ASSENT AS A TEST OF TRUTH.

К оглавлению 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118
119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

The "general assent " to which

we have just referred, De Lamennais proclaims to be the

ultimate test of truth. We have seen how he regards it as the

infallible index of Divinely revealed truth, and contrasts its

dictates with the " unreliable " and mutually contradictory de

liverances of the individual reason (the " sens prive "}. But this

"universal dictate" cannot possibly be the ultimate test of truth,

nor can it possibly supplant, by its appeal to the individual

reason, the function of intrinsic objective evidence.

If each of two individual disputants, e.g. the atheist and the

believer, insists that his own interpretation of facts judged in the

light of evidence is the right one, they may indeed appeal in the

first place, if they so desire, to the general verdict of mankind

on the matter in dispute. But such appeal will not and cannot

of itself settle the question. For the atheist will not recognize,

and the believer ought not to recognize, this general verdict as

conclusive unless and until its authority is seen by its objective

evidence to be a sure guarantee of truth : a point which can be

1 MERCIER, op. cit., 70.

304 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

decided for each only by the exercise of his individual reason

judging the credentials of that authority.

Nor can it be said that those universal dictates of the voice

of human nature, those truths of " common sense," are beyond

dispute, so that their rejection would be an abdication of reason.

For if this general assent be put forward as an authority to

which we are expected to yield unquestioning submission, it

will be easy to point out that its testimony should not be

accepted without reserve. Did not men for ages universally

assent to the solidity of the heavens, and to the view that the

sun moves around the earth ? The most, then, that can be said

is that universal belief creates a presumption in favour of truth,

that we should be slower to believe it to be in the wrong than

to be in the right; but of itself it cannot reasonably demand an

assent of reasoned certitude from the individual.

If, however, the general verdict is put forward rather as a sign

or index of the tendency of man s rational nature to assent to

those generally accepted propositions as true, and this seems

to be what De Lamennais intended, then indeed such common

agreement can be a criterion of truth, though not the ultimate

criterion. It can be a criterion in this indirect way. When in

any particular case of common agreement we can convince our

selves by investigation that this agreement is not due to such

accidental causes of error as prejudice, precipitancy, want of

reflection, mal-observation, etc. ; and when, moreover, we see

that it concerns some matter of grave import to man s nature

and destiny, 1 then we can conclude that the universal dictate

or verdict in question is reached through the uniform and normal

functioning, in each individual, of human nature as intelligent

or rational. And from this, unless we gratuitously conclude,

1 Such are the convictions referred to in vol. i., 15, as "truths of common

sense". Among them might be enumerated, for instance, the conviction that the

human mind is capable of attaining to some true knowledge of things ; that an ex

ternal material universe exists independently of human minds; that the universe is

not chaotic but manifests order and furnishes evidence of design, purpose, intelli

gence ; that there is a moral order and that the distinction between a morally right

and a morally wrong is inseparable from human conduct and rooted in man s

nature ; that man is a free and responsible agent ; that in man s actual experience

of himself and the universe there are evidences which point to the actual existence

of an unseen, suprasensible or spiritual domain of reality, to man s dependence on

Higher Powers, to life after death, to the existence of a Supreme, Intelligent

Author and Ruler of the Universe, to man s religious worship of this Supreme

Being as a duty that is consonant with human nature and dictated by man s

natural reason.

TRADITIONALISM 305

with the universal sceptic (ch. iv.), that men generally, in

attaining to such universal convictions by the normal and natural

functioning of human reason, are blindly yielding to impulses

that are rationally unjustifiable,- we must infer the only other

alternative conclusion, viz. that such examples of the universal

accord of human intelligences as we have in those general

dictates or verdicts must be due to the manifestation of truth

or the presentation of reality to all intelligences alike. And in

making this inference we are asserting rational or intellectual

evidence to be the ultimate basis of truth and certitude. For we

are simply interpreting the " common agreement " as an index

of the presence of intrinsic objective evidence for the dictates or

judgments in which men thus universally agree ; and as being

thus a secondary criterion subordinate to the objective evidence

the presence of which it indicates. In this way the "general

assent" is merely an index that the objective evidence of the

truth of the judgment assented to is really there and is really

apprehended by each individual of the assenting masses. It

must be because the truth of the judgment is borne in upon

each by its intrinsic objective evidence that all agree in assenting

to it. Thus, even in cases in which common assent is a criterion

of truth it is subordinate to objective evidence as the supreme

and ultimate criterion.

There are these other considerations also, which show that

"common assent" cannot be an ultimate test, and must itself

rest on objective evidence. How can the individual know (i)

that any given judgment has the common assent of mankind ? (2)

that this common assent, if forthcoming, is not really due in the

case to some accidental cause of general deception, since many

beliefs that were, morally speaking, universal for centuries have

nevertheless been proved erroneous ? (3) that the common assent,

even when the possibility of accidental deception is satisfactorily

excluded, as it can be in certain classes of assents, by virtue of

the intimate connexion of their subject-matter with the essential

conditions and natural needs of human existence (15), is really

a reliable test of the truth of the judgment assented to ? l It

J That in such cases (15) it is a reliable test, is not self-evident, but requires

proof. And the proof cannot lie merely in the fact that the assent is, morally

speaking, universal ; but in the answer to the question : Why is it universal ? The

universality of the assent merely creates a presumption in favour of the truth of the

judgment assented to. But the individual must look to the nature of the judgment

itself. He must weigh the objective evidential appeal which, in its whole concrete

VOL. II. 20

306 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

is clear that until he decides those questions for himself he can

not make rational use of the criterion of " common assent ".

And it is equally clear that he can decide them only by the

exercise of his own individual reason, and that the decision must

be based upon the intrinsic objective evidence furnished by their

subject-matter to his own individual reason.

It might be urged, and it seems to have been thought by

the traditionalists, that there is as it were some special virtue in

human reason taken collectively, in "la raison ge nc rale" which

is not in human reason taken individually, something which makes

the former infallible, or at least safe and reliable, where the

latter is unsafe and unreliable. Such a suggestion gains plausi

bility from the undeniable fact that in the search for truth, in

the progressive discovery and proof of truth, many minds are

better than one ; that individuals learn from their fellow-men

most of what they know ; that mankind is in possession of an

accumulated heritage of truth (not, however, unmixed with error)

of which individuals are in varying degrees the sharers; and so on.

But, nevertheless, the suggestion will not bear analysis, and

cannot achieve the object for which it is made. For the attain

ment of truth and certitude is not the work of an impersonal

human intelligence, conceived after the manner of the Averroists ;

nor of human reason existing as a universal a parte rci, as extreme

realism would have it : nor do traditionalists mean anything like

that by the " raison generate " or " common sense " of the race.

The attainment of truth and certitude is the work of individual

human minds ; knowledge is an attribute only of individual minds.

If, therefore, there is not in human minds, taken individually, any

native power or capacity to attain to a certain knowledge of

truth, neither can such power or capacity be forthcoming in the

collectivity : if each of them is essentially unreliable, no conceiv

able collection of them can be reliable, much less infallible. But

it is the collection that traditionalists denote by "common sense,"

or " la raison generate ". By proclaiming, therefore, the power-

context, it makes to his own individual reason : part of that evidential appeal coming,

of course, from the fact that the judgment is generally accepted by mankind. II

he sees, on reflection, that there is adequate intrinsic evidence for its truth, and that

this is the reason why people generally assent to it, he will have satisfied himself

not only that the judgment in question is true, but that the common assent of man

kind to it, and to other similar judgments, is a reasonably safe and reliable test of

the truth of such judgments. But he must see at the same time that this latter test

does not supplant, but rather presupposes as ultimate, the intrinsic evidential appeal

of the judgment to the individual reason.

TRUTHS OF " COMMON SENSE " 307

lessness of the individual reason, they strike equally at the

universal or collective reason. And in fact they do disfigure it

and deprive it of the essential attributes of intelligence or ration

ality by proclaiming its function to be merely that of an organon

or vehicle for the transmission of a body of Divinely revealed

judgments, while denying to human reason individually, and

therefore also collectively, the right to demand or the power to

find any rational justification for its assents by scrutinizing the

evidence, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, for the truth of the judg

ments assented to. In ultimate analysis it is really an abdication

of reason on the part of the individual to assent to any judgment

merely because he finds everyone else assenting to it. For

each and for all alike the ulterior question must inevitably arise ;

Why do any of them or all of them assent to it ? And the answer

must be, either because they have rational grounds of evidence

for so assenting, or because they choose to assent in the absence

of such grounds, that is, blindly and unreasonably. In other

words, the ultimate choice must always be between a rational

assent based on grounds of objective intellectual evidence, or

a blind, instinctive assent which, in a being endowed with the

reflective faculty of intelligence, must inevitably terminate in

universal doubt and scepticism.