ater
assurance than the proofs it is built on will warrant.' Newman himself
quotes this dictum, and argues against it that men do, as a matter of
fact, form their judgments in a very different fashion. To most people,
however, the fact that opinions _are_ so manufactured is no proof that
they _ought_ to be so. To most people it seems plain that the practical
necessity of making unverified assumptions, and the habit of clinging to
them because we have made them, even after their falsity has been
exposed, is a satisfactory explanation of the prevalence of error, but
not a reason for acquiescing in it. It is useful, they hold, to point
out how assumption has a perilous tendency to pass for proof, not that
we may contentedly confuse assumption with proof, but that we may be on
our guard against doing so. But such is Newman's dislike of 'reason'
that he rejoices to find that the majority of mankind are, in fact, not
guided by it. And then, having made this discovery, he is quite ready to
'reason' himself, but not in the manner of an earnest seeker after
truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence,
but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys
a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his
'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an
attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's
maxim about truth-seeking. It is equally easy to see that Newman would
spurn the charge of dishonesty as hotly as the charge of scepticism. His
principles made it easy for him to adopt the characteristic Catholic
habit of 'believing' anything that is pleasing to the religious
imagination. His sermons are full of such phrases as 'Scripture _seems_
to show us'; 'why should we not believe ...'; 'who knows whether ...,'
and the like, all introducing some fantastic superstition. He
deliberately accepts the insidious and deadly doctrine that 'no man is
convinced of a thing who can endure the thought of its contradictory
being true.' To which we may rejoin that, on the contrary, no man has a
right to be convinced of anything until he has fairly faced the
hypothesis of its contradictory being true. So long as Newman's method
prevailed in Europe, every branch of practical knowledge was condemned
to barrenness.

For what kind of knowledge is it which is acquired, not by the exercise
of the discursive intellect, or by the evidence of our senses, bu