Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The tenth intuitive truth is, that IN ALL PRACTICAL CONCERNS WE ARE TO CONSIDER THAT COURSE RIGHT WHICH HAS THE BALANCE OF EVIDENCE IN ITS FAVOR.

There are few practical questions where we can have perfect certainty as to the right course. In almost all the concerns of life men are guided by probabilities. It is not certain that seed will spring up, or that a ship will return, or that a given medicine will cure, or that any future project will succeed; but men go forward in their pursuits with exactly the same decision as if the probabilities that guide them were certainties. They find which course has the most evidence in its favor, and then act as if it was certain that this was the right course to attain their designs.

And if any person should habitually act as if he believed the reverse, he would be regarded as having lost his reason.

The eleventh intuitive truth is, that NOTHING IS TO BE ASSUMED AS TRUE UNLESS THERE IS SOME EVIDENCE THAT IT IS SO.

This principle is always assumed in all practical affairs. If a man were to send a cargo abroad without any evidence that it was wanted, he would be called a fool; and so in all other concerns, every sane man takes this for his rule of conduct.

The preceding include the principles which it is believed are the grand foundation on which rest most of the practical knowledge of life, as well as the doctrines and duties both of natural and revealed religion.

There are some other intuitive truths which are not introduced here, and there are some principles that others have placed in this honorable position which could not stand the test here introduced, and claimed to be the only true and reliable one.

The intuitive truths have been called "fundamental truths," because they are the ultimate basis of all knowledge secured or established by the process of reasoning.

This process consists in assuming a certain proposition to be true as the basis of an argument. If this proposition is granted, or supposed to be granted, then the reasoner proceeds to show that the point in dispute is in reality included in the truth already granted, so that believing the first proposition, or basis, necessarily involves a belief in the one to be proved.

For example, if a man wishes to prove that a certain person is a benevolent man, he proceeds thus: