65 
processes that they require the aid of other powers, such as 
a delicacy of perception and of judgment. The illustration 
from style seems to me ill chosen, because many of its conclu- 
sions are founded on perceptions rather than on inferences, 
and few of them amount to certainties. When they do, it is 
always the result of many independent lines of evidence con- 
verging in a common focus. A man possessing a moderate 
acquaintance with the subject would be justified in feeling 
positively certain, if the Rambler had been discovered during 
the present year, and published as a work of Lord Macaulay's, 
that it was not his. It may be replied that a rustic would not 
feel this certainty. Granted; but such a mind would be 
unable to appreciate a long proof in Euclid. In all cases 
where we arrive at certainty respecting style, although the 
judgments are intuitional, like all those which are the results 
of formed habits, the grounds of them admit of formal 
statement. 
47. It is important that it should be carefully observed that a 
large portion of the beliefs of mankind rests on a moral far 
more than an intellectual basis. Under the influence of edu- 
cation, aided also by an original difference in our mental struc- 
ture, we become as it were set in a certain mould of thought. 
This mould of thought is the result chiefly of the combined 
action of our conscience, affections and our passions. This has 
been greatly overlooked by Dr. Newman. A large proportion of 
those cases in which he contends that certain convictions can 
be erected on a mere basis of probability are of this character. 
It forms the basis of our assents, convictions, and certainties 
4 on subjects, the strength of the one being dependent on the 
intensity of the other. When this is the case, the chief use 
which we make of our intellects is to discover a support of 
some kind for our foregone conclusions. Hence the truth of 
the adage, “ The man who is persuaded against his will is of 
the same opinion still ! " This is it which creates what we 
call our general line of thought, or, if I may be allowed to 
use an old Scriptural expression, “ the light or the darkness 
within a man." When a proposition which agrees with this 
line of thought is presented to the great mass of mankind, 
they adopt it without more inquiry; when it is contrary to it, 
they reject it. Such propositions rest on a moral basis. 
48. Dr. Newman adduces another example, and contends 
that when we feel certain that Dr. Johnson wrote the prose of 
Johnson, and Pope the poetry of Pope, we assume a certainty, 
when our premisses only justify a probable conclusion. I again 
reply that the certainty which we feel is the result of a number 
of convergent lines of evidence. It involves the logic of the 
VOL. vi. f 
