PROPOSITION XCIV.

The difficulty which men experience in the attainment of Truth, is attributable, partly to the nature of the objects of possible cognition, partly to the imperfection of the human mind.

I. THE FIRST MEMBER of this Proposition is thus declared. There are a great number of entities, (in fact the greater number of those which are the primary objects of human cognition), which have little intelligibility in themselves, because of their wholly material nature. They are only intelligible by their substantial forms; and by how much these are more nearly wedded to matter, by so much does their intelligibility diminish. Thus, all sensible things other than man, (and from sensible things the human mind derives its knowledge), are inferior in their intelligibility to man himself. From these beginnings, it is true, the intellect of man, by laboured processes of abstraction and generalization, arrives at higher and purer intelligibilities; but the journey is difficult, the obstacles many, the result imperfect. The more there is of generalization, the less there is of distinctness; and the nearer the approach to the unity of true science, the further the distance from the individuality of objective existence. The perfect synthesis of the two belongs to God alone. But here unconsciously an invasion has been made into the second Member of the Thesis. There is another reason, (traceable to the objects of cognition), why men experience such difficulty in the attainment of Truth. Truth is one; Error and Falsity are manifold. The former gathers into one each ray of created light, and reflects the whole bundle of rays in unbroken unity. But this is no easy task. Let slip one ray, immediately there is error; and, as the rays of intelligible Being are numberless, the possibilities of error and falsehood are likewise numberless. We may, therefore, fairly borrow Aristotle's quotation from the Greek poet and apply it to the present subject, esthloi men gar haplôs, pantodapôs kakoi,^{1} -- men arrive at truth by one only road; but at Falsity and error in countless ways.

II. THE SECOND MEMBER of the Thesis is thus declared. As there are entities below man; so there are a far greater number of Beings above man, mounting, by higher and higher degrees of excellence and intelligibility, towards the one Supreme and Infinite. The difficulty, which the mind of man finds in attaining to the Truth touching these objects of cognition, does not arise from any defect of objective evidence, but from its excess; or, in other words, from the disproportion existing between the perfection of the object of thought, and the imperfection or weakness of the human intellect which can only be wakened into activity by the intervention of sensile species. Hence, the well-known statement of the Philosopher that, 'as is the eye of an owl before the light of the sun, so is our mind in presence of the most manifest and evident things of nature'^{2} in accordance with which, he so often makes the distinction between those things which are most evident to us, and those which are absolutely and in their own nature most evident, placing the two in antithesis to each other.

These two sources of the difficulty which men experience in the attainment of Truth, Suarez illustrates by an apposite comparison. 'The human eye,' he says, 'cannot look at the sun by reason of its own imperfection, and it cannot perceive an exceedingly small amount of light, or a very minute object, (such as e.g. infusoria) 'by reason of the imperfection of the object, which has no power to act on the faculty of sight.'^{3} In both cases, as it is easy to see, the difficulty in the attainment of Truth is in part owing to the imperfection of the human intellect. But the difference between the one and the other, is this; that, whereas, in the cognition of the objects included under the second Member of the Thesis, the difficulty is wholly attributable to this cause; in the cognition of the objects included under the first Member, it is partially due to the natural imperfection of the entities themselves.

NOTE.

The sources of human error will, naturally enough, prove impediments to the acquisition of Truth; so that the last two Propositions are intimately connected. The practical importance of the subject seems to demand, that something more detailed and definite should be added, touching the variety and respective characteristics of those sources; and, to this end, no better classification can be found than that of Bacon in his Novum Organon,^{4} though the nomenclature is perhaps none of the happiest. He divides false notions, (or, as he terms them, idola), prevalent among men, into four classes, viz. idola tribus, idola specus, idola fori, idola theatri. By the idola tribus he understands all those errors which arise from the constitution of human nature, and to which, consequently, the whole tribe of man is liable. Idola specus are the errors which are peculiar to each man's cave; and arise from the peculiar character and disposition of each individual. Idola fori are such as spring out of commerce with men; and are principally brought home to a man by the tyranny of public opinion. Idola theatri represent the errors which men imbibe from those countless perverse systems of philosophy; whose professors Bacon, it may be, intended to set before us, as so many actors on the world's stage. Now, it is not intended here to point out all the forms of error to which men are subject under each of these heads; but it may be well to signalize some which more prominently beset our path in our own time. For the rest, the pages of Bacon may be consulted with profit. The idola tribus have formed the subject of the last Thesis; they may, therefore, be dismissed. Among the idola specus, or errors arising from a man's peculiar character and turn of mind, there are two which merit consideration. The first is viewiness, as it is not uncommonly called. It consists in the hasty assumption of certain half truths or entire falsities, by reason of a certain glimmer of supposed originality, or boldness, or paradox, which marks them. They are tinsel at the best, often worse; yet their glitter is attractive. These views are not revelations of Truth, pure and undefiled; and, accordingly, they are constantly found to clash with each other, though indifferently accepted by one and the same intellect. Practically, therefore, they are like children's toywatches; they have no motive force in them. Men of a quick, superficial, unlaborious brain, with a lively imagination, or rather fancy, are peculiarly inclined to take up with views. They have not the patience to go round a truth, -- to contemplate it from this side and from that, -- to measure their concept of it by comparison with other neighbouring concepts, and by careful estimate of the difficulties which seem to environ it. They do not master their idea; the idea masters them. Consequently, though often entertaining companions; they are eminently unsafe guides. For, themselves, they possess few truths, but many opinions, chiefly of the fanciful sort. Such a propensity of mind is prolific of errors, practical as well as speculative, and a fatal impediment to the acquisition of a sound Philosophy. The other is an unhealthy intellectual greed for mere information, as distinguished from scientific cognition. The ambition of some men is to become encyclopedists -- to acquire an acquaintance with a mass of facts connected with every sphere of Truth, at the expense for the most part of collocation, subordination, and relation. But facts do not constitute knowledge of themselves; true Science principally embraces the laws and causes of things. Now, it is peculiar to the weakness of the human intellect, that it cannot retain in equal ratio the Universal and the Individual; in proportion as it nears the one, it recedes from the other. That mind will not be over elastic, which is buried under a heap of isolated facts. Moreover, those Disciplines (pragmateiai, as the Philosopher calls them) which principally concern themselves with experimental facts, have made such progress and have received such additions to their number, that another Admirable Crichton would nowadays be a practical impossibility; and, if he could be, would be a nonentity for his pains. Facts are valuable indeed as the materia prima -- the substratum of Science; but they are hardly intelligible without their form. Now, men who are possessed with such diseased hunger, can never reach Truth. They may be practically useful, in some few instances even ornamental; but they can never be philosophers. They scratch at the surface of Being, very much as geologists scratch on the earth's rind, but without the success of the latter; for they never arrive at the flora and fauna of their world; resting satisfied with the most recent alluvial deposits. It is now, more than ever, advisable to be a man of one book; not in the sense of excluding all other reading, (which would be intellectual bigotry), but in this sense, that all other reading should be subsidiary to, and illustrative of the central authority. Thus knowledge may be true and deep, without being narrow; and you may multiply your planets at discretion, because they will be all under the safe guidance of one centripetal force.

Next in order come the idola fori, or errors which spring from public opinion and the characteristics of modern thought. There are seven sources of error, conspicuous in our eyes, which deserve mention under this head. The first is a prevailing passivity of thought, which has been in great measure brought about by the spread of newspapers, periodicals, and cheap literature. People have been thereby trained to consider ideas and knowledge as marketable goods, which they can purchase for their own use, and even trade upon, in the intercourse of life. So they take to their chosen newspaper, or monthly, or book, and quietly receive, without questioning, the views and impressions which they can thence obtain, making the same do duty as their own. The result is that, though knowledge of a certain sort may have become more general among the masses, it grows daily more superficial; and that they are comparatively few, who have so realized their opinions as to be able to defend them, if assailed. Hence, by far the greater number are at the mercy of every shallow sophist who has a ready pen or a glib tongue, and follows in the wake of predominant prejudices. The second source is the omnipresence of the critical temper. This is fertile in error; for it is caused by, and in turn causes, a self-sufficiency which is the most fatal obstacle to philosophical acquirement. From it proceeds that unwise contempt of all the rich treasures of the past, that mad profession of building up a philosophy, each man for himself, which has condemned to sterility the efforts of the human mind in the higher regions of thought for at least two hundred years. Not but that in the end it is wise and necessary, so far to make Philosophy our own, as to grasp and realize and test, by painful study, those truths which we embrace in their harmony of order. But this is a very different thing from rejecting, at the very commencement, all that has been thought or written before our time, and making our own half-formed opinions the measure of the world. A third source of error is the prevailing unreality of thought. It is not uncommon to come across writers and instructors of the people, who openly profess, that the one only end of philosophical inquiry is the exercise of intellectual activity in and for itself; and that the results are of comparatively little importance. In their judgment, all tbe value is in the search; not in the discovery. Thus Philosophy is transformed into a simple mental gymnasium; and the only advantage that one system has over another is, its superior aptitude for strengthening the intellectual make. In all other respects it is a matter of indifference which system is adopted. What is this but to deny either the existence or, at least, the attainableness of Truth; and to turn that noblest pursuit of man, which makes him most like God, into another kind of calisthenics? Nothing can be more ruinous. A fourth source of error, nearly akin to the preceding is, a practical incredulity touching the responsibility of thought. It stands to reason, that evil may attach to thought, more especially to spoken or written thought, quite as much as to action; to say the least. While, then, it may be readily granted, that a man will not be culpable, who has done his best to test his own opinions, and has long made them his own, on solid conviction, before communicating them to others, even should they prove false; yet he who hastily adopts dangerous and evil opinions out of caprice, and endeavours to propagate them among his fellows, is at least as guilty of a crime, as the man who should strive to spread smallpox in his neighbourhood, or should betray his country into the hands of its enemies. But nowadays there does not seem to be the slightest sense of this responsibility. Each man speaks and writes as it seems good in his own eyes; and, like Cain, denies, (in act at least), that he is his brother's keeper. Men treat as an axiom which none but a fool or a bigot would think of questioning, that the propagation of opinions, (no matter how false, immoral, pernicious to society), ought never to be considered as a statutable offence. Yet, the evil is more wide-spread and persistent than in the case of criminal actions; and it is hard to understand why the murder of the soul should be a less offence than the murder of the body. If a man were practically conscious to himself of his fearful responsibility, at the time that he was about to excite the passions of the mob by a seditious harangue, or that he was beginning a calumnious article against some great public character or a particular body of his fellow-men; how many speeches would be burked and how many articles suppressed, greatly to the relief of the national conscience! A fifth prolific source of error in our own time is, literary venality. Publicists, and authors generally, too often look upon writing as a trade. Editors of newspapers never dream of directing, but only of reflecting, public opinion. Accordingly, one hears of men, whose trade it is to feel the pulse of the community in clubs and elsewhere, and to report to those who dictate the tone to be adopted on any given question. Hence, politics, ethics, religion, are treated as mere elements of a commercial speculation or of a party triumph. Correspondents are commissioned to write down on one side and write up on the other, before arrival at the scene of their labours, without personal knowledge of the state of things which it will be their task to depict. Inconvenient letters, revealing the truth, are suppressed; and an unpopular cause is shut out from all hope of self-vindication. All this forms part of what our modern euphemists characterize as the liberty of the press. Thus it comes to pass, that the people are fed upon lies, and transmit what they have received; till at length there arises a strong tradition of falsities. A sixth source of error is an aversion, hitherto developed among the English people, for the abstract and difficult, -- for all, in effect, that requires great pains of thought. So imbued is the popular mind with this aversion, that metaphysical investigation has come to be identified with useless hair-splitting, and the contemplation of abstract Truth is considered as the antithesis of common sense. The eccentricities of modern soi-disant metaphysicians are partly in cause, partly the designing assaults of polemical writers who dread the probable issues of a sound philosophy; but it is likewise due, in some measure, to the materialism engendered by our devotion to trade and commerce. It cannot be too fully realized that Truth lies hidden in a deep mine; and that they who dig most laboriously and most perseveringly, will possess themselves of its richest treasures. The last cause of error is the neglect of moral preparation, -- a neglect which is alike speculative and practical. It is impossible for a man who is the slave of his passions to be a true philosopher. 'He that wants true virtue,' says Smith, 'in Heaven's logic is blind, and cannot see afar off.' And Schlegel, in his Philosophy of History, expresses the same truth, when he declares that 'the will and not the understanding, is in man the principal organ for the perception of Divine truths.' And again, 'I affirm that in men the understanding is not the principal organ for the perception of Divine truth; that is to say, the understanding alone.

On the understanding alone, indeed, the light may dawn and may even be received; but if the will be not there, if the will pursue a separate and contrary course, that light of higher knowledge is soon obscured; or, if it should still gleam, it is changed into the treacherous meteor of illusion.' Hence it is that, in his system of Ethics, the Philosopher puts the contemplative life at the end of his Ethics as man's crown and beatitude. It is not until after we have conquered our lower nature to the obedience of right reason and become continent in the largest sense of the term, that we can become fitting theorists of Truth. When the eye of the understanding is clouded over with the film of irregular desires; then false philosophies are most hopeful of triumph.

The last class are the idola theatri, the false systems of philosophy in our time. These are sufficiently patent to the student; and it will, therefore, be only necessary to say that, various and often opposed to one another as they are, they may all be grouped under one of two classes, the idealistic or the materialistic. The former has greater attractions for those of a speculative turn of mind; the latter, for the practical and superficial. The one exaggerates the abstract to the exclusion of the concrete; the other exaggerates the concrete to the exclusion of the abstract. Both are dangerous forms of error; and the best preservative against them is the scientific exposition of Truth.

SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE.

I. Truth is primarily predicated of intellect; analogically, of sensile perception and Being. The same may be said of Falsity, which is the contrary of Truth.

II. Conceptual Truth, or the Truth of intellect, is twofold, Material and Formal. Material Truth is in the simple Apprehension; and consists in the conformity of the intellectual representation with the object represented. Formal Conceptual Truth, (which is what is ordinarily meant by Truth), is peculiar to the Judgment, or judicial act, of the mind; and consists in the conscious conformity of the cognition with the object to be represented. Conceptual Falsity consists in a difformity of the cognition from the object to be represented, which the intellect pronounces to be conform; hence it can be found only in the Judgment.

III. Material Conceptual Truth, or the Truth of a simple Apprehension, is called Truth analogically; and it is identified with the Ontological Truth of the intellectual act. Its analogy can thus be twofold, viz., analogy of proportion, if considered absolutely; of attribution of the first class, if considered in its relation to Judgment. Falsity cannot properly exist in simple Apprehension; but may, like Truth, be predicated of it according to analogy of proportion.

IV. Formal Conceptual Truth is neither a real absolute nor a real or logical predicamental Relation, nor a mere negation, nor a mere extrinsic denomination; but, besides the entity of the judicial act, connotes the object as conform to the cognition of it.

V. Truth cannot be predicated univocally of sensile perception; but it is attributed to it either according to analogy of proportion, if considered as representative of tbe sensile object; or according to analogy of attribution of the first class, if considered as determinative of intellectual cognition, and is identical with the Ontological Truth of the sensile act. Falsity can be attributed to sensile perception in the same way. Regarded according to analogy of proportion, it follows Conceptual Truth in this; that both formally belong to sensile Judgment only.

VI. Ontological Trutb, or Truth of Being, is a Transcendental attribute, and consists in the conformity or conformability of Being with Intellect. It is predicated analogically of Being according to analogy of proportion. This conformity has relation primarily to the Divine practical and speculative Intellect; secondarily and, as it were, accidentally, to the finite intellect.

VII. Ontological Truth is neither a real absolute nor a real or logical predicamental relation, nor a mere negation, nor a mere extrinsic denomination; but expresses the entity of Being and, besides, connotes intellect, to which it is conformed or conformable.

VIII. It formally consists in the intelligibility of Being, as capable of causing a conformable cognition of itself in whatsoever intellect.

IX. The root of Ontological Truth in finite Being is, the Divine practical Intellect, to which finite Being is necessarily conformed.

X. Hence, finite Being stands midway between two intellects, the Divine and human. It is measured by the Former, and, in turn, measures the latter.

XI. Hence it follows, that the Divine Truth is the Measure in ultimate analysis of all whatsoever Truth.

XII. Properly speaking, there can be no such thing as Ontological Falsity. For all Being is ipso facto conformed to the Divine Intelligence, both practical and speculative. Neither can it properly be called, in a secondary sense, false, in regard of the human intellect. For there is no Being, as such, which is not apt to generate in our minds a just estimate and conform representation of itself. But it may be sometimes improperly called false, according to analogy of attribution of the first class; inasmuch as it allures the human mind to form a false Judgment. This arises from no defect in Being; but partly, by reason of the similarity of the sensible accidents of an entity with those of other entities distinct from itself; partly, by reason of the imperfection of the human intellect, which depends in great measure on sensible accidents for its cognition of Being.

{1} Ethic. N. L. ii, c. 5. in f.

{2} Hosper gar ta tôn nukteridôn ommata pros to pheggos exei to meth hêmeran, outô kai tês hêmeteras psuchês ho nous pros ta tê phusei phanerôtata pantôn. Metaph. ii. (aliter I minor), c. i.

{3} Metaph., Disp. ix, sect. 3, n. 4.

{4} Novum Organon, L. i. Aphorismi xxxviii-lxviii.