I hope Gentlemen that Sophronius has so far declar’d to you, what is to be meant by Priviledg’d things, that though it be a new term, yet I need not solicitously explain it; and may think it sufficient to intimate in few words that they are things of a very Heteroclyte and Abstruse Nature, and have belonging to them such peculiar Affections and Attributes, as require that in judging and reasoning of them we should employ Notions and Rules congruous to their particular Condition; some of them superadded to, & others perhaps differing from, those that men generally & safely enough make use of about common & familiar things, that are of a nature less impervious to our Understandings. And if the shortness of this Summary Description, should leave it less clear than I hope you find it; I foresee there will divers occasions of illustrating it, by instances and other ways, occur in the Sequel of our Discourse: In order to which I shall, after this short and necessary Digression, return to the lately given First Advice; and tell you that ‘tis grounded upon this Consideration, that ‘tis not reasonable to give assent to any thing as a Truth, but upon a sufficient Reason of that Assent. And tho’ we may well grant in the general, that a thing which surpasses our Reason may have belonging to it some affection that is also above Reason; yet we are not in particular to believe that this or that Affection doth belong to it, without particular and competent proof. For since about a Priviledg’d thing, as well as about any other, Propositions may be fram’d, and often are so, that are contrary to one another; to assent to both, were to be sure to believe one falsity, if not two. And if we will assent but to one, we must either judge at Adventures, or allow our selves to examine the Mediums of Probation, employed on both sides, and thereupon judge, why one of the Propositions is to be assented to, and the other rejected.
Pyrocles.
I am glad Arnobius, that you allow your self and us this manly freedom without which our Understandings were lyable to be impos’d on in matters of the highest Concernment: For there scarce ever did, or I fear ever will, want some men who either out of Ignorance and passive Delusion, or out of self-Confidence, or out of Design, take upon them, with great boldness, to affirm what they please about priviledg’d Subjects, and when they are opposed in their Extravagancies by Ratiocinations they cannot answer, they urge, that these things being above Reason, are not to be judged of by it: But of such men as these I usually demand whether their own Assent to the things they would have us believe, be grounded upon some Rational Argument, or not: If they say, ‘tis not, they are fools to believe it themselves; and I should add to the number of fools, if after this acknowledgment, I should believe them: But if they say they do, I desire them to produce their Argument; for since ‘tis fram’d by a Human Understanding, the force of it may be also comprehended & judg’d of by a Human Understanding: And ‘tis to no purpose to say, that the Subject surpasses Human Reason; for if it do so indeed, it will surpass theirs as well as mine, and so leave us upon even terms. And let the thing assented to, be what it will, the assent it self ought to be founded upon a sufficient Reason, and consequently upon one that is intelligible, to the Human Intellect that is wrought on by it.
Eûgen.
I willingly allow, that there is a great difference between the being able and oblig’d to know the nature or cause of a thing, and the being able to give an intelligible account of the motives that induce our assent to it; and without such motives the assent may by chance be given to what is a truth, but that will not hinder it from being an irrational Assent.
Timoth.
I was not ill pleas’d Arnobius, with the Caution you employ’d in the close of your Advice, where, by saying that the positive Proofs you require to evince an Assertion about a priviledg’d thing, must be sufficient in their Kind, you plainly intimate that you do not exact rigid Demonstrations of such Assertions: And indeed it were not reasonable you should; for since ‘tis manifest, that there are many Truths, such as Historical and Political ones, that by the nature of the things are not capable of Mathematical or Metaphysical Demonstrations, and yet being really Truths, have a just Title to our Assent, it must be acknowledg’d, that a rational Assent may be founded upon Proofs that reach not to rigid Demonstrations, it being sufficient that they are strong enough to deserve a wise mans Acquiescence in them. And therefore if any things can be made out to be reveal’d by God concerning his own Nature, or Actions, or Decrees, we ought firmly to believe them, because that, of some of those things, as his Praescience, Mercy, &c. We can have no better Proofes; and of others, as what he did before our World was made; and what he will do with us after we are dead, we can have no other considerable Proofes at all. And the Objection made by Pyrocles against the assenting to audacious Propositions fram’d by imposing Men, will not reach our Case: for there is no reason to think, that because an Object surpasses an humane Understanding, it must therefore surpass the Divine Intellect it self. And even in things that are transacted in the Mind of Man himself; I may learn from another that is not my Superior, what I can by no means attain to know, unless he be pleased to discover it to me. As that he was at such a time, thinking of the Creation of the World, or resolving how to dispose of his Son, and what Recompence he designs to give a Servant that he has not yet entertained.
Pyrocles.
About things of such a kind as you now mention, Timotheus, I shall not dissent from you; because these are things, that tho’ not discoverable by our Reason till we be informed of them, are yet clearly knowable by our Reason, when we are informed of them. But that there should be things, which tho’ perspicuously proposed, should not be comprehensible by our understanding, is such an affront to that noble Faculty, that I confess it has much indisposed me to grant (what I am yet unwilling peremptorily to deny,) that there are, as Sophronius would have us think, not only some priviledged things, but more than one kind of them; which if we do admit, it will place such narrow Limits to our Understandings, that we must despair of the desireablest knowledge of all, namely that which is conversant about the noblest and sublimest Objects.
Eugenius.
Leaving to Sophronius the management of a Point he has studied, and which I have not now time solemnly to Argue; I shall only tell you in general that I see no necessity, That Intelligibility to a humane Understanding, should be necessary to the Truth or Existence of a thing; any more then that Visibility to a Humane Eye, should be necessary to the Existence of an Atome, or of a Corpuscle of Air, or of the Effluvium’s of a Loadstone, or the Fragrant Exhalations of Ambergris, and Musk from a perfumed Glove; I might here observe, that even by the same Sence some Creatures may discern things that may not be perceptible to others: as no attention or application of the Organ (or the Nose) will inable a man to perceive the Effluvia expiring from the stale Footsteps of a hunted and unseen Hare or Dear, tho’ Hounds, and especially Bloodhounds, will have a vivid Preception of such Odours, and by their help, trace and persue the flying and unseen Beast. This, I say, may be observed in Favour of my present Argument; but ‘twill perhaps be a more proper illustration to represent, that the natural Incapacity of a Childs Intellect, to understand the abstruse Affections of Parabola’s, Hyperbola’s and the incommensurable Lines of a Square, hinders not those Figures, from being contained in rerum naturâ, or their Affections from being true and demonstrable. And tho’ we do admit some priviledged things in the Sence above declared, yet, (to say somewhat to obviate Pyrocles’s Fear) there is no necessity that we should be interdicted all Knowledge of those sublime Objects, in which there are many things, whereof, or of their Consequences, we must confess our selves ignorant. Thus elder Geometricians knew very well what a Rectangular Triangle was, when they conceived it to be a Figure consisting of three strait Lines, two of which comprize a right Angle; though probably for a great while they did not know so much as all its chief Properties or Affections: since for ought appears, before Pythagoras, (who offered a Heccatombe to the Muses in gratitude for the Discovery) it was not known that the Square of the Hypothenusa is equal to the Squares of both the other Sides; and much more likely it is, that they were not able to solve those Difficulties (that continue to perplex even our Age) which attend that endless divisibility of Lines, that is inferrible from that Equality of the two Squares to the single Square.
And besides the inscrutable Perfections of God, some of his Works are such, that, notwithstanding the compleat Knowledge of them surpasses our Forces; yet there remains so many things, as well worthy to be known, as possible to be attained by us, that they will allow Exercise enough to the Wits of all the Philosophers in the World. And besides that, as I have been saying, even about these priviledged Subjects themselves, divers considerable things may be discovered, if they were altogether impenetrable by our Understandings, yet their Number is so small, that they would leave a large Scope for human Knowledge to diffuse and improve it self. For ‘tis not every thing that is hard to be understood or contrary to the common Rules of Probability, that has a right to pass for a priviledged thing, for so the Paradoxes about Srud Quantities, of Isoperimetal Figures; duplicate and triplicate Proportion, and divers other surprising Doctrines that are capable of Mathematical Demonstrations, would be priviledged things. Nor are all those worthy of this Title that are by many proposed and embraced as Philosophical Mysteries, for, such are the Peripateticks Substantial Forms, which really are not priviledged things, but Scholastic Chimeras. But tho’ I shall not presume positively to set down the discriminating Bounds and Signes of priviledged things, yet most if not all of them being such, as are either primary in their kind, as God himself, and the things whose Nature flows immediately from him, or else things that if thorowly inspected, do necessarily involve the consideration of some kind of Infinitum, or else are such that tho’ in some main Questions about them one side must be taken, both sides are encombred with absurdities, or scarce superable Difficulties: Those I say being all (or some of them) the usual marks that belong to priviledged things, you will easily grant, that their Number is not near so great as their abstruseness; and that therefore Pyrocles and his Philosophical Friends need not fear to want employment for their Curiosity. And for farther Answer to his Objection I shall add that we must regulate our Belief by our Perceptions, not our Wishes, and must not conclude, that because ‘twere desirable for us, that all things were penetrable to our humane Understandings, there is really nothing that is not so: and we can no more conclude that we are as knowing as Angels, because we wish we were so, than that we are as immortal as they, because we would never die. But as for those few things that have belonging to them, Properties so extraordinary, as to make it probable, even at the first sight, that their Nature must be very abstruse and difficult be fully discover’d by us, I hope Pyrocles will allow, that things of so Heteroclite a Nature may challenge an exemption from some of the rules imployed about common things; And that really such Rules as I mean, and some also of the vulgar Notions cannot always be safely extended to such Subjects, I forbear to shew in this place; only because I would not too long at once interrupt Arnobius; and I expect to have a good opportunity to speak again of this Subject, before our Conference be ended.
Tim.
You may then, I presume, Arnobius, as soon as you please, favour us with your second Advice.
Arnob.
I shall readily obey you, Timotheus, by proposing it thus:
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