SCIENCE AND DEMONSTRATION 259 



world, as the case may be), and uniform or self-consistent (while 

 it may vary, even to inconsistency, about details). Our evidence 

 that a tradition has been continuous, that it reaches back to the 

 fact itself, will be sometimes mainly negative : lying in our in 

 ability to trace its origin to any subsequent source. But for 

 the continuity and genuine origin of many traditions we can 

 have valuable positive evidence : the existence of written docu 

 ments, or of monuments, whether national, popular, tribal, 

 military, or religious, testifying to the continuity of the tradition 

 back to the time of the fact which it enshrines. The most 

 reliable evidences to the origin and continuity of any form of 

 social custom, or religious belief, are, of course, those that come from 

 documents and monuments that have been brought into existence 

 by the people, or institution, or society, conforming to such 

 custom, or professing such form of belief. There are, perhaps, no 

 oral traditions more strongly confirmed and corroborated by such 

 evidences than those of the Catholic Church. We can sometimes 

 prove that a given belief really had its origin at a certain time, 

 and in certain facts, by proving that such belief could not have 

 originated in a spurious tradition of later origin, or, in other 

 words, that such a tradition could not have arisen in such a 

 deceptive manner. This form of proof is known as the argument 

 from prescription. 



The proof that oral tradition can produce moral certitude is 

 based upon the principle that men are naturally truthful, and 

 upon the fact that in certain cases it is morally impossible that 

 ignorance or deception could have intervened. The cases 

 in point are those of remarkable public facts of great moment 

 to whole peoples or nations, or to the human race as a whole. 

 To admit that men generally could either be mistaken themselves, 

 or mislead all their contemporaries and all posterity in regard to 

 such facts, would amount to a practical denial that man is 

 capable of attaining to any truth. 



ROTHER, Certitude: a Study in Philosophy. RICKEY, Summula 

 Philosophiae Scholasticae, vol. i., pp. 143-70. TOOHEY, The Three Kinds 

 of Certitude, Irish Theol. Quarterly, July, 1909. RICKABY, First Principles, 

 pt. i., chaps, iii., iv. and v. ; pt. ii., chaps, vii. and viii. WELTON, op. tit., ii., 

 bk. v., chap. vii. JOYCE, Principles of Logic, pp. 132-6. JOSEPH, op. tit., 

 chaps, xvii., xxiii., xxv. MERCIER, Logique, pp. 286-93 ; Criteriologie 

 Gen erale (5me edit.), pp. 5-35. MELLONE, op. tit., pp. 252, 258-9, 326-32, 

 382 sqq. WINDELBAND, History of Philosophy (Eng. tr.), pp. 132-54. DE 

 WULF, History of Medieval Philosophy, pp. 39 sqq. 



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