OF POSITIVE FAITH. Corpus enim per se communis dedicat esse LUCRETIUS. De Natura Rerum. Lib. 1, v. 123-126. SECTION I. Ir may not appear unworthy of notice to remark, as a prelude to our observations respecting Belief and Faith, that the well-known Roman poet Lucretius, who was born about a century before the Christian era, appeals forcibly in his celebrated poem on the "Nature of Things," to the self-evidence of common sense, for the positive existence of body, as the only sure basis of Faith. The thought embodied in the elegant verses of the Roman philosopher, although a repetition, is not to be considered as a mere echo of the tenets held in the Grecian, or in the more ancient schools of Philosophy. An appeal to principles, self-evident and consequently unsusceptible of demonstration, has ever been the issue of the most free and spontaneous attempts of intelligence to fathom the depths of the mysteries of Thought. The fallacy of considering instinct, or imVOL. I.-1 pulsive intuition alone as the criterion, whilst the object required was the universality of the intuition, we conceive to be the main cause of the discrepancy of many of these investigations. At all events, as early as 500 years B. C., we find the founder of the Eleatic school of Philosophy, Xenophanes, admitting, according to Sextus Empiricus, (Pyrrh. hyp. 1, § 225,) that man possesses a peculiar faculty in Reason to know what is probable, but that it has not been given to man to attain to certitude. It was Aristotle who first insisted upon the universality of a belief as a sure test of its validity in his well-known axiom, "What appears to all, that we affirm to be, and he who rejects this belief will assuredly advance nothing better worthy of credit," (Eth. Nic. lx. c. 2.) 2.) But Aristotle rightly considers such universality as an argument à posteriori, as a rational inference, acquired by experience. "The character of universality can only be obtained," remarks Aristotle, (Analyt. post. l. i. c. xiii.,) "by proceeding from the particular to the general, and in this consists the pre-eminence of the à posteriori method. . . But how far is such knowledge to be considered certain? By means of what faculty do we apprehend those principles which, although themselves unsusceptible of demonstration, are really the basis of all demonstration; for all animals possess an innate capacity of judging by means of their senses? It is when memory, retaining the various individual perceptions, the intellect forms more general inferences, and the simple unity or one principle deduced then becomes a species or kind. And it is from this gathering together of simple perceptions, and their being retained by memory, that the intellect compares and acquires experience. Thus, by means of the human intellect are derived from the one or the single object, the general or the universal, art and science, or the principles thereof. This faculty is primitive, and proceeds from the nature of the soul. We therefore repeat it: the general proceeds from the particular; the general notion is formed in the soul; it is to the understanding that is given in charge to draw it from the mere sensible perception," (Analyt. post. ibid. ch. xv.) It would be foreign to our purpose to enter into further details in regard to this "universal," which thus acquired by the means of the Intellect from the "particular" or the contingent, becomes at once an "Absolute and Necessary." But it is well, we believe, to point out at once the fallacy of considering the term of "common sense as a mere sensible notion or of senses alone: the epithet "common" is in reality the "universal," and that character of generality is the result of rational inference, rising, in the words of Aristotle, "from the particular to the general." 'Lucretius therefore in saying, that we are taught by common sense the real existence of body, that without it, primary faith finds no confirmation, for we then possess nothing to refer to, when attempting to unravel the mysteries of nature, points out most clearly the mutual support which sense and intellect afford to each other, and reproduces one of Aristotle's most elementary axioms, "that what is by nature necessarily believed to be, truly is." The same argument is most forcibly insisted on by Tully; for we avoid the tempting but bottomless pit of Grecian philosophy, and merely insist upon the fact, that before the Christian era and amongst pagan philosophers "belief" and "faith" were considered as positive and inherent qualities of thought. We, however, most earnestly protest, at the same time, against the supposition that our insisting upon the positive value of belief and faith, as having been admitted to be human feelings long before their adoption as mere religious terms, has been introduced, in order to bestow on these instincts an undue weight. Faith is most assuredly coeval with man, but that faith is rational faith. We protest against any ambiguity being here intended, in our pointing out the positive mental or intellectual value of rational faith. And that ambiguity exists, when, after showing that reason cannot be exercised without faith, (as it really is the case in all inference,) that continual dependence on Faith, (positive or rational,) is transferred to a divine object, and thereby held to be of a different nature. The feeling is always the same, but the object being different, it is no longer rational faith but divine faith. Custom has rendered it usual, indeed, to express our belief in the Almighty and in Christ, by the term Faith; but when we say, as we do here, that faith was pointed out as a primary instinctive feeling, long before the Christian era, we are speaking of faith in Reason, or in the inferences of Reason, and not of faith in God. Nor must our avoiding to enter into any of the endless discussions of the Grecian schools of philosophy be construed into any feeling of aversion for those great minds which shine with a lustre, the more brilliant from the deep gloom that surrounds them. Grecian philosophy attempted in vain to disentangle the human mind from the meshes of superstition and mythology; but the fruitless endeavors of the most bright and mighty geniuses that the human race ever produced, may serve to point out the utter uselessness of the unaided efforts of human intelligence. They merely cast down one idol in order to make room for another; and so it ever will be when rational faith attempts to raise a divinity of its own creation. The point we insist upon with respect to Grecian philosophy, is the due honor paid to Reason in that fair clime in early ages. We pass over |