theless there is in the human constitution a persistent impulse to seek to know the realities within us and without, to account for them by finding their causes, to interpret and vindicate them to the reason by finding their accord with rational principles, laws and ends, and thus to bring them into the unity of a rational system.

17. Probability.

In completing our survey of the acts and processes of knowing, we find that reasoning is not always demonstrative; that after man's utmost investigations in the legitimate use of his intellectual powers a large part of his conclusions fall short of certainty. What must be done with the mass of probability?

I. In cases of evidence insufficient to give certainty it is natural and legitimate to give assent to the conclusion as probable in degree proportioned to the evidence. This is only saying that we assent so far as we know. So far as there is evidence we know; at the same time we are conscious of a residuum of reality in the object of thought which we do not know. Such assent is legitimate and necessary according to the constitution of the mind; it is as legitimate as the assent with irresistible certainty to a mathematical demonstration or an immediate act of consciousness.

II. When the improbability is very slight the mind disregards it and the assent is not practically different from knowledge. "Several philosophers have attempted to assign the limit of probabilities which we regard as zero. Buffon named one in ten thousand, because it is the probability, practically disregarded, that a man of fifty-six years of age will die the next day." It is impracticable to delay on so slight an improbability. If every slightest possibility of the contrary must be removed before acting, all achievement would cease and the entire action of life would resolve itself into doubting and asking questions. III. Assent on probable evidence is reasonably and legitimately a guide of conduct. We learn from Pascal that certain Roman Catholic writers taught that it is permitted to follow the less probable of two opinions, although conscious of being less sure of it. Mr. Gladstone quotes a "Manuel des confesseurs" published for the use of the French clergy of the present day, which teaches essentially the same doctrine. This doctrine is contrary to good morals, since within the whole wide range of probability it allows a man arbitrarily to choose the opinions by which he will regulate his own conduct and which he will inculcate for the regulation of the conduct of others. It is contrary also to common sense and the natural action of the mind.

Les Provinciales; Lettre V.

†Gleanings of past years; Miscellaneous; p. 196.

When conflicting opinions do not require immediate action it is possible and wise to suspend judgment. But when immediate action according to the one or the other is necessary, every one will act according to the opinion that seems the more probable, unless he is deficient in understanding, or is biased by some conflicting personal interest or desire which might equally lead him to act in disregard of what he knows is true.

Bishop Butler, in the Introduction to the Analogy, says, "Probability is the very guide of life. . . . A greater presumption on one side, though in the lowest degree greater, determines the question, even in matters of speculation; and, in matters of practice, will lay us under an absolute and formal obligation to act on that presumption or low probability, though it be so low as to leave the mind in very great doubt which is the truth." The same thought is expressed by Voltaire: "Almost the whole of human life revolves on probabilities. Uncertainty being almost always the lot of man, we should rarely come to any determination if we waited for demonstration. Yet it is necessary to take a course of action and we must not take it at haphazard. It is therefore necessary for our nature weak, blind and always liable to error, to study probabilities with as much care as we learn arithmetic and geometry.'

...

IV. These principles are applicable to religious belief, but with no peculiar significance; assent and action are regulated by probability here precisely as in reference to other subjects. The law of assent to probability has not been invented in the interest of religion, as many seem to imagine; it is simply a law common to every sphere of belief and action. It is a common fallacy to demand an infallible certainty in religion never required elsewhere; and to urge as valid against religious belief objections, founded on some transcendental theory of the necessity of a certainty outreaching all finite intelligence, which are instantly rejected as unworthy of notice both in physical science and practical life. Yet they are as forcible against assent and action in both of those spheres of thought as in religion. Hence devout and earnest inquirers are entangled in needless and distressing perplexity; worldly men, who every day prosecute enterprises and venture fortune. and life on probabilities, excuse themselves from religious action because some questions remain unanswered and some doubts unremoved; and skeptics, who in their own life-time have held as science successive and incompatible theories of geology, or light, or other scientific matter, are loud in objecting against religious belief because it does not give absolute certainty on all points.

* Essai sur les probabilités en fait de justice. Oeuvres; vol. 30, p. 419.

In a former chapter it was shown that, although the mind is fallible, it is capable of knowledge, and that the larger part of our beliefs are confirmed by the continuous experience of life. It often happens that what at first was rejected as improbable, comes by experience to be known as sustained by convincing evidence; that an opinion, acted on at first with hesitation, by its sufficiency as a guide to action vindicates itself as truth and clarifies itself into knowledge. The same is true of religious belief and of action upon it. Venturing on it at first with hesitation, it proves itself sufficient for the intellect, the heart and the conduct, it becomes interwoven with all the threads of life and into the texture of the character, and thus comes to be believed with the highest certainty and rested on with the most serene confidence. "Then shall, we know if we follow on to know the Lord." What the Scripture here affirms as true of religious knowledge is an example of what is true of all knowledge. In the experience of life man advances from the doubtful to the certain, from the obscure to the clear, from the known to the knowledge of what had been unknown; and though his mind is limited and fallible and though he cannot by any intellectual gymnastics leap out of the limitations of his powers, yet by the legitimate use of his powers he is capable of knowledge and of its indefinite enlargement. But he must trustfully use his powers on their legitimate objects and trustfully act on the results, whether probability or certainty. For if he spend his strength in trying to unravel the limitations of his being, he will be entangled like a fly in a spider's web and be thenceforth capable of no action but an impotent buzzing of distress.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE

INTUITION.

18. What is Known through Sense-Perception. IN sense-perception man has knowledge of the external world. He has immediate perception of his own body and of bodies immediately affecting him through the senses.

I assume this on the principles of Natural Realism. It is unnecessary to enter into any vindication of the reality of this knowledge against phenomenalists and idealists. Comte attempted to rest physical science on phenomenalism. But the students of physical science have generally abandoned his complete positivism and emphasize the reality and certainty of our knowledge of the objects of sense. They affirm the knowledge of bodies composed of infrangible atoms, and of force with its conservation, correlation and transformations.

It is unnecessary, also, because Hume demonstrated that every theory of phenomenalism or subjective idealism involves the denial of all knowledge. It is idle to reopen a question then decisively settled, or to plunge again into the discussion of insoluble puzzles which were then remanded to the sphere of that transcendent skepticism which denies all knowledge because a man cannot take himself up in his own hands and examine himself, as he would an insect under a microscope.

So Mr. Mulford puts it: "Man by the senses has a direct perception of the physical world and it is a waste of thought to carry the subject through metaphysical speculation. But this does not demonstrate the certainty of the physical world to one who denies it. There is no demonstration of the being of the physical world."* Our knowledge of it is not by reasoning or any reflective thought, but is by intuition. So Lord Bacon affirms that sense gives us knowledge of "natural matters," "unless a man please to go mad."†

Sense-perception, however, does not decide between speculative theories of the constitution of matter. These are irrelevant to the question. If matter consists of Boscovich's points of force, or of Dr. Hickock's pencils of force in equilibrium, if it is a form of will-force, or a manifesRepublic of God, p. 96. Note.

+ Distributio operis, prefixed to Novum Organum.

tation of thought, all its properties and powers and its objective reality remain unchanged.

It must be added that in sense-perception there is always a rational intuition, implicit or explicit in the consciousness. In sensation I become aware of the action within my consciousness of a power not my own. At the same time I know in the light of reason that this power not my own must be exerted by some other being; for it is a rational intuition that every change must have a cause. Man cannot divest himself of his reason in any act. Natural Realists recognize an implicit judgment in every perception; it is sometimes called a psychological, as distinguished from a logical judgment. What is really present is the implicit, rational intuition that the power exerted is the power of some being. In perception, so far as the intellectual act is the knowledge of a particular power present and acting here and now, we call it presentative or perceptive intuition; so far as it is the knowledge of a universal principle of reason applicable in the particular case, it is rational intuition.

But the fact that a rational intuition is present in perception does not invalidate the knowledge. Rational intuition gives knowledge as really as perceptive. And the mind is not divided; the act is one act in which the mind, constituted both perceptive and rational, knows by intuition at once perceptive and rational. So far from invalidating the knowledge, the union of the two is essential to it. Rational intuition Ce without the perceptive intuition of an object is empty of content; perceptive intuition, without rational intuition of the form in which reason

sees it, is unintelligent and falls short of knowledge.*

As to the general objection that knowledge must be wholly subjective and therefore not real knowledge, because a factor is contributed by the intellect, it is sufficient to reply as follows. If external reality and a man to know it exist, the knowledge is impossible except as the man and the reality about him act and react on each other. In human knowledge the outward reality acts on man through the senses and man reacts in sense-perception. In voluntary exertion the man acts on the outward reality and it reacts on him. In both ways he knows its existence. The objection implies that it is essential to the knowledge of outward reality that no such action and reaction take place. It implies that the mind must have knowledge of an object without coming into any relation or connection with it, without acting or reacting on it. It requires that there must be knowledge without knowing.

It is also objected that because knowledge is an intellectual act it can have no resemblance to the outward object, and that therefore we can have no knowledge of the outward object, but only of subjective im*"Begriffe ohne Anschauungen sind leer; Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind." Kant.