his
senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of certitude,
and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his
trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute
ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he asserts that
according to theology we know the dogmas of religion by "intuition." [37]

This doctrine rests on Cardinal Newman's celebrated theory of the
"Illative Sense." Surely a moment's reflection on the meaning of words,
not to speak of a slight acquaintance with the book referred to, would
have saved him from confounding two notions so sharply distinguished as
"intuition" and "inference." Again, "There can be no doubt there are men
often of great piety and excellence who have, or fancy they have, a sort
of sixth sense, or, as Cardinal Newman calls it, an 'illative sense,' by
which they see by intuition ... things unprovable or disprovable by
ordinary reason." [38] Can a man who makes such reckless travesties of a
view which he manifestly has never studied, be credited with
intellectual honesty?

Doubtless, the semi-scientific millions will be much impressed by the
wideness of Mr. Laing's reading and his profound grasp of all that he
has read, when they are told casually that "space and time are, ... to
use the phraseology of Kant, 'imperative categories;'" [39] but perhaps
to other readers it may convey nothing more than that he has heard a dim
something somewhere about Kant, about the categories, about space and
time being schemata of sense, and about the _categorical imperative._
It is only one instance of the unscrupulous recklessness which shows
itself everywhere. Akin to this is his absolute misapprehension of the
Christian religion which he labours to refute. He never for a moment
questions his perfect understanding of it, and of all it has got to say
for itself. Brought up apparently among Protestants, who hold to a
verbal inspiration [40] and literal interpretation of the Scriptures,
who have no traditional or authoritative interpretation of it, he
concludes at once that his own crude, boyish conception of Christianity
is the genuine one, and that every deviation therefrom is a "climbing
down," or a minimizing. He has no suspicion that the wider views of
interpretation are as old as Christianity itself, and have always
co-existed with the narrower.

He regards the Christian idea of God as essentially anthropomorphic.
Indeed, whether in good