72 
understanding. While we attach due weight to the higher 
orders of mind as authorities in their special departments, 
still we know that they are liable to error. It is therefore 
necessary that we should possess ourselves, of a a ance m 
which we can weigh even their most authoritative utterances. 
But if this is the case with suck men, what shall we say with 
respect to those of inferior endowments? Shall we assume 
that the illative sense of each, unchecked and unhindered by 
any scientific process or formal system, is the only ultimate 
test of truth ? If Dr. Newman is right, it must be so, unless 
we are to accept as our authoritative guides those to whom 
Heaven has communicated special faculties for penetrating into 
truth. But how shall we ascertain who have special faculties . 
Dr. Newman has no doubt a reply ready there which is satisfac- 
tory to his own illative sense, but I am afraid that it will not be 
equally so to ours. If such a person must be chosen, the choice 
is one which will require the highest exercise of our reason; and, 
knowing it to be fallible, we must endeavour to check its 
action by all the aids which philosophic investigation and 
logical formula can afford us. But there is another side to 
this question. If we are told that there is no court of appeal 
in which the contradictory decisions of the illative sense of 
each can be reviewed, we must come to the conclusion, tliau 
that is true to each what the illative sense of each individual 
determines to be so; and as this sense as.it exists in different 
persons frequently takes contradictory views of what is true, 
the conclusion is inevitable that truth is apparent only, not 
real. This state of mind is separated by a mere hair s breadth 
from the ocean of universal doubt. 
61. I conclude with a quotation from Dr. Newman : 
« Certainly, however we account for it — whether we say that one man is 
below the level of nature, and another above it, so it is, that men taken at 
random differ widely from each other in their perception of the first elements 
of religion, duty, philosophy, the science of life, and taste, not to speak here 
of the difference in the quality and vigour of the illative sense itself, comparing 
man with man. Every one, in the ultimate resolution of his intellectual 
faculties, stands by himself, whatever he may have in common with others ; 
and one only is his ultimate judge. Not as if there were not an objective 
standard of truth; but that individuals, whether by their own fault or not, 
variously apprehend it. Thus one man deduces from his moral sense the 
presence of a moral governor, and another does not ; in each case there may 
be an exercise, and a sound exercise, of the illative sense. ... . Ihe illative 
sense of the one is employed upon and informed by the emotions of hope and 
fear, and a sense of sin ; whereas the other discerns the distinctions of right 
and wrong in no other way than he distinguishes light from darkness, or 
beautifulness from deformity.” 
