Protestant rule of faith, namely, the Bible interpreted by private judgment. The Bible may be the word of God and infallible, but my interpretation of it, or my private judgment in interpreting it, is fallible, and therefore I have in it and with it only a fallible rule of faith. So the church may be a divine institution, and by the assistance of the Holy Ghost infallible; but her teaching is addressed to my intelligence, and must be passed upon by my private judgment, which is finite and fallible, therefore incompetent to pass upon the infinite and absolute. Hence, the Catholic rule no more gives infallible faith than does the Protestant rule. The principle of the objection the lawyer urges is that authority is intrinsic, not extrinsic; comes not from without, but from within, from the mind, and can never be greater than the mind itself; and as that is fallible, there is and can be no infallible authority for faith or belief. The objection is simply that an infallible authority for the mind in matters of faith is impossible, because the mind is not itself infallible, and therefore incapable of an infallible act or assent. This, we believe, is the objection in all its force.
The objection rests on two principles, neither of which is tenable: first, that the mind or intellect is universally fallible; and, second, that the authority in matters of faith is in the mind itself, not out of it, and, therefore, belief in anything on extrinsic authority is impossible.
1. The intellect is not universal or infinite, and does not and cannot know all things; but it is never false in what it knows, and in its own sphere is infallible; that is, the intellect is not false or fallible in what it knows, for every one who knows knows that he knows. The judgment is false or fallible only when and where, and so
far as knowledge fails. Thus, St. Augustine says,[42] Omnis qui fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit. The error is not in the intellect or intelligence, but in the ignorance or non-intelligence. Doubtless, we can and do err in our judgment of matters of which we are ignorant, of which we have only an imperfect knowledge, or when we undertake from what we do know to judge of things unknown, which is all that St. Thomas means when he says, “Falsitas est in intellectu.”[43] To deny this is to deny all human knowledge, and to assert universal scepticism, and then the lawyer could not assert his objection, and would be obliged to doubt even that he doubts. If the intellect is universally fallible, we may as well close the discussion at once, for nothing can be settled. If it, in its own province, where it really does know, is infallible, then the only question is, whether, in passing judgment on the facts that establish the infallibility of the church, the intellect is obliged to go out of its own province, and judge of matters in regard to which it is confessedly incompetent and fallible?—a question we shall consider in its place.
2. We join issue with the lawyer on his assertion that the authority is intrinsic in the mind itself, not extrinsic, either in the object or the authority that affirms it. He says in his note that “no authority whatever can reside in the state, the church, or any mere institution or being outside of the person, whether that church or institution assume divinity or not. The authority is not in the so-called fact, but in the person to whom the so-called fact is addressed, and who is called upon to pass upon it. The Baconian system is false, because it makes the so-called fact the authority
for itself; when plainly the very existence or comprehension of it depends wholly on the person to whom it is addressed.” So we do not know facts because they exist, but they exist because we know them or judge them to exist! But how can so-called facts be addressed to the person before they exist? The lawyer goes farther than his argument against the church requires, and consequently proves, if anything, too much, and therefore nothing. He makes not only all knowledge, but, unintentionally, we presume, all existences, depend on their being known, and therefore makes them purely subjective, and falls into Fichteism or pure egoism.
The lawyer’s rule excludes not only faith, but knowledge of every sort and degree; for all knowledge is assent, and in the simplest fact of knowledge the intellectual assent is given on authority or evidence extrinsic to the person, though intrinsic in the object. Knowledge is either intuitive or discursive. In intuitive knowledge, the evidence or motive of the intellectual assent is intrinsic in the object, but extrinsic to the assenting mind. The immediate presence of the object motives or authorizes the assent, and the mind has simply the power or faculty of apprehending the object, or judging that it is, when presented; for, without the object affirming its presence to the mind, there can be no fact of knowledge or intellectual assent. In discursive knowledge the authority or evidence, as in intuitive knowledge, is intrinsic in the object, but it is implicit, and can be placed in immediate relation with the intellectual faculty only by discursion—a process of reasoning or demonstration. But demonstration does not motive the assent; it only removes the prohibentia, or renders explicit
what is implicit, for nothing can be asserted in the conclusion not already implicitly asserted in the premises; yet the assent is by virtue of the evidence or authority intrinsic in the object, as in intuition. All this means that we know objects because they are and are placed in relation with our cognitive faculty, not that they are because we know them, or because the mind places them, or makes them its object. If the lawyer’s rule, that authority is not in the object but in the mind or person, were true, there could be no fact of knowledge, either intuitive or discursive, because the mind cannot know where there is nothing to be known.
Faith or belief agrees with knowledge in the respect that it is intellectual assent, but differs from it in that it is mediate assent, by an authority extrinsic, as authority or evidence, both to the object and to the person. The authority or evidence mediates between the mind and the fact or object, and brings them together in a manner somewhat analogous to that in which the middle term in the syllogism brings together the two extremes and unites them in the conclusion. If the evidence or the authority is adequate, the belief is reasonable and as certain as any conclusion of logic, or as the immediate assent of the mind in the fact of science or knowledge. I am as certain that there is such a city as Rome, though I have never seen it, that there was such a man as Julius Cæsar, George Washington, or Napoleon Bonaparte, as I am that the three angles of the triangle are equal to two right angles. It is on this principle the lawyer acts and must act in every case he has in court. He summons and examines witnesses, and relies on their testimony or evidence to obtain a conviction or an acquittal, except in a question of
law; and then he relies on the judge or the court. If there is no authority outside the person, that is, no authority not in his own mind, why does he summon and examine and cross-examine witnesses or consult the judge? Why does he not work the facts and the law out of his own “inner consciousness,” as do most modern historians the facts they give us for history? As a lawyer, our friend would soon find his principle, if he carried it into court, operating as an effectual estoppel to the practice of his profession.