Presumption

“ But the oftener one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the use of this mere presumption, the weaker does the presumption itself get to be; and one might in course of time use up one's presumptive privileges in this way, even though one started (as our anti-telepathists do) with as good a case as the great induction of psychology that all our knowledge comes by the use of our eyes and ears and other senses. ”

“ With what he did not like, however, it was different; the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption that it was right. It never occurred to him that the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed its being so. ”

“ And to apply the same presumption to all, on the ground of age alone, is not only gross injustice, but gross folly. A universal presumption might, with nearly or quite as much reason, be founded upon weight, or height, as upon age. ”

“ The charge of presumption, thrown by you on the most reasonable innovations, may, without any violence to truth, be retorted on every reformation that has meliorated our condition, and even on the improvable faculty that gives us a claim to the pre-eminence of intelligent beings. ”

“ The presumption in favour of individual judgment is only legitimate, where the judgment is grounded on actual, and especially on present, personal experience; not where it is formed antecedently to experience, and not suffered to be reversed even after experience has condemned it. ”

“ A law based on presumption is one in which the lawgiver rules for certain cases according to what experience shows in their regard—viz., that such cases are generally dangerous, or indicative of a particular fact. ”

“ First, then, it is at least a rather startling supposition that their fellow creatures have always been, and are still, the victims of a universal delusion, from which they alone enjoy the privilege of exemption. Presumption, at all events, is against a man who asserts that everybody but himself sees wrongly. He may be the only person whose eyes have not deceived him, but we should require him to give the strongest proof of so extraordinary an assertion. ”

“ What presumption that a man should ask Deity to think of him, and him exclusively! The presumption becomes simply unpardonable when the supplicant descends to details such as asking God to get him good interest for his money, to provide his son with a suitable berth, and his daughter with an eligible husband! ”

“ On the one side, desperation looks upon that good as future, but under so great a difficulty that it forgets the possibility of it, and thereupon surceaseth all endeavours. Presumption, on the other hand, is so keenly apprehensive of the possibility, that it never regards the difficulty, and so thrusts forward into irregular endeavours or expectations. ”

“ First, Then it is presumption, when from external or subordinate means men expect that for which they were never designed nor appointed of God. To expect ‘grapes of thorns or figs of thistles,’ would be a presumption, because God never designed them for such fruits; and no less is it when in any other case men look for high and extraordinary things from any created good above what God hath put into it by the law of creation. ”

“ The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. ”

“ It is felt that the presumption is against any activity which involves habituation to the predatory attitude, and that the burden of proof lies with those who speak for the rehabilitation of the predaceous temper and for the practices which strengthen it. ”

“ To whoever holds this belief, there is a general presumption against any supposition of divine agency not operating through general laws, or, in other words, there is an antecedent improbability in every miracle, which, in order to outweigh it, requires an extraordinary strength of antecedent probability derived from the special circumstances of the case. ”

“ It is true that it is stated in some of the authorities that where there are conflicting presumptions, the presumption of innocence will prevail against the presumption of the continuance of life, the presumption of the continuance of things generally, the presumption of marriage, and the presumption of chastity. ”

“ When in doubt, I can frequently form my conscience by the aid of this axiom. If, for example, I am in the habit of saying my little hours after breakfast, and some evening a doubt occurs to me whether I said them on that day, I need not say them then, the presumption being that I said them in the morning as usual, and In dubio standum est pro eo pro quo stat praesumptio. ”

“ But however prevalent and justifiable such a presumption may be, we hold it no sound philosophy to give it so complete a preponderance as to debar the mind from contemplating the possibility of quite other and independent acts of divine power, the possibility of the abrupt introduction into our system of new facts, or series of facts, with their appropriate laws. ”

“ Hilden (2 B. & Aid. 791) Lord Tenterden on this subject says: "One of the general grounds of a presumption is the existence of a state of things which may most reasonably be accounted for by supposing the matter presumed." ”

“ When the presumption amounts to a virtual certainty, as in the case of the general structure of organized beings, the only question requiring consideration is whether, in phenomena so little understood, there may not be liabilities to counteraction from causes hitherto unknown ”

“ The evils of haste and precipitancy in the formation of opinions are, perhaps, nowhere more deplorably exhibited, than in regard to the relation between human and divine agency. Indeed, so many rash judgments have been put forth on this important subject, that the very act of approaching it has come to be invested, in the minds of many persons, with the character of rashness and presumption. ”

“ Ere we come to this important enquiry, it behooves us to see that we come with willing minds; that we say not, ‘so far will we go and no farther; we will make one step, but not two; we will examine, but only so long as the result of our examination shall confirm our preconceived opinions.’ In our search after truth, we must equally discard presumption and fear. ”

“ Presumptions normally arise when proof of one fact renders the existence of another fact "so probable that it is sensible and timesaving to assume the truth of [the inferred] fact . . . until the adversary disproves it." ”

“ The à priori presumption is in favour of freedom and impartiality. ”

“ At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be trusted. We must be patient with the inevitable makeshift of our human thinking, whether in its sum total or in the separate minds that have made the sum. ”

“ But dejection at the mass of presumptions arrayed against himself, even apart from his own unfortunate resemblance to the real object of those presumptions, self-reproach on account of his own indiscretion, and pain of mind at the prospect of the troubles which awaited him in a country where he was friendless, suddenly came over him ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not all Probabilists use the principle of the presumptive will of the lawgiver for all cases of negative doubt; some employ different principles for different kinds of doubt, and sometimes arrive at other decisions than those given in the preceding paragraphs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My first object is to show that we are liable to be affected by our prepossessions at every stage of our mental activity, from our primary reception of impressions from without, to the highest exercise of our reasoning powers; and that the value of the testimony of any individual, therefore, as to any fact whatever, essentially depends upon his freedom from any prepossessions that can affect it. ”

“ Upon this judgment of the common sense our inductions are all grounded, so that it may be called the inductive principle. Withdraw trust from it and experience becomes blind as a mole. We may feel what is present at the moment, but the distant and the future are wholly hid in darkness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We ought to engage what I have ventured in this society to call the "emotion of conviction," the caprices of which are so extravagant and so dangerous, much more seriously on the side of the uniformity of Nature than we have ever hitherto done. We should all try to distinguish more carefully than we do between possibility, probability, and certainty. ”

“ 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 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 supposition to the average man appears obviously possible, however much, for other reasons, he might decline to entertain it. And the assurance that his supposition is meaningless nonsense he rejects as contrary to what he calls common sense. ”

“ Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the clearness of statement that the [p.101] subject should certainly elicit, upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere negation, is at least an important factor in the case ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should be noted, however, that the acts of the speculative reason, although they do not belong to prudence itself, are like other acts subject to the direction of prudence; for in pursuing speculative studies one should use good judgment as to the subjects to be considered, the time, place, manner, etc., of study. ”

“ Also and again corresponding to this mental act of supposing and its intended object the supposition, there is a mode of being which is neither existence nor non-existence, but is named subsistence. A supposition, it is said, does not exist—it subsists. This thesis, it will easily be understood, is based on an analysis, and deals with arguments that touch the most fundamental problems of theory of knowledge. ”

“ It is now impossible to say whether I am right or wrong in all my conclusions, but the body beside which we are standing is the final piece of evidence which seems to support what must be a partly speculative line of deduction. ”

“ It is, however, practically solved, as similar problems in regard to other objects of our speculative nature are, in the existence of those feelings, by which we are compelled to assume, as a first principle, our own responsibility for our acts of rational will. ”

“ For all rational and accountable agents must stand or fall upon the principles of the law of nature, except imputation alters the nature and tendency of things; of which the immutability of a God cannot admit. ”

“ Our premises will be true, and our reasoning correct, and yet the result of no value in the particular case. There is, therefore, almost always room for a modest doubt as to our practical conclusions. ”

“ What has been said can be expressed in a formal manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment ”

“ If any one fear that in insisting so strongly that behavior is the aim and end of every sound philosophy I have curtailed the dignity and scope of the speculative function in us, I can only reply that in this ascertainment of the character of Being lies an almost infinite speculative task. ”

“ This means that even in free thinking that which now exists as a presupposition, is a comprehended result, thought out either before or after, but in this transformation of the presupposition into a result, again has a side which is a presupposition, an assumption or unconscious immediacy of the activity of the Spirit. ”

“ In all cases therefore, the probability of compliance is much greater when nothing but compliance is expected, than when a thought of the contrary is, by some inauspicious word, or a mere look of doubt and anxiety, suggested. ”