It may be important here to notice a common fault in the method frequently adopted by philosophers in their investigations in this department of mental science. In the most celebrated treatise that has ever appeared upon this subject, the writer does not recollect to have met with a single appeal to consciousness, the only adequate witness in the case. The whole treatise, almost, consists of a series of syllogisms, linked together with apparent perfectness, syllogisms pertaining to an abstract something called Will. Throughout the whole, the facts of consciousness are never appealed to. In fact, in instances not a few, among writers of the same school, the right to make such an appeal, on the ground of the total inadequacy of consciousness to give testimony in the case, has been formally denied. Would it be at all strange, if it should turn out that all the fundamental results of investigations conducted after such a method, should be wholly inapplicable to the Will, the phenomena of which lie under the eye of consciousness, or to stand in plain contradiction to the phenomena thus affirmed? What, from the method adopted, we see is very likely to take place, we find, from experience, to be actually true of the treatise above referred to. This is noticed by the distinguished author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm, in an Essay introductory to Edwards on the Will. “Even the reader,” he says, “who is scarcely at all familiar with abstruse science, will, if he follow our author attentively, be perpetually conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, or latent suspicion, that some fallacy has passed into the train of propositions, although the linking of syllogisms seems perfect. This suspicion will increase in strength as he proceeds, and will at length condense itself into the form of a protest against certain conclusions, notwithstanding their apparently necessary connection with the premises.” What should we expect from a treatise on mental science, from which the affirmations of consciousness should be formally excluded, as grounds of any important conclusions? Just what we find to be true, in fact, of the above named treatise on the Will; to wit: all its fundamental conclusions positively contradicted by such affirmations. What if the decisions of our courts of justice were based upon data from which the testimony of all material witnesses has been formally excluded? Who would look to such decisions as the exponents of truth and justice? Yet all the elements in those decisions may be the necessary logical consequents of the data actually assumed. Such decisions may be all wrong, however, from the fact that the data which ought to be assumed in the case, were excluded. The same will, almost of necessity, be true of all treatises, in every department of mental science, which are not based upon the facts of consciousness.
[PROPER METHOD OF REASONING FROM REVELATION TO THE SYSTEM OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY THEREIN PRE-SUPPOSED.]
By what has been said, the reader will not understand me as denying the propriety of comparing our conclusions in mental science with the Bible. Though no system of mental philosophy is directly revealed in the Bible, some one system is therein pre-supposed, and assuming, as we do, that the Scriptures are a revelation from God, we must suppose that the system of mental science assumed in the sacred writings, is the true system. If we could find the system pre-supposed in the Bible, we should have an infallible standard by which to test the validity of any conclusions to which we have arrived, as the results of psychological investigation. It is therefore a very legitimate, interesting, and profitable inquiry—what is the system of mental science assumed as true in the Bible? We may very properly turn our attention to the solution of such a question. In doing this, however, two things should be kept distinctly in mind.
1. In such inquiries, we leave the domain of mental philosophy entirely, and enter that of theology. In the latter we are to be guided by principles entirely distinct from those demanded in the former.
2. In reasoning from the Bible to the system of mental philosophy pre-supposed in the Scriptures, we are in danger of assuming wrong data as the basis of our conclusions that is, we are in danger of drawing our inferences from those truths of Scripture which have no legitimate bearing upon the subject, and of overlooking those which do have such a bearing. While there are truths of inspiration from which we may properly reason to the theory of the Will, pre-supposed in the Bible, there are other truths from which we cannot legitimately thus reason. Now suppose that we have drawn our conclusions from truths of inspiration which have no legitimate bearing upon the subject, truths which, if we do reason from them in the case, will lead us to wrong conclusions; suppose that in the light of such conclusions we have explained the facts of consciousness, assuming that such must be their true character, else we deny the Bible. Shall we not then have almost inextricably lost ourselves in the labyrinth of error?
The following principles may be laid down as universally binding, if we would reason correctly, as philosophers and theologians, on the subject under consideration.
1. In the domain of philosophy, we must confine ourselves strictly and exclusively to the laws of psychological investigation, without reference to any system of theology.
2. In the domain of theology, when we would reason from the truths of inspiration to the theory of the Will pre-supposed in the Bible, we should be exceedingly careful to reason from those truths only which have a direct and decisive bearing upon the subject, and not from those which have no such bearing.
3. We should carefully compare the conclusions to which we have arrived in each of these domains, assuming that if they do not harmonize, we have erred either as philosophers or theologians.
4. In case of disagreement, we should renew our independent investigations in each domain, for the purpose of detecting the error into which we have fallen.