1 68 Science Religion and Reality 



intellectual formula of dogma is only a symbol of these experiences 

 which has a value only in so far as it is translated into a rule of 

 practical conduct. 



The first germ of the modernist doctrines is found in Newman, 

 who, while constraining himself to remain in the ranks of Catholic 

 orthodoxy, fought against traditional intellectualism. According 

 to him, the adhesion which our spirit makes to religious truths is 

 not brought about by reasons of logical order, although it has its 

 starting-point in the moral conscience. The profound feeling of 

 obligation and responsibility which we find within us leads us to 

 the belief in a Divine Judge, not by a logical reasoning, but by a 

 kind of instinct which makes us divine the true path, and which 

 resembles the divination of genius. Upon this, which Newman 

 calls the illative sense, assent to the truths of faith is based. By a 

 kind of instinct, he says, analogous to that by which the dog knows 

 his master and the sheep its lambs, the image of God is revealed 

 to the soul of the child without any reasoning, not as an abstract 

 notion, but in a form of concrete and living reality. Reason with 

 its syllogisms does not bring us to certainty, because it is based on 

 undemonstrable premises, and because, with its abstractions, it can 

 never be equal to concrete reality. Something always escapes us, 

 the proofs are never complete. Probability alone, therefore, can 

 be produced from logical inference. In order to transform it into 

 certainty there is need of the illative sense, the procedure of which 

 has its roots in the non-conscious depths of our personality. The 

 illative sense does not pass, like logical inference, from one abstract 

 proposition, but from one concrete thing to another concrete 

 thing. And even when we apparently assent to the conclusions 

 of a certain abstract reasoning, we are not certain of these by virtue 

 of that syllogism, but because the illative sense carries us to the 

 same conclusion ; and we can in fact eliminate logical proofs 

 without taking anything from certainty, just as the scaffolding 

 is taken away from a building after it has been constructed. 

 Abstract logic stands in the same relation to the illative sense as 

 the rules of rhetoric do to poetic creation. 



It might be objected that in this manner assent to truth is left 

 to the personal judgement of the individual ; but Newman replies 

 that the illative sense is based, for religious truths, on the moral 

 conscience, which is the same in all men ; and he who trusts to 

 the voice of this conscience and to all that the illative sense draws 



