REASONED CERTITUDE.

 A few points, however, call for notice.

First, when scholastics emphasize the doctrine that the immediate

objective evidence of axioms of the ideal order is the supreme

criterion of all truth and the ultimate motive of all human certi

tude, they are not to be understood as implying that the evidence

we have for the judgments that are of the most profound im

portance to the human race can be reduced to such evidence (cf.

148). The true solutions of the great problems concerning the

origin, nature, and destiny of man and the universe, concerning

the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, the reality of

the moral order, the obligation and sanctions of religion, are,

needless to say, not immediately evident. Indeed no solutions

of these problems are immediately evident. Nor can the true

solutions of them be deduced from self-evident axioms of the

ideal order by any process of pure deductive reasoning, of which

every step would be cogently self-evident (35) : such, for instance,

as the reasoning employed in pure mathematics. Their solution

involves mixed demonstration. 1 It therefore implies certitude

about some judgments of the existential order ; it implies that

abstract concepts and principles are validly applicable to the

actually experienced order of concrete, existing things, i.e. it

implies the truth of Moderate Realism ; and finally it implies

well-grounded certitude on our part that in the actual process of

applying concepts to percepts, of interpreting singulars by uni-

versals, of locating the intellectual abstract in the sense concrete, we

are allowing ourselves to be guided by the real evidence^ i.e. that

we are representing or interpreting the reality presented to us for

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 254, c; supra, 154.

278 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

interpretation only according to its real or ontological exigencies

and not otherwise. 1 Now this evidence is by no means cogent.

It can be sufficient to ground a firm or certain assent ; but, clearly,

it allows wide scope for the exercise of prudence, care, and caution

in conducting the intellectual processes of conception, judgment,

generalization, induction, deduction, etc., through which alone we

can hope to attain to a reasoned and reasonable certitude regard

ing the true solutions of the momentous problems referred to.

There is nothing to justify the impression which one sometimes

encounters concerning the scholastic doctrine of evidence (as the

supreme criterion of truth and the ultimate motive of certitude),

that this doctrine would make the attainment of human certitude

on the ultimate problems of science, philosophy, and religion, a

much simpler and easier matter than it really is ; or that it seems

to imply that the evidence for these ultimate truths ought to be,

and must be, and really is of the same cogent character as

e.g. the evidence forthcoming in mathematical demonstrations.

On the contrary, scholastics have always distinguished between

cogent evidence for the truth of judgments and reasonably suffi

cient evidence for the credibility of judgments (ii, 12, 38, 67);

and they have always protested against the unreasonableness of

demanding as a universal condition of certain assent to judg

ments in every domain the sort of cogent evidence which compels

intellectual assent to asbtract axioms.-

The real reason why scholastics have emphasized the im

portance of the thesis that the " supreme criterion or test of

true or genuine knowledge, and the ultimate motive of human

certitude, is to be found in the intrinsic, immediate objective

evidence of first principles of the ideal order," 3 is not far to seek.

1 It is this question of the possibility and grounds of certitude about concrete

matters (especially in the domain of religion), or the possibility and legitimacy of

applying abstract principles of the ideal order to the interpretation of concrete

matters of fact and thus reaching certitude about such interpretations, that Cardinal

Newman has examined in his Grammar of Assent. His analysis, which is ably con

ducted on original lines, will at least convince the student that such certitude rests

on evidential grounds which, so far from being intellectually cogent, call for the

exercise of diligence, candour, caution and prudence, in appreciating their suffici

ency for reasoned and reflex certitude. But it is hardly too much to say that the

author would have been materially assisted in his investigation by a fuller know

ledge of the scholastic doctrine of Moderate Realism than he was in a position to

bring to the investigation.

2 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 203, p. 12 ; 275, pp. 322-7. Cf. vol. i., $ 67,

P. 234 n.

3 Vol. i., 67, p. 233 n.

TRUTH AND EVIDENCE 279

It is simply because unless such evidence is a revelation of reality

to the intellect, unless the intellect infallibly attains to true or

faithful (if inadequate) representations of reality through the

intuition of such principles, it cannot possibly attain to any truth,

but is doomed to hopeless scepticism. And why ? Because

these principles are involved in every single item of what we

regard as knowledge. They form the very warp and woof of

all knowledge. They are implicit in all our judgments ; and all

inference, all inductive generalizations from facts and all de

ductive explanations of facts, depend on them. Therefore the

real truth-value of all our knowledge, i.e. its value as giving us a

genuine insight into reality, depends altogether on whether the

intellect, when its assent to such principles is compelled, as all,

even subjectivists and sceptics, admit that it is compelled, there

by gets an insight into reality. And this in turn depends on

whether the compelling factor is objective evidence, i.e. the reality

itself presented as necessarily representable by intellect through

such axiomatic judgments, as having and displaying a real

exigency for such representation ; or whether on the contrary the

compelling factor is a subjective influence which, whether con

scious or unconscious, has no claim to any evidential value, i.e. to

any significance as manifesting reality to the mind. From this

it is clear that what scholastics describe as "evidence" would

be useless as an index to truth and a motive of certitude (i.e. firm

assent to judgments as true, as revealing reality to the mind), if

it appeared on reflection either that the determining factor of the

judicial nexus between our concepts were not objective, or that

the concepts containing that determining factor (or sufficient

ground) of the nexus were not themselves manifestations of

reality.

In other words, the function of evidence, even of cogent immediate evi

dence, as revealing real truth and determining certitude, had to be vindicated

against the suspicion cast upon it by subjectivists, and notably by Kant, in

the manner in which we saw (29-35) that it is possible to raise such a sus

picion. For there is a sense in which even self-evident judgments can be,

and have been, doubted. It has been doubted whether what is called their

" evidence " is indeed real evidence, i.e. whether what the mind sees, in assent

ing to them, is indeed reality, whether it is a feature of reality that is repre

sentable and faithfully represented in and through them. Until such a doubt

was removed the scholastic thesis in regard to evidence stood unproven. And

how was such a doubt removed ? By the whole process of introspective analy

sis which established the objectivity of the nexus in regard to our judgments, the

280 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

reality of our concepts as propounded in Moderate Realism, and the reality

of our percepts in regard to sense perception. And what was it that guided

us in our investigations and determined our conclusions ? At every stage in

the process we reflected on what came into consciousness ; we examined the

appearances of our data as critically and carefully as we could with a view

to discovering their real demands upon our faculty of interpretation, i.e. their

real evidence, and with a view to representing or interpreting them accord

ingly. The whole process was not a process of demonstration but of

introspective analysis (33). And if it be described as a process of " testing "

evidence, it must be observed that on the subjective side our testing " instru

ment " was intellect, and on the objective side we had no test for evidence

except evidence itself : which means simply that we tried to judge appearances

critically according to what we detected, in the appearing reality, as its real

exigencies for intellectual interpretation, i.e. its real evidence.

This is what the human mind has to do in every department if it is to

attain to truth and avoid error : it has to explore the data of experience, or

how things appear, in order to discover, as far as it can, what intellectual

interpretations they really call for, or what judgments will, as far as they

go, truly represent what those things are. This applies equally to men s

"common" knowledge, to their "scientific" knowledge, to their "philo

sophical" convictions, and to their "religious" convictions. The mind has

certain possession of truth only in so far as it knows its judgments to be in con

formity with what reality demands as its intellectual representations. Hence

those real exigencies of things must be clear to the intellect before it can

give a firm or certain assent to the judgments they call for : i.e. sufficiently

clear either to compel assent or to be reasonably and prudently considered

to yield adequate ground for assent. But though some of those exigencies are

clear ab initio, most of them can be made clear only gradually and by the

sustained application of intellect to the data of human experience. This is

true especially of the evidence for the ethical and religious truths that are of

the deepest import to human life. 1 Hence the fact that real objective evidence,

or the manifestation of reality to the intellect, is the supreme test of truth and

the ultimate motive of certitude, by no means dispenses the intellect from

labour : " There is no royal road to knowledge". In the data of experience

there is potential evidence, so to speak, for as much truth as the finite human

mind can ever reach concerning man and the universe ; but this potential

evidence must be made actual to the individual mind before it can "inform "

the individual mind with truth ; and only by its own active application can

the individual mind make this potential evidence actual.

1 That is, for reasoned, reflex certitude in regard to such truths. Obviously, it

is not by way of original research that the masses of mankind attain to their spon

taneous ethical and religious convictions : they receive these on extrinsic evidence,

by way of authority, a vehicle which can have the requisite conditions for ground

ing firm or certain assent to its deliverances.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OTHER INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES OF CERTITUDE.

TRADITIONALISM.

 A few points, however, call for notice.

First, when scholastics emphasize the doctrine that the immediate

objective evidence of axioms of the ideal order is the supreme

criterion of all truth and the ultimate motive of all human certi

tude, they are not to be understood as implying that the evidence

we have for the judgments that are of the most profound im

portance to the human race can be reduced to such evidence (cf.

148). The true solutions of the great problems concerning the

origin, nature, and destiny of man and the universe, concerning

the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, the reality of

the moral order, the obligation and sanctions of religion, are,

needless to say, not immediately evident. Indeed no solutions

of these problems are immediately evident. Nor can the true

solutions of them be deduced from self-evident axioms of the

ideal order by any process of pure deductive reasoning, of which

every step would be cogently self-evident (35) : such, for instance,

as the reasoning employed in pure mathematics. Their solution

involves mixed demonstration. 1 It therefore implies certitude

about some judgments of the existential order ; it implies that

abstract concepts and principles are validly applicable to the

actually experienced order of concrete, existing things, i.e. it

implies the truth of Moderate Realism ; and finally it implies

well-grounded certitude on our part that in the actual process of

applying concepts to percepts, of interpreting singulars by uni-

versals, of locating the intellectual abstract in the sense concrete, we

are allowing ourselves to be guided by the real evidence^ i.e. that

we are representing or interpreting the reality presented to us for

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 254, c; supra, 154.

278 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

interpretation only according to its real or ontological exigencies

and not otherwise. 1 Now this evidence is by no means cogent.

It can be sufficient to ground a firm or certain assent ; but, clearly,

it allows wide scope for the exercise of prudence, care, and caution

in conducting the intellectual processes of conception, judgment,

generalization, induction, deduction, etc., through which alone we

can hope to attain to a reasoned and reasonable certitude regard

ing the true solutions of the momentous problems referred to.

There is nothing to justify the impression which one sometimes

encounters concerning the scholastic doctrine of evidence (as the

supreme criterion of truth and the ultimate motive of certitude),

that this doctrine would make the attainment of human certitude

on the ultimate problems of science, philosophy, and religion, a

much simpler and easier matter than it really is ; or that it seems

to imply that the evidence for these ultimate truths ought to be,

and must be, and really is of the same cogent character as

e.g. the evidence forthcoming in mathematical demonstrations.

On the contrary, scholastics have always distinguished between

cogent evidence for the truth of judgments and reasonably suffi

cient evidence for the credibility of judgments (ii, 12, 38, 67);

and they have always protested against the unreasonableness of

demanding as a universal condition of certain assent to judg

ments in every domain the sort of cogent evidence which compels

intellectual assent to asbtract axioms.-

The real reason why scholastics have emphasized the im

portance of the thesis that the " supreme criterion or test of

true or genuine knowledge, and the ultimate motive of human

certitude, is to be found in the intrinsic, immediate objective

evidence of first principles of the ideal order," 3 is not far to seek.

1 It is this question of the possibility and grounds of certitude about concrete

matters (especially in the domain of religion), or the possibility and legitimacy of

applying abstract principles of the ideal order to the interpretation of concrete

matters of fact and thus reaching certitude about such interpretations, that Cardinal

Newman has examined in his Grammar of Assent. His analysis, which is ably con

ducted on original lines, will at least convince the student that such certitude rests

on evidential grounds which, so far from being intellectually cogent, call for the

exercise of diligence, candour, caution and prudence, in appreciating their suffici

ency for reasoned and reflex certitude. But it is hardly too much to say that the

author would have been materially assisted in his investigation by a fuller know

ledge of the scholastic doctrine of Moderate Realism than he was in a position to

bring to the investigation.

2 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 203, p. 12 ; 275, pp. 322-7. Cf. vol. i., $ 67,

P. 234 n.

3 Vol. i., 67, p. 233 n.

TRUTH AND EVIDENCE 279

It is simply because unless such evidence is a revelation of reality

to the intellect, unless the intellect infallibly attains to true or

faithful (if inadequate) representations of reality through the

intuition of such principles, it cannot possibly attain to any truth,

but is doomed to hopeless scepticism. And why ? Because

these principles are involved in every single item of what we

regard as knowledge. They form the very warp and woof of

all knowledge. They are implicit in all our judgments ; and all

inference, all inductive generalizations from facts and all de

ductive explanations of facts, depend on them. Therefore the

real truth-value of all our knowledge, i.e. its value as giving us a

genuine insight into reality, depends altogether on whether the

intellect, when its assent to such principles is compelled, as all,

even subjectivists and sceptics, admit that it is compelled, there

by gets an insight into reality. And this in turn depends on

whether the compelling factor is objective evidence, i.e. the reality

itself presented as necessarily representable by intellect through

such axiomatic judgments, as having and displaying a real

exigency for such representation ; or whether on the contrary the

compelling factor is a subjective influence which, whether con

scious or unconscious, has no claim to any evidential value, i.e. to

any significance as manifesting reality to the mind. From this

it is clear that what scholastics describe as "evidence" would

be useless as an index to truth and a motive of certitude (i.e. firm

assent to judgments as true, as revealing reality to the mind), if

it appeared on reflection either that the determining factor of the

judicial nexus between our concepts were not objective, or that

the concepts containing that determining factor (or sufficient

ground) of the nexus were not themselves manifestations of

reality.

In other words, the function of evidence, even of cogent immediate evi

dence, as revealing real truth and determining certitude, had to be vindicated

against the suspicion cast upon it by subjectivists, and notably by Kant, in

the manner in which we saw (29-35) that it is possible to raise such a sus

picion. For there is a sense in which even self-evident judgments can be,

and have been, doubted. It has been doubted whether what is called their

" evidence " is indeed real evidence, i.e. whether what the mind sees, in assent

ing to them, is indeed reality, whether it is a feature of reality that is repre

sentable and faithfully represented in and through them. Until such a doubt

was removed the scholastic thesis in regard to evidence stood unproven. And

how was such a doubt removed ? By the whole process of introspective analy

sis which established the objectivity of the nexus in regard to our judgments, the

280 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

reality of our concepts as propounded in Moderate Realism, and the reality

of our percepts in regard to sense perception. And what was it that guided

us in our investigations and determined our conclusions ? At every stage in

the process we reflected on what came into consciousness ; we examined the

appearances of our data as critically and carefully as we could with a view

to discovering their real demands upon our faculty of interpretation, i.e. their

real evidence, and with a view to representing or interpreting them accord

ingly. The whole process was not a process of demonstration but of

introspective analysis (33). And if it be described as a process of " testing "

evidence, it must be observed that on the subjective side our testing " instru

ment " was intellect, and on the objective side we had no test for evidence

except evidence itself : which means simply that we tried to judge appearances

critically according to what we detected, in the appearing reality, as its real

exigencies for intellectual interpretation, i.e. its real evidence.

This is what the human mind has to do in every department if it is to

attain to truth and avoid error : it has to explore the data of experience, or

how things appear, in order to discover, as far as it can, what intellectual

interpretations they really call for, or what judgments will, as far as they

go, truly represent what those things are. This applies equally to men s

"common" knowledge, to their "scientific" knowledge, to their "philo

sophical" convictions, and to their "religious" convictions. The mind has

certain possession of truth only in so far as it knows its judgments to be in con

formity with what reality demands as its intellectual representations. Hence

those real exigencies of things must be clear to the intellect before it can

give a firm or certain assent to the judgments they call for : i.e. sufficiently

clear either to compel assent or to be reasonably and prudently considered

to yield adequate ground for assent. But though some of those exigencies are

clear ab initio, most of them can be made clear only gradually and by the

sustained application of intellect to the data of human experience. This is

true especially of the evidence for the ethical and religious truths that are of

the deepest import to human life. 1 Hence the fact that real objective evidence,

or the manifestation of reality to the intellect, is the supreme test of truth and

the ultimate motive of certitude, by no means dispenses the intellect from

labour : " There is no royal road to knowledge". In the data of experience

there is potential evidence, so to speak, for as much truth as the finite human

mind can ever reach concerning man and the universe ; but this potential

evidence must be made actual to the individual mind before it can "inform "

the individual mind with truth ; and only by its own active application can

the individual mind make this potential evidence actual.

1 That is, for reasoned, reflex certitude in regard to such truths. Obviously, it

is not by way of original research that the masses of mankind attain to their spon

taneous ethical and religious convictions : they receive these on extrinsic evidence,

by way of authority, a vehicle which can have the requisite conditions for ground

ing firm or certain assent to its deliverances.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OTHER INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES OF CERTITUDE.

TRADITIONALISM.