Circumspection

“ Therefore, no sooner do we find in past history an institution, a custom, a law or a belief a little different from those with which we are familiar, than we immediately search for some complex meanings, which frequently resolve themselves into phrases of doubtful significance. ”

“ The safest conclusion, if conclusions are to be drawn at all, is that what has hitherto been, will, in the nature of things, continue,—that whatever separations exist will be marked by zones of latitude. For other evidence we must search in vain. ”

“ Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the discriminations and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by parts, I am affected by one or the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? ”

“ Whom must we disfranchise? The objects concerning whom we are to determine these questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by degrees only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. ”

“ Again, on the subjects of orders, a term I have already been induced to use now and then, I am quite aware that I here am guilty of another misdemeanour, and more especially as I call them natural orders, meaning thereby orders among the contents of which nature has established the similarity; and to the formation of which "the cunningly devised fables" of man have contributed but very little; and meaning also that nature has implanted in us all, more or less, the power of distinguishing such orders by a mere glance, and without any reference to our books. ”

“ If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”

“ But, it will perhaps still be said, where is the rule by which you may distinguish the accidental defect, from that which belongs to the nature of things, and which it is impossible to exclude?—Men to whom nature has given only ears, ask questions of this kind; and those who have an ear shrug their shoulders. ”

“ The problem of change is given up, and we fall back upon our laws, persisting and appearing in successions of fleeting elements. If so, phenomena seem now to have become temporal illustrations of laws. ”

“ Cases may be cited, even in our imperfect acquaintance with nature, where agencies that we have good reason to consider as radically distinct produce their effects, or some of their effects, according to laws which are identical. ”

“ Experiments in thought and life, of even audacious description, were made, not in defiance of precedent—for precedent was hardly respected enough to be defied—but in innocent unconsciousness of precedent. ”

“ But just as we presuppose that wherever the human will played any part, regular forms will come to light, so we begin to doubt that such forms will occur where we find that accident, natural{155} law, or the unplanned coöperation of men were determining factors. ”

“ Behind the loftiest estimates of value by which the history of thought has hitherto been governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitution, either of individuals, classes, or entire races are concealed. ”

“ Let us see how, in these special classes of cases, we shall succeed in verifying the natural presupposition of common sense, which regards error as possible only when our object is not wholly present to mind, and which assumes that a judgment can have an object that is yet only partially present to mind. In choosing the classes of cases, we shall first follow common sense as to their definition. We shall take just the assumptions of daily life, and shall show that they lead us into difficulty. We are not for the first bound to explain why these assumptions are made. ”

“ In the eighth rank of prerogative instances, we will place deviating instances, such as the errors of nature, or strange and monstrous objects, in which nature deviates and turns from her ordinary course. ”

“ The facts become an objection to the doctrine when they are incompatible with some part of it; while, if they merely remain outside, that points to incompleteness in detail and not falsity in principle. ”

“ According to the precedent doctrine, there are no objects which, by the mere survey, without consulting experience, we can determine to be the causes of any other; and no objects which we can certainly determine in the same manner not to be the causes. ”

“ XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, it be said that our character is not the mere fruit of our antecedents and surroundings, the law of uniformity is clearly broken. A new element has come into the world, namely, my character, which has not come out of the antecedents and surroundings according to any fixed law. ”

“ Every effect can be taken up in conception, after it once exists, and the manyfold of the effect arranges itself under the unity of the conception more easily and happily only as the observer himself has more sense and understanding. ”

“ The anthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, act concurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as well as the gravest—as, moreover, they do in the case of all other human actions. ”

“ How to reconcile that tendency, which is a growing and in the main a wholesome one, with the need of uniformity and certainty, is one of the great problems confronting the lawyers and judges of our day. ”

“ It is certain that many things, which now seem miraculous, would not be so, if once we come to be fully acquainted with their Compositions and Operations. And it is also as true, that there are many Qualities, and Figures, and Powers of things, that break the common Laws, and transgress the standing Rules of Nature. ”

“ The fundamental principles of docility and authority have been considered in the first place because they are fundamental; but, for that very reason, they should be present but not in evidence : we do not expose the foundations of our house. ”

“ But even assuming the demonstrable uniformity of the laws or customs of Nature which are known to us, it remains a difficult question what manner of interference with such law or custom we might logically hold miraculous, and what, on the contrary, we should treat only as proof of the existence of some other law, hitherto undiscovered. ”

“ That is necessary which not only is true, but would be true under all circumstances. Something more than brute compulsion is, therefore, involved in the conception; there is a general law under which the thing takes place. ”

“ When I speak of cause and effect, I speak of those general laws only by which we perceive the sequence of human affairs to be usually regulated, and in which we recognize emphatically the wisdom and power of the supreme Lawgiver, the design of the Designer. ”

“ These themes are all-comprehensive: every truth and every error which any intellect can harbour, must find a place under one or other of these heads; and these, accordingly, are the departments into which philosophy is divided, inasmuch as these are the provinces where error has to be uprooted, and truth planted. ”

“ Lord, in which the objects, or agents, of one class are, without any formal notice, employed in the place of the persons or things of which the passages in which they occur treat; and they are exhibited either as exerting, or as subjected to an agency proper to their nature, in order to represent by analogy, the agency which those persons are to exert, or of which those things are to be the subjects. ”

“ In our world all particulars of conduct and goodness, as well as deviations from them, are known; nothing on these heads is, or indeed can be concealed. I am now speaking of an advanced period of my reign; for at first, and in what I may call the intermediate or transition period, it was otherwise. Then there were many laws and precepts established which are now all but obsolete,—for since, the occasion for appealing to them scarcely arises. ”

“ When we have marked the characteristics which form the general points of coincidence; when we have pursued them to their consequences in the several modes of legislation, execution, and judicature, in the establishments which relate to police, commerce, religion, or domestic life; we have made an acquisition of knowledge, which, though it does not supersede the necessity of experience, may serve to direct our inquiries, and, in the midst of affairs, give an order and a method for the arrangement of particulars that occur to our observation. ”

“ It is the development of the consequences of these laws that specially demands our attention in these lectures. We must have the courage to look at the facts unflinchingly, and deduce from them all the wondrous consequences they involve. ”

“ Besides, that which we call evil or misfortune may, according to the absolute laws of existence, and in its profundity, be wise and essential principles of development, which are beyond human comprehension, and therefore something which in itself is an advantageous phenomenon. ”

“ Any theory which proposes two methods of judgment or two measures of law, in consequence of a supposed difference of vital power, is emphatically uncertain, and lays itself open to just suspicion of dangerous error. ”

“ The attempt to show as a universal law by what mechanism in ‘Becoming’ the sequence of one condition upon another could be produced, or in what way that which we call a ‘state’ could be imparted to a subject in general, would very soon teach us that these questions are just as insoluble as the question, how ‘Being’ is made. ”

“ For the rest, there must under the circumstances be only too many mistakes; the historical conjectures, for they can be no more, are founded on authorities sufficiently recognised for me to be permitted to trust them ”

“ The doctrines of Uniformity and Determinism are supposed to be based upon experience. But experience includes experience of the actions of human beings; and some of them certainly appear to be of a capricious and undetermined character. ”

“ Be it as it may with regard to a criterion or criteria, there are methods of demonstration which, when applied to certain subjects, may lead to the discovery of unknown truths, bring to light relations hitherto unsuspected, and lift a paradox to the highest degree of certainty. ”

“ The choice that is finally made between the right, the expedient, and the wrong is determined by a variety of considerations—by conflicting emotions, by the balancing of probabilities and inclinations, by the degree or kind of temptation, by the presence or absence of witnesses, especially human, by other specialties of an animal's position, by the nature and extent of its moral training, by the character of the rewards and punishments offered on previous occasions. ”

“ Such a body, to the continuance and identity whereof we attach the continuance and identity of our personality, and which we posit as a complete articulated whole, and in which we posit ourselves as having causality immediately through our will, is what we call our body. ”

“ And in this examination we shall see whether there is any custom, any action, any system, or practice, or habit, any general approval or disapproval on the part of mankind in general, from which circumstance some suspicion at times arises. ”

“ If they do, why are well meaning men perplexed, and drawn from the weightier matters of the law, by a cloud of terms, whereby the easiest truths are explained into obscurity ? If they are not, then it behooves them to consider who is the author of this new doctrine ”

“ Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal order: definitions and rules and principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through the study of cases. ”

“ Could blind chance constitute order and decorum, and consequently a providence? That wisdom, order, and design should be the production of nonentity, or of chaos, confusion, and old night, is too absurd to deserve a serious confutation, for it supposeth that there may be effects without a cause, viz.: produced by nonentity, or that chaos and confusion could produce the effects of power, wisdom, and goodness. Such absurdities as these we must assent to, or subscribe to the doctrine of a self-existent and providential being. ”

“ Even these forces are seldom fully in consciousness. They lie so near the surface, however, that their existence and influence are not likely to be disclaimed. But the subject is not exhausted with the recognition of their power. ”

“ And the judicial kind is itself also distributed under two divisions,—one absolute, and one which takes in something besides as an addition, and which may be called assumptive. The absolute division is that which of itself contains in itself an inquiry into right and wrong. ”