The following Sections are appended to the Article from “The Contemporary Review”
Principal Fairbairn, in his Article in the Contemporary of December, 1885, as an answer to my explanation in October, has repeated his charges against me with much vehemence, but, as I hope to show, with small success. He still considers me as thinking and writing on a foundation of “underlying scepticism:” he calls it however philosophical scepticism, by which I understand him to mean a sort of scepticism which I am not aware of myself; at least I can only suppose that he contrasts philosophical with personal. Though I do not understand the distinction, I am glad to receive from him a token of good feeling and courtesy such as I believe this to be.
He says that I am only a philosophic sceptic, and that he has taken considerable pains to bring this home to me. He says, “What he [the Cardinal] was charged with, and in terms so careful and guarded as ought to have excluded all possible misconceptions, was ‘metaphysical or philosophical’ scepticism.” This sort of scepticism he proceeds to define, but I fear I cannot call him happy in his attempt. He defines it is “a system which … subjectively affirms the impotence of human reason for the discovery of truth.” 1 Such a definition (in religious questions, as in the case before us) is seriously incomplete. If it be taken in its letter, I certainly cannot deny that it has proved me to be a sceptic, for I do affirm the impotence of human reason for the discovery of a great many truths; but then it has done so at the expense of convicting of scepticism all Catholics, besides all theologians of the Greek Church and all orthodox Anglicans. Dr. Fairbairn’s definition tells against all whosoever hold on faith the great truths of Revelation, such as the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, and beyond all mistake includes in its imputation the Vatican Council itself, which expressly anathematises any one who shall say “that in Divine Revelation there are contained no true and properly so called mysteries, but that all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles by means of Reason properly cultivated.” If to deny the impotence of reason in the discovery of truth is scepticism, I am in good company.
Let me take a more exact and adequate definition of scepticism, and see if I fall under it. The definition of scepticism to which I am myself accustomed is such as this: “Scepticism is the system which holds that no certainty is attainable, as not in other things so not in questions of religious truth and error.” How have I incurred this reproach? On the contrary, I have not only asserted, with a strength of words which has sometimes incurred censure, my belief in religious truth, but have insisted on the certainty of such truth, and on Certitude as having a place among the constituents of human thought;—analysing it, discriminating it, and giving tests of it, with a direct apprehension and manipulation quite incompatible with my never asking myself whether intellectually I was in any sense a sceptic or not. It seems to me that the charge of scepticism which has been used against me elsewhere, as well as in England, is a mere idle word, serviceable in an intellectual combat; and I think it would be more charitable in opponents if, instead of imputing it to any dissatisfaction which I have at any time expressed with certain arguments used in Catholic controversy, they ascribed it, not to an underlying scepticism as to the truths in dispute, but rather to an unmeasured and even reckless confidence in them, or, again, to an attempt to test the availableness at the present time of certain conventional proofs used for polemical purposes.
§ 51. On the Meaning of the word “Reason”
So much on Dr. Fairbairn’s definition of what he considers the “philosophical” scepticism which runs through all my writings. And now I come to what seems to him a main instance of it—my account of Reason considered as the faculty of reasoning. Here he drops his unfortunate attempt at defining; at least he does not tell us what Reason is, as far as I can make out, but he is severe in pronouncing it to be constitutive, architectonic, true, and religious; whereas, in my idea of it, it is a mere instrument, “an inferential instrument,” from which nothing great can come. He says, “What works as a mere instrument never handles what it works in, the things remain outside it, and have no place or standing within its being … To a reason without religious character … truth is inaccessible … This is philosophical scepticism.” I am quite ready to meet him on this new ground of argument. He says that Reason, as I consider it, is necessarily skeptical; let us see.
Here, first, I must protest against its being magisterially ruled by Dr. Fairbairn that the word Reason has one and one only definite scientific meaning, accepted by all authorities in metaphysics, and incapable of any other; whereas, before coming to the question of particular words and phrases, I really wish it settled whether there is a recognized science of metaphysics at all. Certainly in 1831 and the following years the terminology which he takes for granted was little known in Oxford 2, nor indeed any terminology but Aristotle’s; much less were any words or definitions taken for stereotyped truths. I have no great remorse that for fifty years I have used my native tongue as a vehicle for religious and ethical discussions; in this instance, indeed, with the sanction of a writer who is commonly called par excellence our lexicographer. Provided I am careful to record the senses in which I use words, it is not the part of a fair critic to take them in another sense, and in that sense to be tragic in his reprobation of them. My turn of mind has never led me towards metaphysics; rather it has been logical, ethical, practical. As to the word “Reason,” it would have been a strange digression had I, in speaking of the religious state of Europe, entered into an account of the faculties of the human mind and the analysis which has been made of them by various metaphysicians.
Here it is very pertinent to quote in my favour the remarks of Sir William Hamilton; they will protect me in the acts of private judgment which are so offensive to Dr. Fairbairn.
“‘Reason,’” he says, “is a very vague, vacillating, and equivocal word … Throwing aside its employment in most languages for cause, motive, argument, &c., considering it only as a philosophical word, denoting a faculty or complement of faculties, in this relation it is found employed in the following meanings, not only by different individuals, but frequently to a greater or less extent by the same philosopher … Nothing can be more vague and various than his [Kant’s] employment of the word [Reason] … but even in his [Kant’s] abusive employment of the term … no consistency was maintained.” (Hamilton on Reid, Note A, § v. 7.)
In this latitude and confusion of the terminology found among professed metaphysicians I think I have a right to my own way of regarding the faculty of Reason, whether I fail in it or not; and that the more because, while I am following the English use of the word, it is a personal satisfaction to me to be able also to believe that I am adhering to the ecclesiastical. At least Gregory the 16th, Pius the 9th, and the Vatican Council, when they would speak of “proving” and of “demonstrating,” refer the act of the mind to “human reason.” 3