An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of AssentNewman, John Henry
Religion
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
Newman, John Henry
Faith; Theism
Many have been converted and sustained in their faith by this argument,
which admits of being powerfully stated; but still such statement is
after all only intended to be a vehicle of thought, and to open the
mind to the apprehension of the facts of the case, and to trace them
and their implications in outline, not to convince by the logic of its
mere wording. Do we not think and muse as we read it, try to master
it as we proceed, put down the book in which we find it, fill out its
details from our own resources, and then resume the study of it? And,
when we have to give an account of it to others, should we make use
of its language, or even of its thoughts, and not rather of its drift
and spirit? Has it never struck us what different lights different
minds throw upon the same theory and argument, nay, how they seem to be
differing in detail when they are professing, and in reality showing,
a concurrence in it? Have we never found, that, when a friend takes
up the defence of what we have written or said, that at first we are
unable to recognize in his statement of it what we meant it to convey?
It will be our wisdom to avail ourselves of language, as far as it will
go, but to aim mainly by means of it to stimulate, in those to whom we
address ourselves, a mode of thinking and trains of thought similar to
our own, leading them on by their own independent action, not by any
syllogistic compulsion. Hence it is that an intellectual school will
always have something of an esoteric character; for it is an assemblage
of minds that think; their bond is unity of thought, and their words
become a sort of _tessera_, not expressing thought, but symbolizing it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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