3. However, characteristic as it is of Assent, to be thus in its nature simply one and indivisible, and thereby essentially different from Inference, which is ever varying in strength, never quite at the same pitch in any two of its acts, still it is at the same time true that it may be difficult in fact, by external tokens, to distinguish certain acts of assent from certain acts of inference. Thus, whereas no one could possibly confuse the real assent of a Christian to the fact of our Lord’s crucifixion, with the notional acceptance of it, as a point of history, on the part of a philosophical heathen (so removed from each other, _toto cœlo_, are the respective modes of apprehending it in the two cases, though in both the assent is in its nature one and the same), nevertheless it would be easy to mistake the Stoic’s notional assent, genuine though it might be, to the moral nobleness of the just man “struggling in the storms of fate,” for a mere act of inference resulting from the principles of his Stoical profession, or again for an assent merely to the inferential necessity of the nobleness of that struggle. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to praise men for their consistency to their principles, whatever those principles are, that is, to praise them on an inference, without thereby implying any assent to the principles themselves. The cause of this resemblance between acts so distinct is obvious. It exists only in cases of notional assents; when the assent is given to notions, then it is possible to hesitate in deciding whether it is assent or inference, whether the mind is merely without doubt or whether it is actually certain. And the reason is this: notional Assent seems like Inference, because the apprehension which accompanies acts of inference is notional also,—because Inference is engaged for the most part on notional propositions, both premiss and conclusion. This point, which I have implied throughout, I here distinctly record, and shall enlarge upon hereafter. Only propositions about individuals are not notional, and they are seldom the matter of inference. Thus, did the Stoic infer the fact of our Lord’s death instead of assenting to it, the proposition would have been as much an abstraction to him as the “Justum et tenacem,” &c; nay further, the “Justus et tenax” was at least a notion in his mind, but “Jesus Christ” would, in the schools of Athens or of Rome, have stood for less, for an unknown being, the x or y of a formula. Except then in some of the cases of singular conclusions, inferences are employed on notions, that is, unless they are employed on mere symbols; and, indeed, when they are symbolical, then are they clearest and most cogent, as I shall hereafter show. The next clearest are such as carry out the necessary results of previous classifications, and therefore may be called definitions or conclusions, as we please. For instance, having divided beings into their classes, the definition of man is inevitable.