[y] See Additional Note [E].—The great interest of this subject for our purpose lies in the circumstance that the relation of Theory to Fact is in effect a question most closely akin to the one already mooted concerning the relation of our Sensations to our Perceptions (compare Additional Note B). These two questions are indeed so very similar as to be in the main identical. What we want to learn regarding both relations, is, first, the extent of the relativity to our human nature; in other words how much we have mentally put into our Theories and Sensations before we treat them as Facts and Perceptions. Secondly, what reason we have for believing any of our knowledge comprehended under either or both of these relativities (Perception and Fact) to be true beyond our human sphere; and, above all, whether we are able to assert, on good grounds, that such and such parts of either kind of our knowledge are absolutely and immutably true?—
If, for example, we ask—Is it thus true that there are real objects external to ourselves? "I do not believe," Mr. Mill has told us, "that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof." And a few lines further, "The view I take of externality, in the sense in which I acknowledge it as real, could not be more accurately expressed than in Professor Fraser's words." These are "For ourselves we can conceive only—(1) An externality to our present and transient experience in our own possible experience past and future, and (2) An externality to our own conscious experience, in the contemporaneous, as well as in the past or future experience of other minds." (On Hamilton. p. 232, note.) This explanation, Mill had just before observed, is an externality in the only sense we need care about; and it means in plain words, that we possess no absolutely true but only some utilitarian knowledge of the real existence of an outside world. We must, however, and do care infinitely more for another kind of answer to quite another kind of question. Is the antithesis between Right and Wrong,—the Moral Imperative "Do this and live, transgress and die,"—absolutely and immutably true? If not, who would calculate profit and loss as they are calculated in the Gospel; who would or could believe in a Righteous that is to say, a Real and True God?
Many minds, appalled by the vastness of these issues, and finding no satisfactory answer to questions of such infinite importance, have fallen back on the position of Dr. Newman in his Grammar of Assent. But the unsatisfactory characteristic attaching to this position, is that there seems to be no limit to such Assents, because there appears no Reasonable canon or maxim to explain, defend, and regulate them. To the far larger number of minds the problem states itself as a dilemma. There are exactly two alternatives open to Man. His choice lies between two contrasted positions—the most antagonistic conceivable, yet both resulting from one common supposed fact. Ignorance and impotence are the truest characters inscribed upon our Reason. Man must decide either for an unlimited Doubt such as that which Hume delineates, wide as the universal whole of our human Existence; or else yield the kind of Assent to which Dr. Newman invites as being the sole secure refuge for any soul driven by despair into a recoil from utter absence of belief and hope—the want of everything to trust and love. Now, let it be observed that an assent transcending reasonable proof is, in effect, a confession that Reason falls short of establishing those transcendental truths to which the mind has thus assented. And contrariwise, limitless Doubt making all else uncertain, affirms with unmistakeable decisiveness the impotence of human Reason.—"The observation of human blindness and weakness," says Hume, "is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it." Hence, we see that Hume's conclusion is identical with that underlying a position directly antagonistic to his own, and in this respect les extrêmes se touchent.
It follows, then, with equal clearness, that any Dilemma which restricts human choice to the two alternatives above stated, rests upon a denial that Man's Reason can guide Mankind to truth—(and by consequence that he can ever feel after and find his God);—whilst, conversely, this same denial, if posited as a basis of speculation, permits no human choice beyond the two horns of a Dilemma thus made necessarily imperative upon us all.
Neither alternative, however, can be accepted by the Natural Theologian, nor can he possibly receive any such Dilemma as founded in Truth or Reason. On the one hand the Superhuman, and Supernatural lie outside his science which has for its sphere Nature, including Man's Nature; and which steadily endeavours to attain the true interpretation and evidence yielded by both Natures, to a belief extending beyond their present territory and fluent conditions. On the other hand, his science becomes impossible if unlimited Doubt is the sole dreary prospect open to the philosophic inquirer. And with his science all other sciences must perish. Doubt saps the foundations of them all; common-sense facts, scientific theories, and practical every-day beliefs, are all impartially shewn to be baseless. So far as our realities are concerned
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Science is therefore an alien from Man's world; the soul an outcast amid her own:—
"As in strange lands a traveller walking slow,