“Until our opinions are made to rest on facts,” said Leontium, “the error of our young friend—the most dangerous of all errors, being one of principle and involving many—must ever pervade the world. And it was because I suspected this leading misconception of the very nature—of the very end and aim of the science he is pursuing, that I attempted an explanation of what should be sought, and of what can alone be attained. In philosophy—that is, in knowledge—enquiry is every thing: theory and hypothesis are worse than nothing. Truth is but approved facts. Truth, then, is one with the knowledge of these facts. To shrink from enquiry, is to shrink from knowledge. And to prejudge an opinion as true or false, because it interferes with some preconceived abstraction we call vice or virtue, is as if we were to draw the picture of a man we had never seen, and then, upon seeing him, were to dispute his being the man in question, because unlike our picture.”
“But if this opinion interfered with another, of whose truth we imagined ourselves certain?”
“Then clearly, in one or the other, we are mistaken; and the only way to settle the difficulty, is to examine and compare the evidences of both.”
“But are there not some truths self-evident?”
“There are a few which we may so call. That is to say, there are some facts, which we admit upon the evidence of a simple sensation; as, for instance, that a whole is greater than its part; that two are more than one: which we receive immediately upon the testimony of our sense of sight or of touch.”
“But are there no moral truths of the same nature?”
“I am not aware of any. Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.”
“What call you, then, a belief in a presiding providence, and a great first cause?”
“A belief resting upon testimony; which belief will be true or false, according to the correctness or incorrectness of that testimony.”
“Is it not rather a self-evident moral truth?”