Essays in Rationalism

by Charles Robert Newman

So that those who use this criterion, and are convinced of the truth of anything through its medium—a proceeding which I have represented as common and habitual to mankind—in thereby pronouncing certain supposed persons to be judges of truth in the said matter, claim themselves to be also judges of it in the matter of so pronouncing. The acts of judgment they thus tacitly challenge to themselves may be said to be to the following effect:—1. They assign the qualifications that constitute competency for a certain function. 2. They decide that there are persons in the community answering to this character. 3. They opine that the view such persons take or would take, imports an assertion of the truth of the idea in question. 4. They accredit that view with being strictly one, supposing that all qualified to arbitrate would acquiesce and agree in the same. 5. They attribute to themselves a similar unanimity. 6. They assume the sufficiency of their own judgment to make all the above conclusions.

These assumptions on their part, so complicated in description, are simple enough in performance. It is plain that mankind—more properly here to be called the public—simply attach themselves to some opinion which they find current in society; while, however, the assumptions I have just described are, in their full measure, but a necessary consequence of their so doing, doubtless their so doing must itself have been dictated by some kind of anticipation of them, but this may, to any degree, have been vague, undetermined, partial, and imperfect.

The rationale of this double bench of judges is thus explained. In reference to almost every kind of truth there is always a certain portion of the community better able to judge than the rest. Hence it becomes clearly the part of the latter, if they wish to be rightly informed, to defer to the opinion of those confessedly better judges—confessed to be such from the general opinion to that effect. Thus a second set of judges perforce, in addition to those that were originally conceived by choice, is implicated in this transaction.

For the primary sort I must seek a name from the French language, which calls them “experts,” the English supplying, I believe, none, except a very vernacular one, the “knowing ones”; the others have already got a well-known name—the public.

The public, in deciding on the occasions in question, what are the qualifications that constitute “experts” may be said to choose them, thereby, however, choosing persons in idea, and not bodily. The relation of the public to these conceptions of theirs is the same as that of the constituencies to the members of Parliament, in the point of one being the choosers and the others the chosen, with a common object in view.

I suppose, to stop the current of my discourse, and adjourn its topic, for the sake of at once bringing the general principle discussed to the test of exemplification, would have its want of logical harmony excused by its being desiderated by the reader.

I had undertaken to prove that this principle—which, for distinction’s sake, I will call the unanimity principle—is the proper and only criterion of scientific truth to the great non-scientific world, and consequently that modern philosophy necessarily appeals to it when it comes before the public. What I had thus taken upon myself to do, obviously was—first, to display and explicate the principle by definition, and this I had already done; and next—to describe it theoretically by showing its manner of existing, and this I was engaged in doing. Leaving this inquiry in the midst, I am now going to deviate into the practical phase of its description, by showing, not how it is, but how it acts. This seems necessary for the satisfaction of the reader, as being the only way of securing him from any, even were it but temporary, misapprehension as to the working value of the principle for which his attention is demanded. I therefore select the six following examples, the two first homely, and the four last philosophical, of its ordinary use by the public.

They will be at once seen to justify my assertion of its having for its main characteristics the two facts—first, that mankind habitually use it, and have always done so; and next, that propositions thus warranted are universally accepted as established truth, and that no one thinks of calling them in question.

1. Thus no one doubts, when coming to the intersection of two roads, he sees a sign-post, on one of whose pointers is written “To London,” and on the other “To Windsor,” no one hesitates to believe that the information thus conveyed to him is true; because he is aware that those who give it are competent to do so, and that none similarly competent will gainsay it.

2. Again, no one doubts that the sun rises and sets once in every twenty-four hours; no one doubts that he so rose and set yesterday. Every one is ready to affirm the certainty of these two facts, but very few can do so, in any great degree, from their own experience; but they help the lack of this by that of their neighbors. Neither is it necessary that they should have any near, nor even the most remote, idea of the personality of those on whose testimony they thus implicitly rely; it suffices they are sure, whoever they may be, they have the right qualifications for testifying in the way they do, and that no one so qualified can contradict their evidence, or dream of doing so.