adduce for them. Newman usually describes Belief as "absolute" or "unconditional," to contrast it with imaginations, guesses, opinions, or estimates of probability; it is, so to speak, a substantial solid state of mind; or, to vary the metaphor, it has ballast and anchor-cable. A belief when formed is for a time at least a settled fact.

Newman shows conclusively that beliefs do not grow only through reasoning on the part of the person who holds them :

First, we know from experience that beliefs may endure without the presence of the inferential acts upon which they were originally elicited. It is plain that, as life goes on, we are not only inwardly formed and changed by the accession of habits, but we are also enriched by a great multitude of beliefs and opinions, and that on a variety of subjects. These, held, as some of them are, almost as first principles, constitute as it were the furniture and clothing of the mind. Sometimes we are fully conscious of them; sometimes they are implicit, or only now and then come directly before our reflective faculty. Still they are beliefs, and when we first admitted them we had some kind of reason, slight or strong, recognised or not, for doing so. However, whatever those reasons were, even if we ever realised them, we have long forgotten them. Whether it was the authority of others, or our own observation, or our reading, or our reflections which became the warrant of our belief, anyhow we received the matters

in question into our minds, and gave them a place there. We believed them and we still believe, though we have forgotten what the warrant was. At present they are self-sustained in our minds, and have been so for long years. They are in no sense conclusions," and imply no process of reasoning. Here, then, is a case where Belief stands out as distinct from inference. Again, sometimes assent fails while the reasons for it, and the recognition of those reasons, are still present and in force. Our reasons may seem to us as strong as ever, yet they do not secure our assent. Our beliefs, founded on them, were and are not; we cannot perhaps tell when they went; we may have thought that we still held them, until something happened to call our attention to the state of our minds. Sometimes of course a cause may be found why they went; there may have been some vague feeling that a fault lay at the ultimate basis, or in the underlying conditions, of our reasonings; or some misgiving that the subject-matter of them lay beyond the reach of the human mind; or a consciousness that we had gained a broader view of things in general than when we first gave our assent; or that there were strong objections to our first convictions which we had never taken into account. But this is not always so; sometimes our mind changes so quickly, so unaccountably, so disproportionately to any tangible arguments to which the change can be referred, and with such abiding recognition of the force of the old arguments, as to suggest the suspicion that moral causes, arising out of our condition, age, company, occupations, fortunes, are at the bottom. However, what once was assent is gone; yet the perception of the old arguments remains, showing that inference is one thing and belief another. And as belief sometimes dies out without tangible reasons sufficient to account for its failure, so

sometimes in spite of strong and convincing arguments it is never given. We sometimes find men loud in their admiration of truths which they never profess. As, by the law of our mental constitution, obedience is quite distinct from faith, and men may believe without practising, so is belief also independent of our acts of inference. Very numerous are the cases in which good arguments, confessed by us to be good, nevertheless are not strong enough to incline our minds ever so little to the conclusion at which they point. But why is it that we do not believe a little, in proportion to those arguments? On the contrary, we throw the full onus probandi on the side of the conclusion, and we refuse to believe it at all until we can believe it altogether. The proof is capable of growth; but the belief either exists. or does not exist.1

Newman goes on to goes on to point out that there is always a connection between them; the arguments adverse to a conclusion naturally hinder assent; the inclination to believe is greater or less according as the particular act of inference expresses a stronger or weaker probability; belief always implies grounds in reason, implicit if not explicit, and cannot be rightly held without sufficient grounds; still, as we have seen, belief (1) may remain when the reasons are forgotten, (2) may fail or be withdrawn though the reasons remain, (3) may be 1 Grammar of Assent, ch. vi. § 1.

withheld when there are good reasons for giving it, and in general does not vary in strength as the reasons vary. This "substantiveness" of the act of belief is the point to be established.

Further the utmost we can do in the way of rationally supporting a belief is to find a convergence of reasons in its favour,

a larger or smaller number of considerations, each of which is a reason for the belief; but which do not either singly or together amount to complete proof. If we are able to show that it is "truth-like," this is all we can do by reasoning. you prefer it you may call these reasons "probabilities," and say with Butler "probability is the guide of life." But as Newman observes in his Apologia:

If

The danger of this view in the case of many minds is its tendency to destroy in them all absolute certainty [I should prefer to say, all settled beliefs], leading them to consider every conclusion as doubtful, and resolving truth into a set of opinions which it is safe indeed to profess, but not possible to embrace with full internal assent.

The reason why Butler's doctrine appears unsatisfactory is that the word "prob

ability" always suggests some kind of formal estimate or calculation. It is not true that such calculations are the guide of life, nor would it be well if they were. Calculation, in all its forms, is wholly inadequate to the solution of problems arising out of man's higher life. But if Butler's doctrine means by "probability" an assemblage of converging reasons, then it is true; for these may have a total effect on the mind, which it may apprehend almost instinctively, and which may lead to the firm and lasting conviction which Newman calls "certitude." Nay, they not only may but must lead to this, for by the laws of our mind we cannot rest in probability; rightly or wrongly our belief tends to settle into certitude or to die away.

Just as we cannot believe anything without our belief being stronger than the reasons for it will warrant, so we cannot act without going beyond what we are able to prove :

Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning if we determine to begin with proof. . . . Resolve to believe nothing, and you must prove your proofs and analyse your elements, sinking farther and farther, and finding "in the lowest