The Catholic World, Vol. 14, October 1871-March 1872: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and ScienceVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 14, October 1871-March 1872: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Faith or belief agrees with knowledge in the respect that it is
intellectual assent, but differs from it in that it is mediate assent,
by an authority extrinsic, as authority or evidence, both to the
object and to the person. The authority or evidence mediates between
the mind and the fact or object, and brings them together in a manner
somewhat analogous to that in which the middle term in the syllogism
brings together the two extremes and unites them in the conclusion. If
the evidence or the authority is adequate, the belief is reasonable
and as certain as any conclusion of logic, or as the immediate assent
of the mind in the fact of science or knowledge. I am as certain that
there is such a city as Rome, though I have never seen it, that there
was such a man as Julius Cæsar, George Washington, or Napoleon
Bonaparte, as I am that the three angles of the triangle are equal to
two right angles. It is on this principle the lawyer acts and must act
in every case he has in court. He summons and examines witnesses, and
relies on their testimony or evidence to obtain a conviction or an
acquittal, except in a question of law; and then he relies on the
judge or the court. If there is no authority _outside_ the person,
that is, no authority not in his own mind, why does he summon and
examine and cross-examine witnesses or consult the judge? Why does he
not work the facts and the law out of his own “inner consciousness,”
as do most modern historians the facts they give us for history? As a
lawyer, our friend would soon find his principle, if he carried it
into court, operating as an effectual estoppel to the practice of his
profession.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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