n's duty to act, in cases of very imperfect knowledge, and yet we see
that he has perpetually compelled him to do so; nay, often in a condition
next door to stark ignorance. To vindicate the wisdom of such a
constitution may be impossible; but the fact cannot be denied. The
Christian admits the difficulty alike in relation to religion and to the
affairs of this world. He believes, with Butler, that 'probability is
the guide of life';--that man may have sufficient evidence, in a
thousand cases,--varying, however, in different individuals,--to
warrant his action, and a reasonable confidence in the results,
though that evidence is very far removed from certitude;--that
similarly the mass of men are justified in saying that they know a
thousand facts of history to be true, though they never had the
opportunity, or capacitor, of thoroughly investigating them, and
that the great facts of science are true, though they may know no more
of science than of the geology of the moon;--that the statesman, the
lawyer, and the physician are justified in acting, where they yet
are compelled to acknowledge that they act only on most unsatisfactory
calculations of probabilities, and amidst a thousand doubts and
difficulties;--that you, Mr. Fellowes, are justified in endeavoring
to enlighten the common people on many important subjects connected
with political and social science, in which it is yet quite certain
that not one in a hundred thousand can ever go to the bottom of them;
of which very few can do more than attain a rough and crude notion,
and in which the bulk must act solely because they are persuaded that
other men know more about the matters in question than themselves;--all
which, say we Christians, is true in relation to the Christian religion,
the evidence for which is plainer, after all, than that on which man
in ten thousand cases is necessitated to hazard his fortune or his life.
If you follow out Mr. Newman's principle, I think you must with
Harrington liberate mankind from the necessity of acting altogether
in all the most important relations of human life. If it be thought
not only hard that men should be called perpetually to act on defective,
grossly defective evidence, but still harder that they should possess
varying degrees even of that evidence, it may be said that the
difference perhaps is rather apparent than real. Those whom we call
profoundly versed in the more difficult matters which depend on moral
evidence,