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It is according to common experience and observation that the mistakes which men discover do not prevent certainty afterwards, even in respect to the subject about which they know they have been mistaken. But the objection rests on the assumption that certainty under this condition is impossible. The objection thus assumes as a fact what is contrary to the universal consciousness of man.

III. The fact that man is constituted capable of knowing and at the same time finite is a rational ground for the persistence of knowledge after the discovery of mistakes and for the co-existence of knowledge with conscious fallibility. Man cannot cease to be conscious of knowing unless he divests himself of his own constitution; yet being finite, his knowledge must always be limited and can be increased only by progressive acquisition. In acquiring knowledge he is liable to mistake. As constituted rational he is capable of knowing; as finite, he is liable to mistake. The objection implies that the reality of knowledge is proved by reasoning and may be disproved by argument; but the knowledge that I know is inseparable from the rational constitution of man; it persists through all mistakes and dissolves them into knowledge, like a perennial spring whose living water flows through the snow which obstructs it and dissolves it into its own swelling volume.

The objection, therefore, implies that finite or limited knowledge is impossible. It insists that an infallibility which precludes all mistakes is a necessary prerequisite, and the consciousness of it a necessary element of all knowledge. But such infallibility implies omniscience. The objection then is simply the absurdity that the knowledge of everything is a necessary prerequisite to the knowledge of anything, and that the consciousness of omniscience is an essential element of all knowledge. And for this nonsense we are asked to acknowledge that all human knowledge is unreal. The objection belongs to that type of thought which denies the reality of finite being and insists that the only reality is in the Absolute Being.

IV. In human intelligence there is a nucleus of knowledge surrounded by a zone of probability, opinion and doubt. In the nucleus of knowledge having the highest certitude there is no mistake; mistakes are in our reflective thinking on this knowledge, in our interpretation of it and inferences from it, from which comes the zone of probability, opinion and doubt.

When I am in pain I may mistake its cause, but I cannot mistake as to the fact of pain. I may mistake as to the shortest road home, but I cannot mistake, if I understand the terms, as to a straight line being the shortest distance between two points. I may know with indefectible certainty that darkness is not light, or that two and two make four, though aware that I have sometimes mistaken the

light of the rising moon for that of the rising sun, or have incorrectly added a column of figures.

The changes of belief alleged as proving knowledge unreal are often found on examination to be changes of opinion never held as certain. There has been a rapid succession of changes in the science of geology for many years; but the changes have been in theories devised to account for the facts rather than in belief of the facts themselves. Or, changes in scientific teachings are of conclusions from hasty or incomplete induction or deduction, or from insufficient observation, accepted provisionally as probable until further investigation gives certainty. These theories and conclusions are often put forth and received as science; but intelligent persons hold them only as opinions or theories having as yet no claim to scientific certainty. There is nothing in a change of opinion or theory to throw doubt on the reality of knowledge, although such changes are often used as facts by which the objector would prove the instability and uncertainty of all human beliefs.

In many other cases the change is of a belief which has never been scrutinized and formulated, and whose grounds and reasonableness the believer has never investigated.

V. Through all mistakes and changes of opinion the great mass of knowledge persists. The changes of belief are steps in an enlargement and confirmation of knowledge, not in its subversion and destruction.

The primitive knowledge, which gives the material for thought and the laws which regulate thinking, necessarily persists. Aside from the primitive knowledge, the greater part of acquired beliefs persist; as my beliefs that I was once born, that the Roman empire once existed, that wheat is nutritious food, that a certain neighbor is not a drunkard. Many of these beliefs are continually receiving confirmation from experience.

The same is true of scientific beliefs. The recent discovery by astronomers that they were mistaken as to the exact distance of the sun from the earth is not accompanied by any change in the great mass of astronomical knowledge. It is not true that man's beliefs are in continual transition and flux. The mass of them persist as knowledge; the ocean remains though the waves are always rising and breaking and falling on its surface. Physical Science is advanced, with many a mistake, by the cumulative evidence of persistent observation and experience, and inferences therefrom.

The same is true of changes of spontaneous belief when scrutinized by reflective thought. A man grows up in the religious belief of his childhood, without inquiring as to its grounds. The first objection of skepticism disconcerts and distresses him; and as new difficulties are

suggested, he is ready to think all his religious faith and hope must be abandoned. But as he proceeds to investigate, he may find, as multitudes have done, that the objections are not valid, that his belief rests on reasonable grounds. Thus his belief returns, sustained and confirmed by reason, clearer, stronger and more reasonable for the doubts which it has looked in the face and found to be unreasonable. It has sent down its roots to the depth where is perpetual moisture, and its leaves no more wither and it does not cease from bearing fruit. In this sense it is true that the way to true belief is through honest doubt.

If the objection were urged on an astronomer that the repeated and great changes in astronomical systems prove the untruthfulness of all astronomical science, he would reply that this objection was the denial alike of reason and of common sense. And rightly; for in its greatest changes, like the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican systems, astronomy has brought along with it into the new system a multitude of truths and facts already known in the old, and but for the knowledge of these it could not have advanced to the new system. It is simply an enlargement and growth of astronomical knowledge, not its extinction.

The empirical scientist, if candid, will allow the same explanation of changes in philosophy and religious belief which he gives for those in empirical science. In urging this objection, the objector commonly includes agnosticism in philosophy and urges it as proving that philosophy is self-contradictory. But both empirical science and philosophy presuppose the reality of knowledge, and agnosticism is no more a part of the latter than of the former. This error in applying the objection being corrected, certainly the differences and changes of opinion and the controversies attending them in philosophy are scarcely more numerous and frequent than in physical science. And as through all changes of physical science, so through all the changes of philosophy a mass of truth common to all philosophy is carried forward and becomes greater and clearer in the progress of philosophical thought. Renan says, "Who knows if the metaphysics and theology of the past will not be to those which the progress of speculation will one day reveal, what the Cosmos of Anaximenes is to the Cosmos of Laplace and Humboldt?"* And in philosophy as in physical science, the differences and the changes of belief have been steps in the enlargement and completion of philosophy, not in its subversion and destruction.

The same is true of religious belief. It has been well said, "Nothing has been so disputed about in the world as the Christian religion, unless it be nature itself. It is because, more than anything else, it has

* L'avenir Religieux des Sociétés Modernes, sub finem.

the simplicity and complexity of nature."* There is truth common to all religions. In the divisions of Christianity the beliefs held in common are usually more in number and more important than the beliefs which differ. Because religion is life, and the decay of religious life is attended with decay of religious belief, the problem of the progress of religious knowledge is more complicated than the progress of science, and a sinking from a greater knowledge to a less and from belief of truth to belief of error is more likely; yet even in religious knowledge the changes of belief have been predominantly incident to the enlargement of the knowledge. It is not the Christian who goes back to polytheism, nor the polytheist who goes back to fetichism, any more than the Copernican goes back to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, or the chemist from belief in oxygen to belief in phlogiston. And as men have advanced from the lower types of religion to the higher, they have brought with them whatever of their religious beliefs remained true in the presence of their enlarged knowledge, and have sloughed off only those which had been exposed as errors.†

Fetichism recognises the supernatural every where in nature. Polytheism does not cease to recognise the supernatural in nature, but recognises it with more intelligence as divinities distinct from nature, energizing in its several realms and through its mightiest powers. When in the Roman Empire polytheism was carried to its extreme development, when an infant had one guardian divinity in its sleeping, another in its rising, another in its crying, and another in its walking, when in the growth of wheat, the germinating, the growth of the blade, the forming of the joints in the stalk, the setting of the grain had each. its separate divinity, this was the recognition of the divine presence, activity and care in all nature and in all human life. Monotheism perpetuated this truth and clarified and enlarged it in the knowledge of one personal God pervading the universe with wisdom and love, and ordering all its courses for the realization of the highest rational ends. The gods that had crowded the world vanished and the world was filled with the fullness of God.

* E. D. Mead, " Carlyle," p. 27.

Unter der Hülle aller Religionen liegt die Religion selbst.-Schiller.

Vaticanus the deity that opens the infant's mouth in crying; Levana lifts it; Cunina watches over the cradle; Rumina brings out the milk; Potina presides over its drinking; Educa over the supplying of food.

Seia cares for the grain when sown beneath the ground; Segetia for the rising blade; Proserpina for the germinating of the seed; Nodutus presides over the formation of the joints and knots; Volutina over the sheaths infolding the stalk; Patelana over the opening of the sheath; Flora over the flowering: Lacturnus over the grain while in the milk; Matuta over the ripened grain; Tutilina over the harvesting: Runcina over the removal from the soil; Spiniensis over rooting out the thorns; Rubigo protects from mildew.-Augustine Civitas Dei, Lib. iv. 8, 21.

During the first Christian centuries the Roman polytheists were outgrowing their ancient religion and were introducing from the East religions that might better meet their wants. Before his conversion to Christianity, Constantine was a believer in one God, the Sun-God of the Persians. When he saw the cross on the Sun, it signified to him that the Christian's God, who is a spirit, in righteousness and mercy redeeming the world from sin to Christ-like love, is superior to the Sun-God whom he had worshiped, and must rightfully displace him. Whether the story is historically true or not, its significance and pertinence remain unchanged.

Thus under all ignorance, doubt, probability, and all changes of belief is knowledge of reality, which from childhood to age in the individual and from century to century in mankind is becoming larger and clearer and is putting away errors in its growth. And though other errors spring up, they are incidental to investigation and to progress in knowledge, not effective of its subversion and destruction. The legitimate influence of mistakes is not to annul our knowledge, but to lead us to greater carefulness and thoroughness of investigation.

All this is only saying that man, though limited, is constituted intelligent and rational, that is, with the power of knowing; that he can enlarge his knowledge and clarify it from errors by observation and reflection, and that the pursuit of knowledge is a legitimate function of the human mind, and not, as Lessing has represented it, an ineffectual seeking prosecuted for the mere pleasure of the search, a fruitless hunt prosecuted for the mere excitement of the chase.

27. Criteria of Primitive Knowledge.

The question now arises whether there are criteria by which we can discriminate among our beliefs those which are primitive and true knowledge of reality from those which are not. It has already been shown that we know that we know only in the act of knowing. Therefore the only possible criterion must in some way be knowledge itself. Four criteria, consistent with this restriction, may be named.

I. The first criterion is of course the knowledge itself as it rises clear and convincing in its own self-evidence; it is the self-evidence of the knowledge. This is the true significance of the criterion of Descartes: "Having observed that there is nothing whatever in this, 'I think therefore I am,' which assures me that I say the truth, save only that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to be, I concluded that I could take for a general rule that things which we conceive very clearly and distinctly are all true things." That is, knowledge is real * Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity and Heathenism. Oeuvres Vol. iii. p. 90, Principes de Philosophie.

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