The title which I’ve ascribed to this post does not indicate a return to the star-gazing that was the subject of one of my posts last week. Perish the thought! My father (God rest his soul) would never forgive me if I succumbed to the usage of the American name for the constellation, known as ursa major, or the great bear, or, if we prefer the vernacular, the plough. No, I am referring to myself as the big dipper, in the sense that I have picked up the habit recently of wandering through my own library and dipping into volumes plucked from the shelves at random. This seems lazier than picking a book from the shelf in order to read it with the attention it deserves. It seems, therefore, that I have picked up a bad habit. I console myself that, reprehensible as it may be, my new habit is better than watching television, the latter of which is no longer possible in the Pearce household due to our terminating its intrusion into our family life. In any event, I plucked Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua from the shelf and was once again struck by the brilliance of Newman’s mind and prose. I was also struck by this succinct statement of the central thesis of his seminal philosophical work, The Grammar of Assent:

My argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we are able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probablities, and that, both according to the constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker; that certitude was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of propositions; that probablities which did not reach to logical certitude, might suffice for a mental certitude; that the certitude thus brought about might equal in measure and strength the certitude which was created by the strictest scientific demonstration; and that to possess such certitude might in given cases and to given individuals be a plain duty, though not to others in other circumstances …