61 
timately follows from tlie premisses. But with respect to 
Laputa, the testimony is valueless. If it he said that our 
rejection of the story, prior to all inquiry, is founded on our 
disbelief in the possibility of the miraculous, I deny it. 
37. Another case of certitude is adduced by Dr. Newman, 
which he considers to rise higher than the evidence on which 
it is based. Every one of us, says he, feels certain that we 
shall die, although we admit that there are two cases in the 
history of man where death has not taken place. I cannot 
see that these two cases at all affect the general character of 
the proposition ; but they help to prove what I maintain, that 
all our highest certitudes admit of qualification. The certitude 
in question is, after all, a conditional one. It is based on an 
hypothetical syllogism. We must die if God will not work a 
miracle to prevent it. But He will not. Therefore we shall 
die. I admit that we all feel certain that we shall die ; but I 
maintain that the certitude is conditional, and not absolute, 
and therefore that this example of his own choosing is destruc- 
tion of Dr. Newman ; s general position. But how, indepen- 
dently of the hypothetical syllogism, do we arrive at the cer- 
titude itself ? Does it rest on merely probable evidence ? I 
answer that it rests on several lines of evidence, which con- 
verge in a common focus, one of which involves the whole 
principle of inductive inference. 
38. Dr. Newman maintains what seems very like a paradox. 
Although a man may have been in error a hundred times 
respecting the reality of his certitudes, this does not hinder 
him from attaining an absolute certitude on the one hundred 
and first time. This involves a confusion of thought between 
absolute and concrete certitude. I do not deny that many 
minds exist on whom all the lessons of experience are wholly 
thrown away, and that many are certain on most insufficient 
grounds. But if a man feels that he has been always wrong 
in what he has taken to be certitudes, and yet feels absolute 
and unqualified trust in the certitude of his last convic- 
tions, his certitude has a moral rather than an intellectual 
basis. It may be owing to imperfections in his reason ; but 
I should rather attribute it to a deficiency in the grace of 
humility. 
39. There is much which is extremely valuable in Dr. New- 
man's chapters on inference. But the opening paragraph is 
misleading on grounds which I have already pointed out. cc In- 
ference,” says he, “ is the conditional acceptance of a proposi- 
tion ; assent is the unconditional. The object of assent is truth ; 
the object of inference is the truth-like, or a mere verisimilitude. 
The problem which I have undertaken is that of ascertaining 
