaces, declares that the value of
Testimony. 109
testimony may be weakened by transmission, and
at length altogether lost. (Essay on Prob.)
This is true of tradition, that is, of oral testimony
transmitted from mouth to mouth, or from age to
age ; but Sir G. C. Lewis (Meth. of Obs. and Re as.)
has shown that " when the testimony of the original
witness has once been obtained, and recorded either
by himself or others in an authentic form, it is per-
petuated so long as the written memorial of it is
preserved in the original, or in a faithful transcript,
and may at any time be used for historical pur-
poses."
I am to show that testimony is fitted to establish
the occurrence of supernatural as well as natural
events. In opening the subject it is essential to
determine what the natural is, and what the super-
natural is, especially in their relation one to
another.
II.
THERE is A NATURAL SYSTEM. In seeking to
find its nature let us recall the distinction drawn in
Lecture iii ; the Laws of Causation- and the Laws of
Uniformity. In the former there is power in the
cause to produce the effect. I believe there is an
intuitive conviction which perceives this, but it is
not necessary to our present purpose to insist on
this. It is enough that a long, a combined, an un-
110 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
contradicted experience testifies to the universality
of causation. Let it be observed that this means
that every event has a cause in some mundane
agency, such as gravity, or electricity, or magnetism,
or chemical affinity. I believe that every occur-
rence has a cause in God, but also that it proceeds
immediately from a power imparted to created ob-
jects. God is the author of the seasons, but he pro-
duces them by the relation of the earth and the
objects on it to the sun.
Causes are so organized that they lead to general
results; what I call laws of uniformity. The earth
is so related to the moon that the tides are pro-
duced with their regular times. There is no cau-
sation implied in their succession ; the incoming
wave does not produce the receding wave, nor,
vice versa, does the retiring wave produce the
next advancing wave. Many of these laws are
simply co-existences, in which the agents exercise
no influence on each other. Even in cases of suc-
cession the antecedent does not produce the con-
sequent. Thus day does not produce night; both
are the issue of causes beyond them. People often
speak of a law necessarily producing an effect ; this
is true only of the laws of causality.
By the arrangement of these causes there is a
natural system.
Testimony. 1 1 1
1. Every substance in nature is endowed with
certain properties, original or derived. Thus the
soul is possessed of powers of consciousness, of
sense-perception, and feeling. Bodies continue in
the state in which they happen to be, whether this
be motion or rest, unless they be influenced by
powers ab extra ; all bodies attract each other in-
versely according to the square of the distance ; the
elements combine according to definite propor-
tions ; light is propagated by vibrations ; action is
equal and opposite to reaction ; in polar forces like
repels like, and attracts unlike ; these are samples
of properties which may be simple or may be com-
plex, but are, at all events, natural properties.
These properties consist essentially in tendencies; not
in acts, but tendencies to act on the needful con-
ditions being supplied. Thus oxygen has the tend-
ency to combine with hydrogen, and does combine
with it, when the hydrogen is presented in the
proper mode. Thus it is the tendency of fire to
burn when fuel is presented, and the tendency of a
dead animal body to decay. It will be shown, as
we advance, that this tendency is never, properly
speaking, interferred with in any of the miracles of
Scripture. But our present aim is simply to bring
out what is the cosmical system.
2. The substances and their properties are cor-
112 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
related and distributed so as to produce a general
and an obvious order. This is effected by the ar-
rangement of the substances with these properties
so as to produce here a contemporaneous order,
and there a regular succession of phenomena which
can be observed for scientific and for practical pur-
poses. Of this description are the apparent mo-
tions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens,
the seasons for sowing and planting, for reaping
and gathering in fruit, the stages in the life of the
plant, and a hundred other periodical laws which
human beings can observe, more or less easily, by
science or without science, and to which they can
accommodate themselves, and, as they do so, secure
the blessings which nature has provided. All this
order arises from arrangements among the sub-
stances with their powers. With other distribu-
tions and collocations of natural agents there might
be no general laws or the general laws would be dif-
ferent. The actually existing laws are admirably
adapted to the constitution of man ; to his intellect-
ual powers, which delight to discover class and
cause, and the relations of means and end, and also
to his practical convenience, as enabling him to an-
ticipate the future from his experience of the past.
It is very conceivable that these laws may be in
themselves an end contemplated by God, and
Testimony. 113
pleasing to him as he surveys them. It is certain
that they are a means toward a farther end, a
means of making creation intelligible to the intelli-
gent creature, and capable of being used for prac-
tical purposes.
3. There is a large yet limited body of objects
and powers, constituting nature and performing its
functions, I believe that the substances, with
their properties, have all been created by God, and
also that all their natural relations and dispositions
have been instituted by him. No human power,
no natural power, can add new substance to nature,
or destroy any existing substance ; we may burn the
hay or stubble, but it is not thereby annihilated ;
one portion has gone up into the air as smoke,
another has gone down to the earth as ashes. Not
only so, it seems to be established by the latest sci-
ence that power cannot be created or lost, and
that the sum of force in the world cannot be in-
creased or diminished by natural means. We may
transform one natural force into another, or make
"one natural force produce another ; but in all the
mutual action of bodies the sum of the potential
and actual energies is never altered. Not only is
it beyond created power to create or annihilate new
bodies or substances, it is beyond all natural power
to create or annihilate force. Nature is a self-com-
8
114 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
prised system, globe, or sphere ; in se ipso tot us,
fares, atque rotundus.
In saying so, it is not meant to assert that this
sphere has no points of contact or relationship with
other compartments of creation, and, still less, that it
has no dependence on a higher and a supernatural
power. All that we maintain is, that it has a num-
ber of agencies which, in their totality, combination,
and action, constitute the system of nature. A
miracle, we shall see, does imply the interposition of
a power beyond this mundane sphere. It serves its
end because it is the effect of a supernatural
cause. *
But, meanwhile, let us understand precisely what
is meant when it is said that nature is a self-con-
tained system. Let us not suppose that it has been
proven that it needs nothing to support it, and that
it will go on forever if left to itself. The geologist,
in his diggings, has gone a little beneath the sur-
face, but has not reached the bottom in his ex-
plorations ; he has gone back many ages, but has
not reached the beginning, which ever retreats from
him. The astronomer has penetrated to great dis-
tances, but he has not reached the outside ; he is
just impressed the more with the vast circumambient
region into which his telescope cannot penetrate.
Science in all its explorings knows not when the
Testimony. 115
beginning was, nor when the end shall be ; knows
not where the center is, nor where the circumfer-
ence is if, indeed, there be a circumference. This
knowable world, however large and complete, is not,
after all, the universe, but only a part of it ; whether
we follow it behind or before, above or beneath, on
the right side or the left, it is seen to be broken off;
beginning we know not when, ending we know not
where, but certainly not when and where our vision
fails : it looks hung from above, and resting below,
on nothing discernible by physical science. There
is clear evidence that things have not always been
as they now are ; there was a time, for example,
when man was not on the earth ; an earlier time
when there were no animals on the globe. There
is no evidence that there are physical agencies
in the world which would keep it existing forever.
The continental mathematicians of last century
thought they had gone a step beyond Sir Isaac
Newton, and demonstrated that, according to laws
now in existence, the machine would go on through
all eternity without requiring to be wound up or
receiving any aid from without. All that they
proved was that there is a beautiful self-adjusting
or self-regulating arrangement in the solar system
which secures that the obvious variations of the
motions of the planetary bodies are periodical.
116 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth.
Later inquiry has shown that there are agencies
now operating which must in the end dissipate the
whole existing order of things ; and the most ad-
vanced science has discovered no natural means of
counteracting the destructive tendency. The fol-
lowing are the conclusions drawn by Professor W.
Thomson. " I. There is at present in the material
world a universal tendency to the dissipation of me-
chanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical
energy, without more than equivalent dissipation, is
impossible in inanimate material processes, and is
probably never effected by means of organized mat-
ter either endowed with vegetable life or subjected
to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a
finite period of time past the earth must have been,
and within a finite period of time to come the earth
must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at
present constituted, unless operations have been,
or are . to be, performed which are impossible
under the laws to which the known operations
going on at present in the material world are
subject."*
All events happening according to the uniformity
of nature can easily be established by the mouth
of two or three witnesses.
* Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1852.
Testimony. 117
III.
THERE is A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. It is in
the midst of the natural system, to which it is
adapted, and the two go on in co-operation.
It may be said to begin with the creation, which
is supernatural, and necessarily before the natural,
which is its product. Sin enters into the govern-
ment of the holy God, and it is announced to the
tempter, Gen. 3. 15, " And I will put enmity be-
tween thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel." This is an epitome of the his-
tory of the whole world. There is a deliverer, who
is the seed of the woman, but with vast power to
crush the head of the serpent, that is the evil ; in
short, at once human and divine. Henceforth there
is a struggle and a contest between the powers of
evil and of good, with God in the midst of it to
restrain the evil and secure in the end the victory
of the good. This is the present state of our world,
as we see it all around us and feel it in the depths
of our hearts.
In the midst of the natural the supernatural has
its place. As types reign in the vegetable and
mineral kingdom so they also run through the king-
dom of grace. There is the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, representing the contending powers
118 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths.
in the world, and also the tree of life for the heal-
ing of spiritual diseases. Enoch is translated to
keep alive a belief in immortality. Some are saved
by an ark in the overwhelming deluge. Abraham
is called out of a world fast falling into idolatry to
keep alive the knowledge of the truth. There is
the establishment of a commonwealth under the
immediate care of God ; there are prophets, speak-
ing in the name of God, giving lessons for the pres-
ent and opening glimpses of the future. There is a
captivity in Babylon followed by a deliverance, and
a scattering of the Jews with their Scriptures for the
wide diffusion of the Gospel. In the fullness of
times, in the middle of the ages, while Greece had
furnished its learning and Rome its strong domin-
ion so as to allow the messengers of the cross
to spread the glad tidings, the long-expected One
arrives ; he fulfills his office, goes about continually
doing good, he is persecuted by the Jews, is in
agony in the garden, he is forsaken by the Father,
and dies an accursed death, but before he expires he
is able to say, " It is finished."
The death is followed by a resurrection. The
work of the supernatural goes on but it is after a
somewhat different manner. Miracles were multi-
plied while Jesus was upon the earth to testify that
Jesus was above nature and had come from God.
Testimony.
There is no proof that there has been any outward
miracle wrought since the aspostles died. The
natural, being the ordinance of God, takes its course,
and the supernatural helps it in the providential
diffusion of the Gospel, but it is chiefly shown, or
rather felt, in the hearts of men in converting and
sanctifying them and in giving them peace. That
is the old contest, but it is between the flesh and
the spirit, in which the spirit finally prevails. " The
Spirit of the Lord shall be poured on all flesh."
All throughout the Scriptures God is presented
to us under one and the same aspect, as extending
mercy to sinners through the sufferings of his Son.
In the first promise to fallen man, the seed of the
woman, who was to put his heel on the head of the
serpent, is described as having his heel bruised as
he does so. In the first worship of fallen man there
is the offering of the bleeding lamb. You might
have discovered the wandering path of the patri-
archs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the altars
which they built and the smoke of their sacrifices
which they offered. Under the law almost all
things were purified by blood. The grand object
presented in the New Testament is a bleeding Sav-
iour suspended upon the cross. It is thus the same
view that is presented to us under the patriarchal,
the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations. Ex-
120 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
cept in the degree of development, there is no dif-
ference between God as revealed in Eden, in Sinai,
and on Calvary ; between God as described in the
books of Moses and God as described so many
centuries later in the writings of Paul and of John.
In the garden we have the law given, and indi-
cations, too, of One coming to deliver from the pen-
alty. On Mount Sinai there is a law delivered
amid thunderings and lightnings, but also ordi-
nances which tell of an atonement for sin. In the
mysterious transactions on Calvary there is an awful
forsaking and a fearful darkness, emblematic of the
righteousness and indignation of God, as well as a
melting tenderness in the words of our Lord breath-
ing forgiveness and love, and telling of an open
paradise : " To-day thou shalt be with me in para-
dise.'* The first book of Scripture discloses to us,
near the commencement, a worshiper offering a
lamb in sacrifice ; and the last shows a Lamb, as it
had been slain, in the midst of the throne of God.
IV.
There are- two systems. Let us look for a mo-
ment at each.
The Natural. It is not an intuitive truth, it is
not self-evident, it is not necessary, it is not uni-
versal. For a long period people did not believe in
Testimony. 121
it. It has been established only within the last few
ages. It is the result of a large experience and has
at last been proven by science, which found law in
every department.
Thus natural points to the supernatural, that is,
the existence of God. The order every-where and
the adaptation of one thing to another are evidence
of a designing mind. The invisible things of God
are clearly seen from the things that are made, even
his eternal power and godhead. We carry this
truth with us as an important factor into the con-
sideration of
The Supernatural. It is of importance to deter-
mine precisely what this is. First, negatively, it is
not a violation of the law of cause and effect or any
intuitive principle in our nature, such as I have ex-
plained in the first lecture of this work. Were it
so it could not be proved, could never have ap-
peared. The supernatural has a cause, and an ad-
equate cause, in God. This has been shown in two
philosophical works written by men not prepos-
sessed in favor of Christianity, by Thomas Brown in
his work on Causation, and by J. S. Mill in his
Logic. He who made the world, as his works show,
continues to work in it, and may for wise and good
reasons change his mode of procedure.
A miracle is an interference with the law of cause
122 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
and effect only so far as that law requires a physical
cause of a physical event. It does not call in the
physical cause, because there is a cause in the di-
vine power. A miracle is an interference with the
law of uniformity, the nature which I have taken
such pains to unfold in an earlier part of this lect-
ure for the purpose of enabling me to explain what
a miracle is. That law is simply the result of an ar-
rangement of causes which may be changed. It is
not guaranteed by any intuitive or necessary con-
viction. It is simply the result of experience, and
the experience which has established the natural may
also establish the supernatural. It is possible, then,
for a miracle to take place, and it is possible to es-
tablish it by good and sufficient evidence. Let us
look at that evidence.
V.
How is it, when an ordinary ghost-story is circu-
lated, that scientific men and educated men gener-
ally turn away from it, and will scarcely be moved
to inquire into it ? Because the story is contrary to
the whole analogy of the system of nature, and is of
a class which is believed in only by the weak and
superstitious, little disposed or capacitated to inves-
tigate evidence. But why do we not turn away in
the same manner from the stories recorded in the
Testimony. 123
life of Jesus ? This is, in fact, the whole argument
pressed upon the world an age ago in the Essays
and Reviews, and propagated by the Arnold family,
especially in their novel. The question can be an-
swered. There is a vast difference between the two
cases. The ghost-stories are totally unlike the nar-
ratives of our Lord's miracles. The ghost tales are
seldom authenticated to us by clear-headed and
competent witnesses. When they and the like fab-
ulous stones are investigated by competent men on
scientific principles the evidence is dissipated, as
when Faraday sifted the cases of table-turning.
It is entirely different from the evangelical his-
tory. We have the testimony of four witnesses who
have all the characteristics of true though sinful
men, and this confirmed by the testimony of an
educated man of high intellectual gifts, and by the
whole history of the period, and the successful propa-
gation of the Gospel in the earlier ages.
But it is said that in the early ages people were
inclined to believe in the supernatural, and in-
vented miracles, and that thus their testimony on
this subject is not to be credited. I admit the
premises but deny the conclusion. The people at
the time of our Lord were ready to believe in mira-
cles. But, I add, not in such miracles as are re-
corded in Scripture. They are commonly great
124 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
wonders, monsters on earth, dazzling lights in the
sky. They are such as gratify the love of wonder
and the superstitions of the heart.
In inquiring of lawyers and of others what is a
good book on testimony, they refer me to the works
of Dr. Greenleaf. He gives from the start the fol-
lowing rules: "The credit due to the testimony of
witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty;
secondly, their ability ; thirdly, their number and
the consistency of their testimony ; fourthly, the
conformity of their testimony with experience, and
fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with col-
lateral circumstances." Let me apply these rules,
somewhat amended, to the testimony, to the life,
and especially the resurrection, of Jesus: I. The
four evangelists had means of knowing what they
narrate, for they had been for several years in con-
stant contact with him. 2. They were transparently
honest, as every man sees, and had no motive to de-
ceive, as by telling their story they only exposed
themselves to persecution. 3. Their writings show
that they had ability to understand what they
narrated. 4. We have these four direct witnesses,
besides others, whose testimony spread the Gospel
over wide regions. 5* Their tale is consistent. There
is enough of discrepancy to show that there could
have been no previous concert among them, and, at
Testimony. 125
the same time, such substantial agreement as to
show that all were independent narrators of the
same great transaction as the events actually oc-
curred. 6. Their statements are all in accordance
with what is told us of the state of Judea and the
world as given us by trustworthy historians such as
Josephus, the Jewish, and Tacitus, the Roman,
historian.
I admit the premises, but deny the conclusion.
The people at the time of our Lord were ready
to believe in the miracles. But, I add, not such
as are recorded in Scripture. Historians and trav-
elers tell us what kind of miracles were invented
among the nations. As a specimen, take those
mentioned by Livy, the historian, who lived in
the age immediately before our Lord: ''During
this winter, at Rome and in its vicinity, many
prodigies either happened, or, as is not unusual
when people's minds have once taken a turn to-
ward superstition, many were reported and credu-
lously admitted. Among others, it was said, that an
infant of a reputable family, and only six months
old, had, in the herb-market, called out, ' lo, Tri-
umphe ; ' that, in the cattle-market, an ox had, of
his own accord, mounted up to the third story of a
house, whence, being affrighted by the noise and
bustle of the inhabitants, he threw himself down ;
126 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
that a light had appeared in the sky in the form of
ships ; that the temple of Hope, in the herb-market,
was struck by lightning ; that at Lanuvium the
spear of Juno had shaken of itself ; and that a crow
had flown into the temple of Juno and pitched on
the very couch; that in the district of Amiternum,
in many places, apparitions of men in white gar-
ments had been seen at a distance, but had not
come close to any body ; that in Picenum a shower
of stones had fallen ; at Caere the divining tickets
were diminished in size. In Gaul a wolf snatched
the sword of a soldier on guard out of the scabbard,
and ran away with it. It rained blood in the forum
at Rome. The spear of a statue of Mars, at Praen-
este, moved out of its place of its own accord. An
ox spoke in Sicily. An altar surrounded by men in
shining garments was seen in the sky. Armed le-
gions of spirits appeared in Janiculum." In favor of
no one of these have we the testimony of a single
eye-witness. They have no worthy meaning.
How different with the miracles of our Lord.
We have the record by those who witnessed them.
We have the testimony of the four evangelists,
evidently truthful men, each giving his own account,
and yet all substantially one.
Christ's work, when on earth, was a work of salva-
tion. They brought to him the sick, the maimed,
Testimony. 127
and the blind, and he healed them all. If you had
accompanied Christ on some of his pilgrimages
when on earth what a glorious sight would you
have seen ! Not, indeed, such a sight as this world
admires when it applauds the warrior with strong
and healthy men before him whom it is his pride
and glory to cut down and destroy. You would, if
you had followed Christ, have seen a far different
but a far more glorious sight. You would have seen
before him, on the way by which he was to pass, the
road covered with couches with the sick laid out
upon them ; and you would have seen the dumb,
when they could not speak, striving to give ex-
pression to their woes by their earnest struggles ;
and you would have heard the blind, when they
could not see him, crying to be taken to him. This
was the scene before him ; and behind him, after he
*
had passed, were the sick bearing their couches, and
the lame leaping like the harts, and the dumb sing-
ing his praises, and the blind gazing earnestly upon
him with joyful eyes, and the lunatics in their right
minds, and those lately dead in the embraces of
their friends. Yes, these were the fruits that fol-
lowed Christ's visits wherever he went. And he is
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for-
ever. His office, his prerogative, is still to seek and
to save that which is lost. He is in this world now
128 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
by his Spirit, as he once was by his bodily presence.
He is not to be discerned by any pomp or external
splendor. The kingdom of God cometh not by
observation ; but still we may discern him by the
eye of faith. Before him are persons afflicted with
all manner of soul maladies: some under the power
of wild passion, by which they are. led captive at
pleasure, some covered all over with the leprosy of
vice, all of them blind to the perception of spiritual
beauty and deaf to the voice of God addressed to
them. Wherever Christ goes the way is strewn
with such ; and wherever he goes he leaves behind
him traces of his presence. Before him, as he
marches through our world, are the blind, the deaf,
the dying, and the dead ; and behind him are the
seeing, the hearing, the living, the lovely, and the
loving. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up
the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap-
tives, and the opening of the prison to them that
are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord."
The witnesses were plain, unsophisticated men.
Then we have the declaration of one of the great
men of the world, altogether independent of his
inspiration a scholar, a writer, an actor of great
Testimony. 129
practical wisdom. Paul, once so strongly preju-
diced against the Crucified, assures us that he saw
Christ in the flesh, and that he was overcome by
him. The Arnolds evidently feel a sensitive shrink-
ing from the honest, sturdy, outspoken apostle.
The novelist tells us he was no reasoner. Those
who can reason themselves know that in the Ro-
mans, and in all his epistles, he is one of the most
powerful reasoners that ever put together premises
and conclusions. At times he makes a digression,
but it is as a man who steps back a few feet that
he may gather force to clear the chasm.
Every man who reads the gospels has a miracle
set before him in the discourses of our Lord, which,
for sublime doctrine and pure precept, for grace
and elevation of sentiment, for faithfulness and for
pathos and for tenderness, for indignation against
sin and pity for the sinner, for knowledge of the
human heart, and love to men, women, and chil-
dren, transcend all the highest intellects have done
in Greece and Rome, and, as spoken by a Galilean
peasant, are themselves a miracle.
The common Christian has not just to prove a
miracle against an infidel. All that he has to do
for his own conviction is to find that Christianity
came from uneducated men in Galilee. This
granted, the miracle follows ; and he is con-
9
130 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
strained to say, "Thou hast conquered me, O
Galilean."
VI.
" What think you of Christ ? Whose Son is he ? "
We are obliged to think of him, and we have to
answer the question, "Whose Son is he? Whence
does he come?" We may suppose that he, a
mechanic in Galilee, uttered all these truths, the
Sermon on the Mount, and the parables, and we
have already a miracle. Or, if we may adopt a
more refined theory, and suppose that there was a
wonderful carpenter's son in Nazareth, and that a
body of fishermen on the lake constructed the Life
of Christ out of him, we have a still more astound-
ing miracle, with nothing resembling it in the his-,
tory of the world.
Take one supernatural event the resurrection of
Jesus. We have as full proof of it as of any event
in ancient history say the death of Julius Caesar,
which every one believes in. We have as clear evi-
dence that these four evangelists wrote the gospels
as that Xenophon wrote the memoirs of Socrates.
But the grand proof of the truth of our religion
lies in the combination of evidence. We have a
treble cord, which cannot be broken. How have
men of science established the doctrine of the
uniformity of nature ? By an accumulation and
Testimony. 131
combination of observations in all departments of
nature. It is in the same way that we prove that
there is a supernatural system in the midst of the
natural, and fitting into it. Round the life and
death and resurrection of Jesus we have a body of
conspiring evidences. There were antecedents and
there are consequents. We have the anticipation
in the history, types, and prophecies of the Old
Testament. Then we have the results flowing from
the belief in the resurrection of Christ, the preach-
ing of the Gospel, the spread of Christianity in all
countries, the production and fostering of all that is
good in art and history, in the elevation of morals,
in the establishment of schools and colleges and
hospitals, in raising the status of the working
classes, in the comfort imparted to poor and
afflicted ones, in the converting power of the grace
of God, in the slaves of the wildest passions sitting
at the feet of Jesus clothed and in their right mind.
All these constitute, from first to last, a unity, a
system ; he who would overthrow it will have to
attack, not the mere outposts, but the consistent
whole. It is a bounteous river system with its
waters flowing over the waste places of the earth,
but issuing from the throne of God in heaven.
All these miracles are worthy of God and
adapted to the state of man ; with a few exceptions
132 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
they are wrought to deliver from pressing evils in
our world, from disease, from sorrow, from sin.
The grand end of the whole is the redemption of
the soul, for which the great men of the world have
labored, but have failed of their end.
Nor let it be urged that the Jewish and heathen
worlds were so predisposed toward the miraculous
that the early Christians had only to proclaim it to
find all men believing it. For it is to be remem-
bered that the Gentiles got it from the Jews whom
they hated, and the Jews from the Galileans whom
they despised.
More persuasive, if not more convincing, we have
what are called the internal evidences : the suitable-
ness of Christianity to man's nature and wants, to
his felt weakness, and his sinfulness, for which an
atonement has been provided ; as bringing life and
immortality to light, and as rolling away the great
stone that closed the tomb, and opening the grave
that the spirit may arise to heaven.
