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John Henry Newman
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Title: An Essay In Aid Of A Grammar Of Assent
Author: John Henry Newman
Release Date: October 1, 2010 [Ebook #34022]
Language: English
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT***
An Essay
In Aid Of
A Grammar Of Assent.
by
John Henry Newman,
Of the Oratory.
Non in dialecticà complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum.
ST. AMBROSE.
London:
Burns, Oates, & Co.
17 & 18, Portman Street, and 63, Paternoster Row.
1874
CONTENTS
Dedication.
Part I. Assent And Apprehension.
Chapter I. Modes Of Holding And Apprehending Propositions.
§ 1. Modes of Holding Propositions.
§ 2. Modes of apprehending Propositions.
Chapter II. Assent Considered As Apprehensive.
Chapter III. The Apprehension Of Propositions.
Chapter IV. Notional And Real Assent.
§ 1. Notional Assents.
§ 2. Real Assents.
§ 3. Notional and Real Assents Contrasted.
Chapter V. Apprehension And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.
§ 1. Belief in One God.
§ 2. Belief in the Holy Trinity.
§ 3. Belief in Dogmatic Theology.
Part II. Assent And Inference.
Chapter VI. Assent Considered As Unconditional.
§ 1. Simple Assent.
§ 2. Complex Assent.
Chapter VII. Certitude.
§ 1. Assent and Certitude Contrasted.
§ 2. Indefectibility of Certitude.
Chapter VIII. Inference.
§ 1. Formal Inference.
§ 2. Informal Inference.
§ 3. Natural Inference.
Chapter IX. The Illative Sense.
§ 1. The Sanction of the Illative Sense.
§ 2. The Nature of the Illative Sense.
§ 3. The Range of the Illative Sense.
Chapter X. Inference And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.
§ 1. Natural Religion.
§ 2. Revealed Religion.
Note.
Footnotes
DEDICATION.
To
Edward Bellasis,
Serjeant At Law,
In Remembrance
Of A Long, Equable, Sunny Friendship;
In Gratitude
For Continual Kindnesses Shown To Me,
For An Unwearied Zeal In My Behalf,
For A Trust In Me Which Has Never Wavered,
And A Prompt, Effectual Succour And Support
In Times Of Special Trial,
From His Affectionate
J. H. N.
_February 21, 1870._
PART I. ASSENT AND APPREHENSION.
1. Propositions (consisting of a subject and predicate united by the
copula) may take a categorical, conditional, or interrogative form.
(1) An interrogative, when they ask a Question, (e. g. Does Free-trade
benefit the poorer classes?) and imply the possibility of an affirmative
or negative resolution of it.
(2) A conditional, when they express a Conclusion (e. g. Free-trade
therefore benefits the poorer classes), and both imply, and imply their
dependence on, other propositions.
(3) A categorical, when they simply make an Assertion (e. g. Free-trade
does benefit), and imply the absence of any condition or reservation of
any kind, looking neither before nor behind, as resting in themselves and
being intrinsically complete.
These three modes of shaping a proposition, distinct as they are from each
other, follow each other in natural sequence. A proposition, which starts
with being a Question, may become a Conclusion, and then be changed into
an Assertion; but it has of course ceased to be a question, so far forth
as it has become a conclusion, and has rid itself of its argumentative
form—that is, has ceased to be a conclusion,—so far forth as it has become
an assertion. A question has not yet got so far as to be a conclusion,
though it is the necessary preliminary of a conclusion; and an assertion
has got beyond being a mere conclusion, though it is the natural issue of
a conclusion. Their correlation is the measure of their distinction one
from another.
No one is likely to deny that a question is distinct both from a
conclusion and from an assertion; and an assertion will be found to be
equally distinct from a conclusion. For, if we rest our affirmation on
arguments, this shows that we are not asserting; and, when we assert, we
do not argue. An assertion is as distinct from a conclusion, as a word of
command is from a persuasion or recommendation. Command and assertion, as
such, both of them, in their different ways, dispense with, discard,
ignore, antecedents of any kind, though antecedents may have been a _sine
quâ non_ condition of their being elicited. They both carry with them the
pretension of being personal acts.
In insisting on the intrinsic distinctness of these three modes of putting
a proposition, I am not maintaining that they may not co-exist as regards
one and the same subject. For what we have already concluded, we may, if
we will, make a question of; and what we are asserting, we may of course
conclude over again. We may assert, to one man, and conclude to another,
and ask of a third; still, when we assert, we do not conclude, and, when
we assert or conclude, we do not question.
2. The internal act of holding propositions is for the most part analogous
to the external act of enunciating them; as there are three ways of
enunciating, so are there three ways of holding them, each corresponding
to each. These three mental acts are Doubt, Inference, and Assent. A
question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion is the expression of
an act of inference; and an assertion is the expression of an act of
assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see one’s way to hold that
Free-trade is or that it is not a benefit; to infer, is to hold on
sufficient grounds that Free-trade may, must, or should be a benefit; to
assent to the proposition, is to hold that Free-trade is a benefit.
Moreover, propositions, while they are the material of these three
enunciations, are the objects of the three corresponding mental acts; and
as without a proposition, there cannot be a question, conclusion, or
assertion, so without a proposition there is nothing to doubt about,
nothing to infer, nothing to assent to. Mental acts of whatever kind
presuppose their objects.
And, since the three enunciations are distinct from each other, therefore
the three mental acts also, Doubt, Inference, and Assent, are, with
reference to one and the same proposition, distinct from each other; else,
why should their several enunciations be distinct? And indeed it is very
evident, that, so far forth as we infer, we do not doubt, and that, when
we assent, we are not inferring, and, when we doubt, we cannot assent.
And in fact, these three modes of entertaining propositions,—doubting
them, inferring them, assenting to them, are so distinct in their action,
that, when they are severally carried out into the intellectual habits of
an individual, they become the principles and notes of three distinct
states or characters of mind. For instance, in the case of Revealed
Religion, according as one or other of these is paramount within him, a
man is a sceptic as regards it; or a philosopher, thinking it more or less
probable considered as a conclusion of reason; or he has an unhesitating
faith in it, and is recognized as a believer. If he simply disbelieves, or
dissents, he is assenting to the contradictory of the thesis, viz. that
there is no Revelation.
Many minds of course there are, which are not under the predominant
influence of any one of the three. Thus men are to be found of
irreflective, impulsive, unsettled, or again of acute minds, who do not
know what they believe and what they do not, and who may be by turns
sceptics, inquirers, or believers; who doubt, assent, infer, and doubt
again, according to the circumstances of the season. Nay further, in all
minds there is a certain coexistence of these distinct acts; that is, of
two of them, for we can at once infer and assent, though we cannot at once
either assent or infer and also doubt. Indeed, in a multitude of cases we
infer truths, or apparent truths, before, and while, and after we assent
to them.
Lastly, it cannot be denied that these three acts are all natural to the
mind; I mean, that, in exercising them, we are not violating the laws of
our nature, as if they were in themselves an extravagance or weakness, but
are acting according to it, according to its legitimate constitution.
Undoubtedly, it is possible, it is common, in the particular case, to err
in the exercise of Doubt, of Inference, and of Assent; that is, we may be
withholding a judgment about propositions on which we have the means of
coming to some definitive conclusion; or we may be assenting to
propositions which we ought to receive only on the credit of their
premisses, or again to keep ourselves in suspense about; but such errors
of the individual belong to the individual, not to his nature, and cannot
avail to forfeit for him his natural right, under proper circumstances, to
doubt, or to infer, or to assent. We do but fulfil our nature in doubting,
inferring, and assenting; and our duty is, not to abstain from the
exercise of any function of our nature, but to do what is in itself right
rightly.
3. So far in general:—in this Essay I treat of propositions only in their
bearing upon concrete matter, and I am mainly concerned with Assent; with
Inference, in its relation to Assent, and only such inference as is not
demonstration; with Doubt hardly at all. I dismiss Doubt with one
observation. I have here spoken of it simply as a suspense of mind, in
which sense of the word, to have “no doubt” about a thesis is equivalent
to one or other of the two remaining acts, either to inferring it or else
assenting to it. However, the word is often taken to mean the deliberate
recognition of a thesis as being uncertain; in this sense Doubt is nothing
else than an assent, viz. an assent to a proposition at variance with the
thesis, as I have already noticed in the case of Disbelief.
Confining myself to the subject of Assent and Inference, I observe two
points of contrast between them.
The first I have already noted. Assent is unconditional; else, it is not
really represented by assertion. Inference is conditional, because a
conclusion at least implies the assumption of premisses, and still more,
because in concrete matter, on which I am engaged, demonstration is
impossible.
The second has regard to the apprehension necessary for holding a
proposition. We cannot assent to a proposition, without some intelligent
apprehension of it; whereas we need not understand it at all in order to
infer it. We cannot give our assent to the proposition that “x is z,” till
we are told something about one or other of the terms; but we can infer,
if “x is y, and y is z, that x is z,” whether we know the meaning of x and
z or no.
These points of contrast and their results will come before us in due
course: here, for a time leaving the consideration of the modes of holding
propositions, I proceed to inquire into what is to be understood by
apprehending them.
By our apprehension of propositions I mean our imposition of a sense on
the terms of which they are composed. Now what do the terms of a
proposition, the subject and predicate, stand for? Sometimes they stand
for certain ideas existing in our own minds, and for nothing outside of
them; sometimes for things simply external to us, brought home to us
through the experiences and informations we have of them. All things in
the exterior world are unit and individual, and are nothing else; but the
mind not only contemplates those unit realities, as they exist, but has
the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it abstractions and
generalizations, which have no existence, no counterpart, out of it.
Now there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms are common
nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and non-existing, such
as “Man is an animal, some men are learned, an Apostle is a creation of
Christianity, a line is length without breadth, to err is human, to
forgive divine.” These I shall call notional propositions, and the
apprehension with which we infer or assent to them, notional.
And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular nouns,
and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit and
individual, as “Philip was the father of Alexander,” “the earth goes round
the sun,” “the Apostles first preached to the Jews;” and these I shall
call real propositions, and their apprehension real.
There are then two apprehensions or interpretations to which propositions
may be subjected, notional and real.
Next I observe, that the same proposition may admit of both of these
interpretations at once, having a notional sense as used by one man, and a
real as used by another. Thus a schoolboy may perfectly apprehend, and
construe with spirit, the poet’s words, “Dum Capitolium scandet cum tacitâ
Virgine Pontifex;” he has seen steep hills, flights of steps, and
processions; he knows what enforced silence is; also he knows all about
the Pontifex Maximus, and the Vestal Virgins; he has an abstract hold upon
every word of the description, yet without the words therefore bringing
before him at all the living image which they would light up in the mind
of a contemporary of the poet, who had seen the fact described, or of a
modern historian who had duly informed himself in the religious phenomena,
and by meditation had realized the Roman ceremonial, of the age of
Augustus. Again, “Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori,” is a mere
common-place, a terse expression of abstractions in the mind of the poet
himself, if Philippi is to be the index of his patriotism, whereas it
would be the record of experiences, a sovereign dogma, a grand aspiration,
inflaming the imagination, piercing the heart, of a Wallace or a Tell.
As the multitude of common nouns have originally been singular, it is not
surprising that many of them should so remain still in the apprehension of
particular individuals. In the proposition “Sugar is sweet,” the predicate
is a common noun as used by those who have compared sugar in their
thoughts with honey or glycerine; but it may be the only distinctively
sweet thing in the experience of a child, and may be used by him as a noun
singular. The first time that he tastes sugar, if his nurse says, “Sugar
is sweet” in a notional sense, meaning by sugar, lump-sugar, powdered,
brown, and candied, and by sweet, a specific flavour or scent which is
found in many articles of food and many flowers, he may answer in a real
sense, and in an individual proposition “Sugar is sweet,” meaning “this
sugar is this sweet thing.”
Thirdly, in the same mind and at the same time, the same proposition may
express both what is notional and what is real. When a lecturer in
mechanics or chemistry shows to his class by experiment some physical
fact, he and his hearers at once enunciate it as an individual thing
before their eyes, and also as generalized by their minds into a law of
nature. When Virgil says, “Varium et mutabile semper fœmina,” he both sets
before his readers what he means to be a general truth, and at the same
time applies it individually to the instance of Dido. He expresses at once
a notion and a fact.
Of these two modes of apprehending propositions, notional and real, real
is the stronger; I mean by stronger the more vivid and forcible. It is so
to be accounted for the very reason that it is concerned with what is
either real or taken for real; f...
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