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not diminished by well-attested a posteriori considerations ; 
the habit of accepting the less probable in preference to or 
equally with the more probable, the inferior testimony as more 
cogent than or equally cogent with the superior. We must 
not call a person credulous who assents to testimony, because 
he does so ; we cannot apply that reproachful term to him 
unless he assents to inferences in themselves improbable, or 
only slightly probable, and resting on weak and unsifted testi- 
mony. The Mahometan, for example, is credulous, not for 
accepting the Koran in the first instance, but for accepting it 
on the unsupported testimony of Mahomet, in spite of the 
intrinsic improbability of much that it contains. 
But as I said at the outset, man must believe something. 
He must assent to something upon testimony; he must be 
either a rational believer, or credulous. He cannot — much 
as positivists may endeavour to force him — expunge from his 
mind all that belongs to the region of the Unseen, where 
authority and Kevelation, the Law supported by the Testi- 
mony, take the place of axiom and maxim. Hitherto the 
Sceptical school has accused us of credulity. We propose to 
turn the tables and fling back the accusation against them. 
They believe something, as we believe something; but the 
object of their belief is more improbable than ours, and the 
testimony on which they believe it weaker than we produce 
in support of our own side. 
Somewhat of this credulous incredulity may be seen even 
in the school of Philosophical Scepticism. “We have no 
power,” said Pyrrho and Timon, “ to judge of the True and 
the Beautiful. The Criterion fails.” But whence came this 
power to determine our want of power ? If we are able to 
decide upon the untrustworthiness of our Criterion, then we lay 
claim to a higher Criterion still, the Criterion of the Criterion, 
“We assert nothing,” said they, “not even that we assert 
nothing.” This however is itself an assertion, involving the 
exercise of a higher Judgment, — the Judgment of Judgment. 
Here the sceptic philosopher shows his credulity. Instead 
of holding that we have a faculty, limited perhaps, but still a 
faculty, of deciding on what is brought before our mental sight ; 
instead of accepting the testimony borne to the existence of 
this faculty by his own daily consciousness, and others' daily 
course of action, he prefers to lay claim to the possession of a 
superior faculty, which can try, and convict of incompetence 
and falsehood, and condemn to perpetual rejection, the judging 
power. And of the existence of this superior faculty he brings 
forward no testimony whatever. He disbelieves against 
probability and the sense of mankind; and believes without 
