66

Illative Sense; possibly they have been too busy with experimental research. Some day, however, the doctrine may take a new lease of life, not in lowly circles, but in the very highest. The word Illative, according to the dictionary, means something pertaining to illation or inference, and the Illative Sense is defined as "that faculty of the human mind by which it forms a judgment upon the validity of an inference." The definition does not satisfy us, for the illative sense is not a "faculty"; and it is not clear whether the illation judges or estimates the validity of the inference, or whether it is a judgment consequent upon the inference. Newman himself does not seem to have given us a neat and formal definition in his Grammar of Assent, but Sir Leslie Stephen supplied the deficiency. To him the illative sense is that by which the mind draws remote inferences without a conscious syllogistic process."1 This brings us nearer, and we propose to offer the reader an illustration. Remembering that formal logic is a test of thinking, and not a process of discovering new ideas, or arriving at new conclusions, we will imagine that a London merchant, intent upon opening a branch of his business in Cardiff, is engaged in estimating the chances of success and the possibilities of failure. His cogitations centre in masses of figures, then pass to considerations of staff; he weighs the pros and cons of the new shop's position and its relation to the customers he has in view. The whole scheme involves many difficult calculations, so complicated, indeed, that no mathematician could symbolise the mental processes involved and no logician could syllogise them. Very well; how, then, does he come to a decision to act or not to act? By an estimate of probabilities, and that estimate is carried out by the illative sense. Newman illustrated his doctrine from Shakespearean criticism, but his exposition of method is of universal application, and that method is one of "the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous, to be 1 An Agnostic's Apology, p. 205.

convertible into syllogisms." 1 But does the illative sense exist, or is it a figment of Newman's imagination? There is no doubt at all of its existence, simply because most people draw inferences without conscious logical effort: indeed it is one of the commonest forms of mental activity, employing the whole of our mental functions in a unified manner. That is really why we call attention to it at this stage of our inquiry. Sir Leslie Stephen, one of Newman's severest but fairest critics, admitted that the illative sense undoubtedly corresponds to a real faculty or combination of faculties.” 2 The language of this admission is not as exact as we should have liked it to be the use of the word faculty, for instance-but we will take it as a confession that there may be more than one mental function at work during illation.

VII

The illative sense is strictly individual in its action. In Cardinal Newman's case it landed him in Roman Catholicism; in Professor F. W. Newman's case it resulted in a form of theism. Why? Because our illations depend on the nature of our temperament, our education, our environment, and our experience, but chiefly on temperament-that bodily setting which determines the tendencies of the mind and is partly responsible for the proportions of Thought, Feeling, and Will in our mental constitution. James Mill tried to make his son John a duplicate of himself, but John's proportion of Feeling was in excess of his father's, and he therefore illated differently-i.e. more emotionally. Böhme's illative sense, plus his experience, resulted in a system of theosophy; Haeckel, with a narrow feeling-development, and an excess in the other directions, draws inferences of a very different kind. Thus we see the strange spectacle of men with great powers of intellect accepting superstitions as if they were truth - some superstitions being religious and others scientific; we see men of equal ability diametrically opposed 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 281.

2

An Agnostic's Apology, p. 209.

in party politics; we see Tyndall scorning spiritualism and Crookes and Wallace believing in the reality of its phenomena; we see men of bright intelligence accepting Mrs Eddy's statement that disease is error, while other men, just as bright, smile incredulously; realists fight with idealists, Romanists with Protestants; art critics of some competence defend the new movements, whilst other critics, also competent, condemn them utterly. There must be some reason why highly developed and trained minds cannot agree on important issues; and we find it mostly in the unified action of our whole consciousness. It is not logic that decides; otherwise professors of logic would not disagree so passionately on free trade and tariff reform; our decisions respecting truth come from a blend of instinct, feeling, thought, and experience operating by means of the illative sense.

1

VIII

A further reflection is this: that the endeavour to find the nature of genius in a modification or expansion of Thought, Feeling, or Will is bound to be unsatisfactory, simply because the mind is a unity. There are times, no doubt, when one function will be preponderant, but at no time does either one of the three functions entirely occupy the field of consciousness. Schopenhauer said that "if the normal man consists of two-thirds Will, and one-third Intellect, the genius, on the contrary, has two-thirds Intellect and one-third Will." Well, test this by an estimate of Napoleon and the inaccuracy is at once evident. He was a man of immense motive-power, and his Will was certainly in advance of his Intellect. Schopenhauer leaves no room for Feeling and all the finer issues of sensibility on which so much depends; and his attempt to measure ability arithmetically breaks down at once when we consider a genius outside the group of those whom he had in mind. But we have to admit that we often think in a manner that is unbalanced and unsound, because we give too much play to Feeling, to Thought, or to blind Impulse. Speaking of 1 The World as Will and Representation, vol. iii., p. 140.

Robert Hugh Benson's conversion from Anglicanism to Romanism, Mr R. J. Campbell says: "Unless I am utterly mistaken, the intellect played almost no part in the tremendous decision which led him to submit to Rome."1 This appears to be a reasonable judgment, but, after all, the mind that came to the conclusion referred to was Mgr Benson's not Mr Campbell's; and we have no right to say that the author of The Dawn of All changed his creed on account of "convictions" that represented, say, five-eighths Feeling, two-eighths Will, and only one-eighth Intellect. There can be no doubt whatever that with a mind of such sincerity the whole consciousness, governed by temperament, was involved in the decision, not in equal ratio of function, probably, but in the ratio of the man as Nature had made him. These guesses at mental proportional representation have academic, even practical, interest to some extent. Croce asks: "Was not the battle of Austerlitz also a work of thought, and the Divine Comedy also a work of Will?" We can only reply in the affirmative, and reflect on the actuating motives of Germany in 1914 when the desire (feeling) of conquest, the carefully constructed (thought) plan of campaign, and the vigour of its prosecution (will) show the whole Teutonic soul at work. A French writer who has investigated the relationship between thought and action came to the conclusion that penser: agir are one form of energy-i.e. a unity.3

But what of an extraordinary gift in music, or memorypower? Does not this prove that even Nature itself indulges in irregularity by producing men with one power in excelsis and the others below the average level? That is not the point. We are discussing the interworking of the three functions of mind whatever they are in their natural proportions; and whilst the predominance of a special gift will control the direction of mental activity, it will not, and cannot, act in entire separation from the other functions; it merely takes the lead.

1 The Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. By C. C. Martindale, S.J.

Philosophy of the Practical, p. 7.

Le Reve et l'Action, p. 359.

IX

By range we mean, first, the possible reach of consciousness; its ability to encompass and to give approximate values to all kinds of phenomena. Next, we mean all that is implied in the activity of the subconsciousness, the range of which is as yet beyond our ken.

In reference to the first, we begin by saying that in its more elementary form it shows itself in the somewhat mechanical increase of knowledge-the storage of facts in the mind. A man who knows astronomy up to its advanced stages has a wider area of consciousness than the man who does not. We may add a knowledge of Greek to a knowledge of Hebrew, or supplement a study of language by a course in formal logic. But in its deeper meaning the word range, as used here, connotes a great deal more than additions to our store of information; it means a perception of unities amid diversities, a more or less emotional apprehension of wholes as distinct from parts. So instead of a sum in addition, adding fact to fact, Greek paradigms to Hebrew tenses, or the psychological powers of words to the forms of the syllogism, we realise their larger relationships to history and to human life. We become aware of the significance of things small and great.

Take an illustration. What are tears? The visible expression of strong inward emotion. Does that hasty definition tell us all about them? Yes; for the practical purposes of sympathy, presuming, for the moment, that the tears mean grief and not laughter. But ask the physiologist to answer the question, and he will discourse learnedly on the lachrymal glands and ducts showing how our tears are always flowing, and how grief, or laughter, diverts them from their natural channel through the two canaliculi to the nose. Ask the analyst: What are tears? and he will write down the formula 1 thus:

NaCl-H2O

་

1 Baltazar, one of Balzac's characters, says: Ah! tears; I have analysed them; they contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin, and water." Perhaps Balzac did not seek scientific accuracy.