Assumpsit

“ If our incapacity to conceive the negation of a given supposition is proof of its truth, because proving that our experience has hitherto been uniform in its favor, the real evidence for the supposition is not the inconceivableness, but the uniformity of experience. ”

“ The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Opinion, whether in the form of an ungripped assent, or a weak supposition, was alien from the mental disposition of the serious man. With him there was no hasty or premature assent of the understanding, no forgetfulness, no distrust. ”

“ This will be found the sole absolute assumption of my Discourse. I use the word "assumption" in its ordinary sense; yet I maintain that even this my primary proposition, is very, very far indeed, from being really a mere assumption. Nothing was ever more certainly—no human conclusion was ever, in fact, more regularly—more rigorously deduced:—but, alas! the processes lie out of the human analysis—at all events are beyond the utterance of the human tongue.
Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be, when, or if, in its absolute extreme of Simplicity. ”

“ So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as social, is also real and true." ”

“ But since, by supposition, the new individual has the marks, whether we have ascertained him to have them or not; if we have affirmed the major premise, we have asserted him to be mortal. Now my position is that this assertion can not be a necessary part of the argument. It can not be a necessary condition of reasoning that we should begin by making an assertion, which is afterward to be employed in proving a part of itself. ”

“ Because of a fundamental assumption—not merely hypothetical for the convenience of inquiry—but confident and absolute; an assumption which, so far as the argument is concerned, is the very matter in dispute—that man must have progressed and developed to the point at which we see him. ”

“ Wherefore, if this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose. ”

“ Sense-deceptions, faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the psychologist, but stern realities; and their existence emphasizes the need in the determination of truth and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, of an appreciation of the circumstances under which it is peculiarly human to err. ”

“ Now let us apply this theory of the supposition to the problem of error, and we shall then see how there can be an object present to the mind when we judge falsely, and also that the object is the same whether we judge truly or falsely. Suppositions are real possibilities; they are alternatives that may be fulfilled or that may never be fulfilled. ”

“ To be able to hold an Argument Right or Wrong may pass with some perhaps for the Character of a Good Disputant, which yet I think it is not, but must by no means be allow’d to be that of a Rational Person; it belongs to such to detect as soon as may be the Fallacies of an ill one, and to establish Truth with the Clearest Evidence. For indeed Truth not Victory is what we shou’d contend for in all Disputes, it being more Glorious to be Overcome by her than to Triumph under the Banners of Error. ”

“ And here, similarly, belief within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has certainly been leading towards.
Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest kind of sympathy. ”

“ And a proof of what I advance is, that, in all other doubts, we hesitate only in order to be instructed; every thing is examined which can elucidate the concealed truth. But here the doubt is merely for doubting's sake; a proof that we are equally uninterested in the doubt as in the truth which conceals it from us; they would be very sorry were they under the necessity of clearing up either the falsity or the truth of uncertainties which they pretend to have on our mysteries. ”

“ But the usual supposition at the outset is that any judgment has by itself its own object, so that thereby alone, apart from other judgments, it stands or falls. And thus far we have tried to show that this natural supposition leads us into difficulty. We cannot see how a single sincere judgment should possibly fail to agree with its own chosen object. But enough of our problem in general. ”

“ Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always something else, something fuller and realer, something including and using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"—for such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him ”

“ The nature of the assumptions obviously does not in the slightest degree affect this conclusion. It is true that the statement of the particular assumptions may constitute an appeal to belief otherwise derived, and evolve feelings which may render the calm exercise of judgment more difficult, but the fact remains absolute, that an argument which "begins and ends with an assumption" is totally impotent. It remains an assumption, and is not an argument at all. ”

“ There had seldom been a case in which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic—an apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the unvital and immaterial—as a preliminary to a swift volte-face by which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory which captivated and—for the moment—convinced. ”

“ Here doubting will arise in his mind, of what is, or is not, agreeable to the divine will; as nothing can give the mind certain evidence, but faithfully complying with the evident sensations which the light of truth opens upon it, let them be what the creature may judge to be small or great; for we have no more reason or right to refuse complying with a small requisition, than we have a great one, if the requisition proceeds from the same source. ”

“ How could the universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its importance. ”

“ Doubt, which is tentative denial, like negation, which is completed denial, logically presupposes positive knowledge of some kind or other. It is never rational to doubt the truth of a specific proposition except on the strength of your possession of positive truth with which the suggested judgment appears to be in conflict. ”

“ It would be impossible to conceive a more mendacious and absurd claim, and it would be impossible to concoct a more impertinently foolish assumption than to assume that such a claim would receive the consideration of a sane mind. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ These three mental acts are Doubt, Inference, and Assent. A question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion is the expression of an act of inference; and an assertion is the expression of an act of assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see one’s way to hold that Free-trade is or that it is not a benefit; to infer, is to hold on sufficient grounds that Free-trade may, must, or should be a benefit; to assent to the proposition, is to hold that Free-trade is a benefit. ”

“ But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded. ”

“ The influence of the moral causes in generating doubt, though sometimes exaggerated, is nevertheless real. Psychological analysis shows that the emotions operate immediately on the will, and the will on the intellect. Consequently the emotion of dislike is able through the will to prejudice the judgment, and cause disbelief of a doctrine against which it is directed.76 Nor can we doubt that experience confirms the fact. ”

“ Thus, for the distinct believer—that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, [p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of doctrine and to some specific manner of life—reality is always tethered to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. ”

“ Who has not, at some time or other of his life, experienced the force of that casuistry which is begotten of suspicion? Who has not felt how completely reason is mastered by the subtle assaults of a wily ingenuity which, whilst combining the false and the true, the possible and impossible together, makes out a mock array of evidence almost too strong for a doubt? ”

“ True, the other criteria are, in exceptional circumstances, liable to error; in certain cases when a doubt arises an appeal is taken to the testimony of others: but why? Simply, in order to make sure that one has not labored under one of those derangements to which human misery is subject. We know that what is natural is general; and he who doubts inquires of others, that he may ascertain if he has by some accident been out of his ordinary natural state. ”

“ For our doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. ”

“ Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of the single person's inner responsibility. ”

“ What has doubt, what has investigation, done concerning the universe of which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work, before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little, petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the fear of ignorant men had created. ”

“ To such I would say, judge nothing hastily, dismiss nothing petulantly, patient investigation, and sometimes suspension of judgment in relation to matters difficult of belief are necessary to the ascertainment of truth, and in such manner wise men, anxious to know the truth, proceed. ”

“ In theory you cannot indulge with consistency in an ultimate doubt. You are forced, willingly or not, at a certain point to assume infallibility. For, otherwise, how could you proceed to judge at all? ”

“ Either we have a right to the assumption contained in the conception of the individual mind as standing in relation to things, in which case the grounds of the assumption must be sought elsewhere than in the results of this reciprocal relation, or we have no right to the assumption, in which case reference to the reciprocal relation can hardly be accepted as yielding any solution of the psychological problem. ”

“ If you only hope to have your assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case, you ought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do it. I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not really wanted. ”

“ But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. ”

“ And, behold the first reason upon which I have established the general proposition, that the majority of those who make a boast of their doubts have actually none; it is, that their doubts are those of licentiousness, and not of unbelief. Why, my brethren? Because it is of licentiousness which hath formed their doubts, and not their doubts licentiousness; because that, in fact, it is to their passions and not to their doubts that they hold: lastly, because that, in general, they attack in religion only those truths inimical to their passions. ”