75 
third place, when I stand on the seashore and view the distant ships coming 
towards me, their masts appear first, and then their hulls. These are simple, 
practical, common-sense facts which enable me to draw a series of inferences 
that the proposition is true, and I give to those inferences an assent which is 
perfectly absolute, and which then passes into the next stage, that of certi- 
tude. But when I am told that the earth is not only a globe, but an oblate 
spheroid,— flattened, that is to say, at the poles,— because the vibration of a 
pendulum in countries near the equator is slower than in those countries 
which are nearer to the poles, from which the inference is drawn that the 
equatorial regions are at a greater distance from the centre of gravity than 
the polar regions ; and also that the world is an oblate spheroid, because, 
supposing it to have been fluid in its first formation when sent with its centri- 
fugal motion on its own axis round the sun, it would, on scientific principles, 
assume that shape ; these inferences lead me to assent to that proposition. But 
that “ assent ” is not so absolute ; it does not, to my mind, assume that cha- 
racter of “ certitude ” which the first proposition does. I may say that I have 
no doubt about it ; but there is not such a practical common-sense appeal to 
my understanding in the one case as in the other. I merely bring this for- 
ward to show that I think certain assents to propositions may be absolute, 
and others not so absolute, and therefore, in that view of the case, I conceive 
that Mr. Row has more or less established his position. I now come to 
“certitudes” ; and I must confess that when Dr. Newman says that there are 
no degrees in certitudes, he has the best of the argument. I freely grant 
that certitudes may be illusive, but while they last they must, from the 
very nature of the case, be absolute. The subject has no degrees and no 
conditions whatever. Take an unreal or illusive certitude, such as the 
mirage in the desert. The traveller going through the desert declares, 
beyond all possibility of mistake, that he sees water, though the guides 
assure him to the contrary. There you have an absolute certitude in a 
man’s mind, though it is only an illusive one. In the 38th section of his 
paper Mr. Row says : — 
“ 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 convictions, his certitude has a moral rather than an intellectual 
basis.” 
Now I think that reasoning is wrong. Dr. Newman maintains, as Mr. Row 
points out in the beginning of the paragraph, that a man may have been 
in error several times over in his certitudes — say three times wrong as to 
the reality of his certitudes,— but yet that does not prevent him from having 
an absolute certitude on the fourth occasion. 
Mr. Row.— Dr. Newman says “ a hundred times wrong.” He has purposely 
put the figures very high. 
Mr. Titcomb. — For my purpose I prefer the smaller figure. Now the 
mirage which appears to the inexperienced traveller is a matter of certi- 
