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or no.

is a law of our minds, which is exemplified in action on a large scale, whether a priori it ought to be a law Our hoping is a proof that hope, as such, is not an extravagance; and our possession of certitude is a proof that it is not a weakness or an absurdity to be certain. How it comes about that we can be certain is not for me to determine; for me it is sufficient that certitude is felt. It is unmeaning in us to find fault with our own nature, which is nothing else than we ourselves, instead of using it according to the use of which it ordinarily admits. We must appeal to man himself, as a fact, and not to any antecedent theory, in order to find what is the law of his mind as regards Inference and Belief. If, then, such an appeal does bear me out in deciding, as I have done, that the course of inference is ever more or less obscure, while belief is ever distinct and definite, and yet that what is in its nature thus absolute does in fact follow upon what in outward manifestation is thus complex, indirect and recondite, what is left but to take things as they are, and resign ourselves to what we find?

That is,

instead of devising, what cannot be, some sufficient science of reasoning which may compel certitude in concrete conclusions, to confess that there is no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony borne to truth by the mind itself; and that this phenomenon, perplexing as we may find it, is a normal and inevitable characteristic of the mental constitution of a being like man on a stage such as the world.1

How far is this general attitude justifiable?

It is plain that we cannot form an "antecedent theory" of what belief and reason1 Grammar of Assent, ch. ix,

ing ought to be, and bring it to the mind from the sky so to speak, testing our mental operations by it. So far we must assent to Newman's conclusion. Still there is a great difference between two questions which Newman does not distinguish. The first is, What are the rational grounds which men do in fact assign for this or that belief? the second is, What are the real or ultimate grounds of the belief, that is, those which might and could be assigned for it, and ought to be, if we wish to go to the bottom of it? Newman does not ignore this question; he tries to make the psychological analysis of Belief and of its usual causes do duty for an answer to it. Let us see to what conclusions this procedure leads him, and how far they are consistently worked out.

But, first, there is one vastly important conviction which never passes out of Newman's mind; in the light of it all his inquiries are conducted. And it should not pass out of his reader's mind either. This is his firm assurance that Conscience, meaning our consciousness of moral authority, the authoritative claim which duty and right

make upon us, affords direct evidence of the existence of God as a personal intelligent Moral Governor of the world. He declares this in one or more passages in each of his works. In the Apologia he says:

"I find it impossible to believe in my own existence without believing in Him who lives as a personal, allseeing, all-judging being in my conscience." Again: "The being of God is as certain to me as the certainty of my own existence, though when I try to put the grounds of that certainty into logical shape I find a difficulty in doing so. . . . I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God drawn from the general facts of human society and the course of history, but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make my moral being rejoice."

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This witness of conscience is the one deep belief in which Cardinal Newman is at one with his brother and with Dr Martineau. In the sequel we shall have to compare different statements of it, as a fact, and examine the forms into which, as an infer

ence, it may be thrown. At present we only note an important consequence of it in Cardinal Newman's mind. The evidence of conscience has an even more important place in his system than in Dr Martineau's,

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For having thus arrived at belief in a ruling moral Power, and since Truth is of such great moral and spiritual value, he feels entitled to assume that God will have provided for man's attainment of truth, not merely by "revelation," but by so forming the natural constitution of man's mind that he can attain it, and will attain it in the end. We may therefore trust our beliefs, even though we cannot express in any rational form their causes and grounds. This invites comparison with the thought, frequently expressed to-day, that though intellectual and moral truths are the products of natural evolution, or even of mere natural selection, yet we can trust those truths if evolution is a divine method.

Newman suggests the argument more than once in the Grammar of Assent. We may express it in another form-a form which he would have repudiated, but which nevertheless brings out its main point. If we may believe that the constitution or framework of the world, including that of man's mind, is rational in the deeper sense of the word, in which morality itself is

rational,—if the world is intelligible and is a harmony, we may also believe that the laws and principles of thought which are necessary to understand it must be reliable ; we may believe too that nothing irrational can permanently survive, and that our minds will not be able to rest for ever in falsehood. But such a Faith in a rationality of the Whole is a desperate leap in the dark unless we can find some traces of rationality in the parts; and Newman does not find many in the operations of the mind. on which belief rests.

His general position is this. In the case of most beliefs, among the innumerable causes of each there will be many causes which we cannot find; and among those which we can find, there are not many which we can express as reasons.

But it is a law of our nature that beliefs must grow and take definite shape in our minds and have some degree of permanence. Sometimes they have many strong reasons in their favour; but we are constantly forming beliefs which we hold with a tenacity out of all proportion to the reasons we can

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