admitted premises.
The third virtually includes any conclusion in science based on direct
experiment, or observation; though the belief of the truth even of
Newton's system of the world, when received as Locke says he received
and as the generality of men receive it,--without being able to follow
the steps by which the great geometer proves his conclusions,--may be
represented rather as an act of faith rather than an act of Reason;
as much so as a belief in the truth of Christianity, founded on its
historic and other evidences. The greater part of man's knowledge,
indeed, even of science,--even the greater part of a scientific man's
knowledge of science, based as it is on testimony alone (and which
so often compels him to renounce to-day what he thought certain
yesterday),--may be not unjustly considered as more allied to Faith than
Reason. It may be said, perhaps, that the above classification of the
truths received by Reason and Faith respectively is arbitrary; that
even as to some of their alleged sources, they are not always clearly
distinguishable; that the evidence of experience may in some sort
be reduced to testimony,--that of sense, and testimony reduced to
experience,--that of human veracity under given circumstances; both
being founded upon the observed uniformity of certain phenomena under
similar conditions. We admit the truth of this; and we admit it the more
willingly, as it shows that so inextricably intertwined are the roots
both of Reason and Faith in our nature, that no definitions that can be
framed will completely separate them; none that will not involve many
phenomena which may be said to fall under the dominion of one as much as
the other. We have been content, for our practical purpose, without
any too subtle refinement, to take the line of demarcation which is,
perhaps, as obvious as any, and as generally recognised. Few would say
that a generalised inference from direct experience was not matter of
reason rather than of faith; though an act of faith is involved in
the process; and few would not call confidence in testimony where
probabilities were nearly balanced, by the name of faith rather than
reason, though an act of reason is involved in that process. We are much
more anxious to show their general involution with one another than the
points of discrimination between them.
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In receiving important doctrines on the strength of such evidence, and
in holding to them against the perple