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
(7) If we so variously apprehend the familiar objects of sense, still
more various, we may suppose, are the aspects and associations attached
by us, one with another, to intellectual objects. I do not say we
differ in the objects themselves, but that we may have interminable
differences as to their relations and circumstances. I have heard
say (again to take a trifling matter) that at the beginning of this
century, it was a subject of serious, nay, of angry controversy,
whether it began with January 1800, or January 1801. Argument,
which ought, if in any case, to have easily brought the question to
a decision, was but sprinkling water upon a flame. I am not clear
that, if it could be fairly started now, it would not lead to similar
results; certainly I know those who studiously withdraw from giving
an opinion on the subject, when it is accidentally mooted, from
their experience of the eager feeling which it is sure to excite in
some one or other who is present. This eagerness can only arise from
an overpowering sense that the truth of the matter lies in the one
alternative, and not in the other.
These instances, because they are so casual, suggest how it comes to
pass, that men differ so widely from each other in religious and moral
perceptions. Here, I say again, it does not prove that there is no
objective truth, because not all men are in possession of it; or that
we are not responsible for the associations which we attach, and the
relations which we assign, to the objects of the intellect. But this it
does suggest to us, that there is something deeper in our differences
than the accident of external circumstances; and that we need the
interposition of a Power greater than human teaching and human argument
to make our beliefs true and our minds one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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