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goes farther, and says that our reasonings and conclusions in the most neces- 
sary matters do not amount to certainties, but are merely probabilities, and 
that the conclusion of a proposition in Euclid is after all a mere verisimilitude. 
Now, I hold, that Dr. Newman has confounded between two senses of the 
word “ conditioned.” I readily admit that the conclusion of a proposition in 
Euclid is conditioned on the premises from which it flows ; i.e., that— a fact 
which is expressed by the word “ therefore the conclusion is contained in 
the premises. But as these are in necessary matter, the conclusion viewed 
in itself is not conditioned but absolute ; or, in other words, is as necessary 
ns the premises. It is simply conditional qua the word “therefore”; but 
this is quite another thing from saying that the three angles of a triangle are 
equal to two right angles,— a proposition to which I in any sense yield a 
conditional assent. But Dr. Newman says, that all conclusions are con- 
ditional qua conclusions ; and then he invents a new process of the mind by 
which we give an absolute assent to them. I need scarcely point out that 
this is. done to supply a standing-point for his theological leanings. Thus 
by a kind of legerdemain, an unconditional assent may be given to proposi- 
tions for which the evidence is worthless, or nearly so. I regret to say, that 
it seems to me to be the great object of this treatise to invent something 
which will constitute an apparent stand-point for this most sophistical com 
elusion. Now, I hold that our certitudes are in some degree relative also ; 
and that all I am certain of is relative to all the other powers of my mind 
and to the evidence on which it rests, and although I may forget that evi- 
dence, yet I can remember the nature of it. Now, Mr. Titcomb seemed to 
think that a certainty can rise higher than the evidence on which it is 
based, and he took several instances of the works of design as proving the 
being of a God. Now, in my paper, I have insisted on the value of what 
I should call the convergence of evidence into one common focus. Such 
evidence is not a mere balance of probabilities. The nature of it is this, 
that we have a number of separate lines of absolutely distinct evidence 
which converge in a common centre ; and when that is the case, there is some 
principle in the mind— I do not know what it is— which accepts that proof 
as absolutely valid, and the evidence is quite as suited to produce belief as 
what we call demonstration. Now, as to my admission that there are certain 
powers of mind possessed by individual persons which may be said to be 
intuitions. When I wrote that, I intended to express no opinion of my 
own, I merely took what Dr. Newman said upon it, and my point was that 
even if that were true, it did not in the least prove his argument. I am far 
from being satisfied as to what is the correct view of the matter. He has 
alluded to Napoleon’s special power of looking at an army through a glass, 
and at once forming a correct judgment as to their numbers and positions! 
Cases like that, at any rate, strike us ordinary people as strange, and whether 
they be the result of intuitions, or of very rapid judgments, I do not know ; 
but in using the phrase “ intuitive,” I did not mean to imply an absolute 
intuition, but simply the wider sense of the word as it is used by Dr. 
Newman, and as it is often applied. I have no doubt I have simply fallen 
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