"Dans les sciences des choses inorganiques, disait-il encore, on procède par déduction des détails au tout; dans les sciences des êtres organisés, c'est de l'ensemble que se tire par déduction, la vraie connaissance des parties.
"De plus, d'accord maintenant avec Platon, Aristote, Leibniz, il déclarait que l'ensemble étant le résultat et l'expression d'une certaine unité, à laquelle tout concourt et se co-ordonne et qui est le but où tout marche, c'est dans cette unité, c'est dans le but, c'est dans la fin ou cause finale qu'est le secret de l'organisme.
"Le 16 Juillet 1843, écrivant à M. Stuart Mill, il exprimait l'opinion que, si ce savant ne le suivait pas dans les voies plus larges où dorénavant il allait marchait, c'est que, très-versé dans les études mathématiques et physiques, il n'était pas assez familier avec les phénomènes de la vie. Plus avancé dans la science biologique, M. Mill aurait mieux compris comment il faut, outre le détail des faits, quelque chose qui les domine, qui les combine et les co-ordonne." (Ibid. p. 75, seq.)
[153] These pages are inappropriate to that wide and momentous controversy:—Has each Science a Method of its own?—and by consequence its own terminology? That such a question remains to be debated, is a clear proof that most of our philosophizing is yet tentative; and has not passed over the critical "first stage."
[ac] "In vain," says Hume's Cleanthes, "In vain would the sceptic make a distinction between science and common life, or between one science and another. The arguments, employed in all, if just, are of a similar nature, and contain the same force and evidence. Or if there be any difference among them, the advantage lies entirely on the side of theology and natural religion."—Dialogues, etc., Part I. sub. fin.
And our ultimate appeal—as for example concerning the subject next discussed in this chapter—is, he observes, to an instinctive operation of the mind which obliges us to accept and act upon what we cannot explain. Writing in his own person, Mr. Hume observes, "As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they are actuated, so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends."—Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. Section V., end. Compare footnote [d]. to this chapter, p. 269 post.
[ad] The word Belief has been used in a variety of senses by modern writers of differing views from Jacobi to Sir. W. Hamilton, from Dr. Newman to Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"This word," Mr. Spencer says, "is habitually applied to dicta of consciousness for which no proof can be assigned: both those which are unprovable because they underlie all proof, and those which are unprovable because of the absence of evidence." And again; "we commonly say we 'believe' a thing for which we can assign some preponderating evidence, or concerning which we have received some indefinable impression.... And it is the peculiarity of these beliefs, as contrasted with cognitions, that their connexions with antecedent states of consciousness may be easily severed, instead of being difficult to sever. But unhappily, the word 'belief' is also applied to each of those temporarily or permanently indissoluble connexions in consciousness, for the acceptance of which the only warrant is that it cannot be got rid of.... Thus the two opposite poles of knowledge go under the same name; and by the reverse connotations of this name, as used for the most coherent and least coherent relations of thought, profound misconceptions have been generated."
Mr. Spencer made these remarks at separate intervals of time, and has repeated them in 1874 (Essays, III. 259-60). It would therefore appear that he thinks little has recently been done to discriminate the significations of so ambiguous a term.
This chapter endeavours to investigate a small number of the genus "Beliefs" to which the differentia "Of Reason" has been added by way of distinction. It also attempts to offer a contribution towards the useful work of explaining their specific validity, and if its argument be correct, they constitute a very important definable species of the Genus, carrying with them a persuasion pre-eminently their own.