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strictly technical sense. The effect of No doubt, if we suppose a man sudMr. Balfour's phraseology depends on denly endowed with senses for the first its implying primarily an examination time, and tell him forthwith to examine by scientific explorers of their feelings his own feelings as a road to physical in the present, and on their drawing, science, the proposal seems as absurd in the present, inferences to a cause as Mr. Balfour intimates. He must adequate to producing them. Surely first learn to stand and to walk. and this is psychologically inexact. The to realize his constant relations with inference both to the existence of a co- something which gradually becomes herent system, and to its representing most coherently, though only relatively, something external, has been, surely, known to him. And it is this knowlthe gradual and unconscious result of edge which science proposes to extend. an accumulation of experiences in the These remarks hold good mutatis past, constant experiences from the mutandis, if we maintain with modified first dawn of consciousness of the in-realism that our perception of the priteraction of our own activities, muscu- mary qualities is immediate, or if we lar, sensational, locomotive, of which hold it to be an inference that such a we are the authors, with coherent quality as extension, as being revealed effects produced by something existing, to the consciousness in sensations of in Berkeley's words, "independently different kinds, has in it an objective of my mind, for I know myself not to character. In each case the analysis be their author." 1 Scientific observa- of our consciousness, instead of being tion, though made by means of present as Mr. Balfour says essentially insensation, is not an examination of consistent" with our spontaneous conpresent feelings, or made "to account viction, corresponds with it as far as for " "fleeting impressions." The it goes. The analyses alike of the present sensations are interpreted by different schools of thought go far the product of past sensible experience, enough hand in hand to give at least a which is habitually in our mind. They good indication of the premises on presuppose that product, and only bring which their common practical conclubefore us aspects and instances (it may sion rests - that there is an external be new aspects and instances) of the reality which is known to us more or coherent system which past experience less relatively through the senses. has revealed to us. To this system And this is the spontaneous conviction Berkeley himself was ready to give the of the unphilosophical mind-except name things." "In common talk," that the question as to the relativity of he wrote, "the objects of our senses sensible knowledge has simply not ocare not termed ideas, but things. Call curred to it. them so still, provided you do not attribute to them any absolute external existence." But that they discernibly represent an external existence, Berkeley was equally emphatic in asserting. It is this coherent system, habitually regarded as representing something external, and not either " feelings" ΟΙ "ideas" (in the popular sense) or "fleeting impressions," which the men of science are engaged in investigating by means of their present sensations.2

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1 Works, edition of 1784, p. 160. Cf. also p. 202. 2 Mr. Balfour shows elsewhere some appreciation (though very partial, as it seems to us) of the facts to which we refer. But it remains true that the apparent force of the passage we are criticising depends on their being forgotten.

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This of course does not touch the metaphysical question as to the nature of the "thing in itself;" but it would as little paralyze scientific investigation to believe from its commencement that we can only know the external reality in terms of its sensible effects, of what is revealed in sensation active and passive, as it weakens our belief in the geographical truth that England is an island, or our interest in the fact, to have it brought home to us that (if

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3 Newman does not treat exhaustively in any o his published works of the nature of the inferenc to an external world. But he says expressly tha we know "nothing at all" of "substance or o matter." (Apologia, p. 239.)

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so be) we have no knowledge of what | new standpoint, he sees that the marwe mean by England itself, except iner can still guide his ship by prein terms of our sensible experience. Copernican observations, and that the Science, whether geographical or astronomical, is not on this hypothesis undertaken, as Mr. Balfour says, "to account for" our impressions, but to extend the knowledge, relative though it be, which has been begun by our past sensible experience in the manner already indicated. Its conclusions are exactly as relative as all sensible knowledge is.

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sun-dial may with advantage remain where it stands. And so, too, it is with the discovery that physical science is relative, and that we cannot now be in a position to decide what it tells us in terms of absolute truth. It does not make it uninteresting, or change our conviction that we are learning much from it; though doubtless there may be in such a discovery a certain lessening of the freshest enthusiasm, parallel to that which advancing life, with its many lessons as to our limitations, brings in so many spheres of interest.

And certainly facts do not show that Idealism has diminished the interest of its upholders in physical science. Kant's awe at the "starry heavens " was none the less that he considered We may apply our parable by pointspace to be only a "form of thought." ing out that Mr. Balfour's reductio ad Berkeley's eloquent description of the absurdum of the cosmo-thetic Idealist's planets and fixed stars, and of the basis for science applies word for word truths which astronomers have to tell to the Ptolemaist's belief (in the fifof them, co-existed with thorough- teenth century) in the teaching of pregoing Idealism. The study of nature Copernican plane astronomy. We have is not likely to seem valueless because the "singular spectacle of a creed we cannot with our present faculties which is believed in practice for one know the position which our relative set of reasons, though in theory it can knowledge of it will hold in the world of reality, "beyond this bourne of time and place."

only be justified by another; and which through some beneficent accident (sic) turns out to be true, though We should be inclined to say that its origin and each subsequent stage of the discovery of the relativity of its gradual development is the product physics is somewhat parallel to that of of error and illusion." 8 Surely the a relativity within the sphere of phys- truer account in both cases is that the ical science itself. The "plain man" coherence of science was due neither thinks he perceives the external world to a beneficent accident nor to illusion, immediately, and the "plain man" but to the truths (relative though they thought in Galileo's time that he saw were) on which the investigation was sun and planets moving. When he based. We may add that Mr. Balis first told that he has been wrong, he four's failure to keep apart the quesis thrown into confusion, and thinks tions of the accuracy of scientific you have upset some deep conviction.2 conclusions and of their relative He views plane astronomy as based on character leads him to use the word 66 error " and "illusion." But when "truth" ambiguously. The concluhe has fully taken in the import of the sions may be quite accurate and yet not absolutely true.

In the second of the dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

We need hardly say that if Mr. Balfour merely means that primitive scientific explorers could not apprehend the consistency of Idealism with their own experience -that is to say, could not take in their rejection of it would what Idealism meantnot have been persistence in "illusion," but adherence to relative truth, the relative character of which they did not recognize, in preference to a misapprehension which would have been positive

error.

The main difference, then, between Newman's method and Mr. Balfour's would appear to be this- that Mr. Balfour, contemplating the supposed inferential process primarily as a present inference to an adequate cause instead of an inference based on a com

3 See p. 117.

We pass to the consideration of Mr. Balfour's treatment of Authority. He carries his attempt to maximize the extent of the non-rational causes of

plexus of past experiences, finds it | life. The assumption is that the raunsatisfactory and shadowy, dismisses tional nature when healthy and normal it, and passes to a different region for makes for truth as the vital functions the basis of our conviction; tracing make for life, and this assumption, our conviction to an instinct, and our which is confirmed by analysis, where justification in trusting it to the fact analysis is possible, we make in every that it supplies a need. The line of act of reasoning. Analysis is not to be thought indicated by Newman, on the rejected as Mr. Balfour tends to reject other hand, leads us to find in the it, because it does not attain to cominferential process far more, because pleteness. It may give an excellent it leads us to contemplate it in its truc indication as to whether the mind is on strength as a complicated record of right or on wrong lines by its partial latent reasoning from varied experi- observation of the process of the living ences, of reaction of the activities of reason; and it may even point to a which we are conscious, on something process being normal, while it incidenexisting independently of our minds, tally discloses difficulties which it canwhich gives gradually a homogeneous not resolve, as the dissector may and most definite conception of certain understand the working of a function leading attributes of that something so as a whole, and yet its actual performfar as its powers of affecting us are ance may involve an expansion of some concerned. The process of analysis of muscle which seems absolutely imposexperience, which to Mr. Balfour is sible in scrutiny of the dead tissue. more or less beside the mark, becomes, in this system, valuable although incomplete. It indicates sufficiently the ground for the fundamental postulate of science considered as relative; belief, and to minimize our obligations while, according to Mr. Balfour, it is inconsistent with the beliefs to which science owes its existence. Mr. Balfour's method seems to give no protection against the fear that an instinct which appears simply to contradict all attempts at rational analysis is purely illusive. But if, on the other hand, we are able, when we investigate the grounds of our spontaneous decision, to see that they are in large measure primarily with pointing out the falsity rational, we have at least some warrant of the popular conception (p. 201), that for trusting the decision even where Reason "is a kind of Ormuzd, doing we cannot follow its analysis; just as constant battle against the Ahriman of the doctor concludes from his sur-tradition and authority ;" and that “its roundings, which give him direct gradual triumph over the opposing information on only a few critical powers of darkness is what we mean conditions of the action of lungs and by progress." Mr. Balfour points out heart, that they are really as a whole performing the vital functions satisfactorily, and that they will keep at work all that complicated machinery, quite inaccessible to observation, which is involved in the continuance of human

1 We do not forget that according to Newman

there are cases where the mind (notably of a man of genius) traverses a path which analysis cannot sufficiently follow to justify at all.

to the human reason, into one of the most remarkable and valuable chapters of his work, the chapter on 66 Authority and Reasou." We cannot but think that here, too, his observation of psychological facts has been somewhat at fault. We find the same tendency to insist exclusively on one aspect of a truth, and to ignore the latent workings of the human reason. He is concerned

how large a share Authority has and should have in forming the convictions of the individual; how essential it is, both for his own preservation and for that of the society in which he lives, that he should accept the mass of convictions which form the basis of the action of the body politic. For the individual, he maintains, to examine for himself the exact evidence on which

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That this obedience (at least provisional) to established authority is of the highest importance, and that many disregard it in maintaining the supposed right aud duty-the absurdity of which is not too strongly emphasized by Mr. Balfour - of each individual to make up his mind on all subjects by his own "free speculative investigation," is beyond question. It may be remarked, by the way, that this was largely recognized by the parent of the doubting philosophy which paved the way for modern Rationalism, by Descartes himself; who advocated (in the third section of his "Discours de la Méthode ") une morale par provision," which included the duty of submission on the part of cach man to the laws and customs of his country, and to the religion in which he had been brought up, and of following in practical life the most moderate and most generally received maxims.

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"rests every positive enactment and tification of the two leads, we cannot every moral precept which he has been but think, to some inaccuracy. He accustomed to obey," and to act on states the "current theory," which he them only in proportion as he is satis- is opposing, first, as the theory that fied with the result, would be fatal. " every one" should sift the reasous "To say," he writes, "that such a for his own convictions, and in the community, if it acted on the opinions same paragraph as the theory that thus arrived at, would stand but a poor "Reason only can be safely permitted chance in the struggle for existence, is to mould the convictions of mankind." to say far too little. It could never Yet the reductio ad absurdum to which even begin to be; and if by a miracle he proceeds, of supposing every man, it was created, it would without doubt woman, boy, and girl as instituting an immediately resolve itself into its con- independent examination into the justistituent elements." fication of social and ethical rules of the community is obviously conclusive as a criticism of the one theory, inconclusive as against the other. Again, a little later, he speaks of current exaggerations of "the importance of Reason among the causes producing and maintaining the beliefs, customs, and ideals which form the groundwork of life -a phrase which obviously suggests beliefs and customs of a nation or of mankind; but his illustration, while extremely apt in reference to the individual, is not so in reference to the race. He gives the analogy of a boy who worked the steam-engine in its early stages, by pulling a string at stated intervals, by which operation the valve was opened which admitted the steam into the cylinder. The boy, he says, probably "greatly magnified his functions, and regarded himself as the most important, because the only rational, link in the chain of causes and effects." This illustration without But Mr. Balfour goes much beyond doubt is analogous to the self-satisfacthis. In the first place he is concerned tion of an individual who exaggerates with pointing out the current exagger- the importance of his own Reason in ations as to the importance of Reason carrying on the processes of daily life. and to show the " comparative petti- But if we apply it to the share taken ness of the role. . . played by reasou- by human Reason in general in detering in human affairs." He passes at mining the customs which are the times almost insensibly - from the groundwork of life, we find that most place occupied by Reason in determin- of the very important processes which ing individual conviction, to its place to the boy was independent of any in determining the convictions of the rational exercise, was for the race the race; from protesting against the com- result of its own inventive reason. mon exaggerations of the sphere of word inserted into the sentence in private judgment, to protesting against which Mr. Balfour points the analogy exaggerations as to the scope of Rea- would make this clear. "So do we son in the corporate judgments of the stand," he writes, as reasoning becommunity. Aud his occasional iden-ings in the presence of the complex

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processes, physiological and psychical, | victory of Reason over Authority inout of which are manufactured the con- troduced absolutely and universally, for victions necessary to the conduct of every individual, true conclusions hithlife." Add after "psychical" the erto entirely unknown.

sors.

words "and rational," and it becomes But we may look at this instance clear that the argument and illustration from another point of view. We may serve to show not the small place which regard it, not as the opposition between Reason occupies, but which the reason-Reason and Authority, but rather as ing of one individual occupies in the the opposition between blind trust in process. traditional Authority and an intelliThis leads us to remind ourselves gent use of scientific Authority - for that the reasoning of one generation Watt and his successors inherited the naturally issues in conclusions which scientific conclusions of their predecesform the "groundwork" of social life for individuals in the next. And in And this brings us to the second this way a very few achievements of point in Mr. Balfour's comparison bethe individual Reason come to affect tween the provinces of Reason and of the whole race; and the successful Authority, in which he appears to us struggle of Reason against Authority, to draw a conclusion more adverse to in one generation may issue in a change Reason than his own premises warrant. in the "groundwork" of social life, Coufiuing ourselves to the question as which is due to Reason, although it to the respective shares of Authority does not necessarily affect all individ- and of Reason in determining indiuals by the medium of their own rea-vidual belief, let us observe that at first soning faculties. To take up Mr. he contemplates these two powers as Balfour's steam-engine and complete causes of belief, right or wrong, and, it the passenger who in our own time as we have seen, bases his decision enters the train with the conviction in favor of Authority greatly on the that it will carry him from London to impossibility and absurdity of each Brighton in an hour, owes this conclu- individual investigating the social consion in part at least to the reasoning victions which are the groundwork of of Watt and his successors. The in- life. But it is plain that individuals ventors of the steam-engine reached differ infinitely among themselves as to their conclusions by the active use of how far this surrender of their private Reason. On the other hand, the mot- judgment to the decisions of the comley array of postboys and stage-coach munity is based on Reason. In the drivers who, as our grandfathers have uneducated, as in young children, the told us, used to gather together at the cause of belief may be simply blind subFeathers' Inn and drink confusion to mission to the influence of Authority. the intruder, were obviously represen- In the older and more educated it is tatives of the established Tradition and far more a rationabile obsequium. And of the Authority of customary belief. yet the rejection of the absurdity of Their historic refrain, private judgment (which is the central point of his argument as he first states No boiler so large or so hot, Can rival the speed of the Tantivy trot, — it) is at least as characteristic of those who trust Authority, because they perwas the voice of Tradition and of the ceive such a course to be reasonable as Authority in possession, while their of those who trust it blindly. That is rivals, if they expressed their senti- to say, it is as characteristic (at least) ments with more of scientific cogency of those for whom Authority is (in Mr. and less of that poetic enthusiasm Balfour's language) a reason for belief which is characteristic of primitive be- as of those for whom it is merely a liefs, were, relatively at least, the rep-cause and not a reason. Mr. Balfour, resentatives of Reason. Here we have observing that with this class of cases an instance in which in a few years the Reason precedes Authority as a cause

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