On Human Certitude, and the Universality of Science

Not to the fount of Hippocrene,
Nor groves of laurel ever green,
Nor where the sportive graces stray
With flowers is strown the Muse's way.
Lorenzo, no, I more rejoice
At Reason's bold, and manly, voice
Than at the softest, sprightliest air,
Mirth ever sung to lighten care;
Truth's sober tale more pleas'd to hear
Than all that tickle Fancy's ear;
Tho such, to babbling echo sweet,
Aloud the public voice repeat.
Her numbers, then, let Truth excuse,
Tho rudely sing th' unpolish'd muse;
Careless of ornament, and proud
To differ from the sing-song crowd,
So boastful of the poor pretence
To swell with sound the starveling sense.
Truth hopes not for poetic praise:
To fiction sacred are the bays.
Dost thou demand, ingenuous youth,
What is, and who doth teach, the truth?
I answer—Wouldst thou learn of me,
'Tis that wherein mankind agree:
At least no safer truths we know
Than what the world will grant us so.

The truth, indeed, as sages tell,
Of yore lay buried in a well,
So deep, that hid, for want of light,
From ev'ry peering mortal's sight,
The more suspicious than the rest
Conceiv'd its being was a jest;
And, as no soul could find it out,
That fact itself was all a doubt.
Philosophizing train of thought!
Since by improving moderns caught;
Who tell us nature trick'd mankind,
When giving eyes she left us blind;
Heaven making fools, and thinking fit
To play upon their want of wit.

But sure we boldly may receive
As truth what all mankind believe:
Such universal faith a guide
In skepticism itself implied.
Yet sayst thou, "till the world unite
"To fix on some one rule of right,
"Enquiry still is at a pause;
"Still vague investigation's laws."

Lorenzo, all, with you and me,
In points demonstrable agree;
Conviction, right or wrong, the test
Of truth in ev'ry human breast;
For what's demonstratively so,
Believers ev'n profess to know.
On Science hence our search must rest;
An universal rule confess'd.

Laid then those subtilties aside
Where human certitude's denied,
Inquiry safely may proceed
To form its scientific creed.
Let Prior's Solomon profess
His science all uncertain guess,
Th' egregious sophist but affirms
A contradiction, even in terms:
For who his ign'rance can suppose
Of what he's conscious that he knows?

Dost thou, my pupil, still delay?
In search of truth afraid to stray,
If plac'd belief in points alone
That are demonstratively known;
These much too few and too confin'd
To serve the purpose of mankind?

Lorenzo, see to common-sense
How just, how gen'ral the pretence.
To nation, climate, age or sect,
Unlimited without respect:
Hence, howsoever wide we stray,
When church, or system, lead the way
All, of necessity, agree
In what alike, they hear and see.
For not a son of Adam's race
Innate conviction can efface.
The highland loon, the lowland lout,
Wild Irish fierce, and Cambrian stout,
The boor that Rhynland's polder drains,
Tho reason slumber in his brains,
All the same premises in view,
The same conclusions ever drew.

For know that like our mother earth
Its human offspring, at its birth.
Where fertile clay and barren sand
Compose the variegated land,
Th' unequal strata of the soil
Unequally demand our toil:
The rich that toil with gain repay;
Thrown on the poor our pains away.
In man's uncultivated mind
So varied is the soil, in kind.
The flow'rs of science, fresh and fair,
On some expand, without our care;
On others scarce, by culture, grow
The buds, that wither as they blow
Yet here essentially allied,
Howev'r else diversified.
The fertile marl, the steril sand
Alike the seed or plant, demand:
Denied alike spontaneous grain
To Bergen's rocks and Baiae's plain.
So, not a truth innate our own,
The seeds of knowledge must be sown
Experience slow must swell the root,
And tend the fibres as they shoot;
Or speedier aid instruction grant,
And slips of foreign growth implant.

The mental and material claim
Here too essentially the same:
Grow seed or plant where'er it will
In kind 'tis propagated still.
No soil nor climate can produce
From tares the barley's potent juice:
To thorns no culture can assign
The purple honours of the vine.
Thus when, by simple nature's aid,
Put forth sensation's tender blade,
If, to perfection hearer brought,
It bloom and ripen into thought,
Wherever situate the root,
The same its intellectual fruit.
Its taste, its form; perhaps, we blame,
But still its genus is the same:
In this no poverty of soil,
No dulness ever mock'd our toil.

If vainly, then, in letter'd pride;
The scholar deep is dignified;
So false, so empty the pretence
Of wits to more than common-sense.
If plain to th' idiot as to you
Th' immediate object of his view,
While ev'n the blockhead truly knows
Far as his little science goes,
Consistent, sure's our confidence,
In search of truth, on common-sense:
That gen'ral index to mankind,
To taste and genius unconfin'd,
Pointing in all one common way,
By dullness shorten'd but its ray,
Of wit and knowledge all the end
In length that radius to extend;
In stubborn age, or pliant youth,
Its bearing in the line of truth;
A needle constant to the pole,
Whence beams true faith upon the soul.

Dost thou object "if common-sense
"So plausible an evidence,
"And all mankind of this possess'd,
"That any differ from the rest?"
Know thou, when honest minds dissent,
Misunderstood's their argument:
Diff'rent the premises appear,
Else were the fix'd deduction clear.
Hence half our numerous quarrels rise;
We see not with each others eyes:
So that precisely all alike
Nor terms, nor things conception strike.
For every individual draws
His plan by mere perspective laws;
Fix'd to one station, time and place,
In pow'r no full survey to trace,
The false mistaking oft for true,
Observ'd at diff'rent points of view.
So, when to cheat the partial sight,
And prove in mirth that black is white,
With lights dispos'd the shades between,
In folds is spread the artful scene,
Oppos'd, the colours strike the eye,
And he affirms what you deny.
Here spotless all appears and fair;
Perceiv'd a total blackness there.
The demonstration of his sight
Who doubts? who knows not black from white?
Thus evidence supports dispute;
Nor one the other can refute.
And yet is common-sense to blame?
The premises were not the same.
Were these alike, tho say you err,
Both would infallibly concur:
For take each others point of sight,
And set, at once, the matter right.

Conceive not, then, because we find
One source of truth in ev'ry mind,
We e'er shall individuals see,
At ev'ry time and place, agree.
As soon, amidst yon grove of trees,
While plays a constant eastern breeze,
We ev'ry single spray shall find
In one direction, west, reclin'd.
For, tho to truth alike our claim,
Our taste nor sentiment's the same.
For dusky green the jaundic'd eye
Mistakes the clear-blue summer sky;
The distant scene, however bright,
Is darkness to the short-of-sight;
To loaded ears as whispers still
The clack and thunder of the mill.
Thus lost, as colours on the blind,
On dulness qualities refin'd;
Than musick to the deaf no more,
To ignorance th' abstracted lore.
Hence oft objection calls us out,
To satisfy the blockhead's doubt;
Who not one proof, whereon depends
His sought solution, comprehends:
The tritest arguments, of yore,
In vain repeated o'er and o'er,
Proving how fruitless were the toil,
The jarring world to reconcile.
And yet, as but from time and place
Our several modes of thought we trace,
Alas! how blindly do we run
Each others heresy to shun;
Our own our glory and our pride,
While curses all the rest betide:
By pious children doom'd their [...]ire,
By fires their children to hell-fire;
Heirs to salvation's brighter sphere
So strangely damn'd, and damning here!
Thus Calvin ignorantly raves
At souls which, therefore, Luther saves;
To both denied Lord Peter's keys;
Who shuts out hereticks like these.
And yet ev'n those, who boast to feel
Their bosoms burn with christian zeal;
Who, dooming dervizes to hell,
With pride uncharitable swell,
In Naz'reth bred, or Bethle'm born,
Had laugh'd our Saviour's birth to scorn;
Mere Turks, denounc'd for you and me.
The bitter fruit of Zacon's tree
To eat with fiends below; the doom
Of Anti-Mahomet and Rome!
Yet, blind as Sampson, when despair
Had sunk his life below his care,
The numbers wanton Gaza lost
Destroy'd but at his proper cost,
Half-witted Zeal, of all the test,
Itself condemns among the rest:
For, if requir'd by gracious heaven
Our service but as knowledge given,
Should I in pope or mufti, trust;
For proving to their tenets just,
Your rule to censure me, or mine,
Holds the like condemnation thine.
Yet still more wicked, weak and blind
This reprobating zeal we find;
When, void of truth, absurd and vain
The tenets zealots thus maintain.
For sure ridiculous and odd
That zeal precipitate for God,
So short of knowledge, that, indeed,
It understands not ev'n its creed!

For know; whate'er the world pretend,
But few believe what they defend.
In modes of faith tho falsehood taught,
Nonsense is equally their fault:
Thousands by forms of speech deceiv'd
Ne'er yet by mortal man believ'd;
Creeds penn'd, as said, at heaven's command,
In terms no soul can understand;
Or such, tho thunder'd from on high,
That plainly give themselves the lie.
But sure, if words no sense convey,
Faith in their utt'rance dies away;
Nor can a single son of Eve
Apparent falsehood e'er believe.
Belief no vague declaimer's rant,
No bigot's creed, no sophist's cant;
'Tis not the scripture text to quote;
To get our catechism by rote;
O'er homilies to spend the day;
At midnight, half asleep, to pray;
To chatter matins at the dawn
Or gabble with the man of lawn:
True faith, that consciousness of soul,
That times nor accidents control;
Save those adapted and combin'd
To root conviction from the mind.
For know that neither threat nor blows
Sincere belief can e'er impose.
The monk's hot zeal, the jesuit's skill
Lead not conviction as they will.
Go, turn inquisitor and burn
The hereticks, all round, in turn;
The Turk, refusing to resign
His sensual paradise for thine;
The Indian, that in death pretends
To visit but his former friends;
Unless his faith what you may tell,
Of joys in heaven and pains in hell.
Not one of all the suffering tribe
Thy sentiments per-force imbibe.
Howe'er induc'd by hope or fear,
The mind is no free agent here:
To change their faith beyond the power
Of martyrs at their dying hour.
How idly, then, enthusiasts rave
Of systems, that will damn or save;
Or think true proselytes to gain
By torture, gallows, whip or chain;
Since, ever constant to its cause,
True faith depends on nature?s laws;
By nonsense nor caprice misled,
The honest heart and sober head!
How idly wild fanaticks preach,
While ignorant of what they teach;
The spirit ne'er affects the mind,
Unless with th' understanding join'd;
Nor hath the word, if void of sense,
To gospel pow'r the least pretence.
Some certain meaning, hence, and plain
A saving faith must needs contain:
If fix'd its object, sure, no less
The sense of terms our creed express:
A parrot, else, if none deceive her,
A sound and orthodox believer;
Convinc'd as much as ever yet
The Athanasian paroquet.
Let not fanaticism deceive:
None can a mystery believe.
Tho plung'd by zeal in error deep,
While common-sense lies fast asleep,
Their faith rash bigots strangely boast;
The strongest his who's cheated most;
Who least for truth presumes to search;
But headlong runs into the church.
For, laid thy hand upon thy heart,
The formule of thy creed impart;
Dost thou its substance comprehend?
Lo! all its mystery's at an end.
In spite of their misguiding Zeal,
Here to their hearts let all appeal:
Enough if just be their pretence
To honesty and common-sense:
Here rests that umpire of mankind,
Conscience, the God within the mind.

At eastern temples, as of yore,
Without the threshold of the door,
In reverence, did the zealot use
To doff, and leave, his dirty shoes:
Like him, the modern faithful, taught
That reason is a thing of naught,
Lest they should soil the church with doubt,
Their understandings leave without.
For ask who thus in mystery trust,
If Euclid's demonstration's just;
If truth the geometric art,
Or subtile algebra, impart.
Unknowing what precisely meant,
They honestly refuse assent;
Confess they first must comprehend,
Before they credit or contend.
O self condemn'd! O dead to shame!
Have these a conscience void of blame;
Who take no worldly points on trust,
But scruple till they know them just;
Yet their supreme concerns will rest
On tenets half the world contest
Conviction openly defy,
And with their tongues their hearts belie?
These the true faithful shall we call?
These have, alas, no faith at all.
For, howsoe'er with art they strive
To keep absurdity alive,
Cloath'd in equivocal disguise,
Or garb of truth, their specious lies,
Still common-sense, unrooted out,
Will find a flaw to fix a doubt:
And where one doubt is left behind
No firm belief informs the mind.

Yet is there whose officious zeal
Pretends a consciousness to feel,
A fix'd internal evidence
Of axioms, hid from common-sense;
A stronger testimony given,
By inspiration breath'd from heaven?
Lorenzo, neither you, nor I,
What God reveals can e'er deny.
But here how needful to be wise
To know where revelation lies.

Art them thyself ihspir'd by Heav'n?
Tell me what certain proof is given.
Dost thou intuitively view
What reason tells thee must be true?
No revelation here requir'd,
How proves such truth that thou'rt ihspir'd?
For why inspir'd, if but to tell
What reason might have told as well?
As truth beholds thy mental eye
What seems to all the world a lie;
Thy proof imagination strong?
Here also may'st thou still be wrong.
If heaven hath ever fir'd conceit,
Brandy has also done the feat.
Nay oft th' infatuate-of-brain,
Of heav'n's presum'd injunctions vain,
Have madly broke its dread commands,
And dipt in blood their murd'ring hands.
If God or devil then inspire,
Of reason still we must inquire:
And reason doubtless would reply,
"Heaven never yet reveal'd a lie."
On others gifts confiding more,
Dost give thine own pretensions o'er?
Dost from th' inspir'd thy faith receive,
And pin it on thy neighbour's sleeve?
Reason or heaven must tell thee too,
If such be more inspir'd than you.
"Where then the proof?" I frankly own,
To me, yet uninspir'd, unknown:
Such guides, to me, by madness fir'd,
As madmen, with the Turks, inspir'd.

In spite of Middleton and Hume,
Dost thou on miracles presume?
To revelation these thy guide;
Thy faith by wonders verified.
Go thou, and, easy of belief,
My comrade ask if I'm a thief.
If inspiration's false and true,
Sure miracles suspicious too;
And, hence, thy conduct most absurd,
To take for one the other's word.
Our souls how long to damn and save,
Hath subtile priestcraft play'd the knave!
Its pupils train'd, from early youth,
T' equivocate and hide the truth;
To practise the deception nice,
Of tricking hand, or quaint device;
To cheat the palate, nose and eye,
And gild that dirty pill, a lie!
Yet dost thou miracles maintain?
Be here thy definition plain:
The muse disdaining to reply
To such as shock the naked eye.
Events as miracles dost own,
Whose cause immediate is unknown?
Or is thy faith establish'd more
On actions ne'er perform'd before?
Alas, my much-believing friend,
The times of yore might these defend;
When heretic free-thinkers rose,
That dar'd the holy church oppose;
For infidelity renown'd,
Asserting that the globe was round;
Vile heresy! whence, doom'd to hell,
Upsal's good bishop martyr fell:
Wretches, so impious as to hold,
The earth about its axis roll'd,
And, as the years their courses run,
Still took its journeys round the sun;
Vile heresy! for which, 'tis said,
Old Galileo too had bled,
Had not the sage, more loth to die,
Recanting, damn'd it for a lie.
In days of ignorance like these,
When legends had the power to please;
While love of wonder salv'd deceit,
And gudgeons swallow'd whole the cheat;
How little strange that monks and fryars
Should prove miraculously liars;
Or converts to divines so sad
Turn out miraculously mad!
But now, a century worn away,
Time working wonders ev'ry day,
The vast discov'ries years have made
Have spoilt the wonder-monger's trader.

Wouldst thou, since facts so strange of yore
Are now miraculous no more,
Thy genuine miracles define
As real acts of power divine,
Th' effects of some immediate cause,
In fact transgressing nature's laws?
How!—did th' omnipotent, on high,
Let those, his laws, at random fly:
Or was his providence so blind
To what omnisciency design'd,
That still his sov'reign will attends
To strike his foes or skreen his friends;
That pow'r beyond th' Almighty's art
To nature's system to impart;
Needful heaven's arbitrary fire
To blast a fig-tree or a liar?
Lorenzo, be not thou so vain,
To think thus brittle nature's chain;
From which whatever link we strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, broke alike,
Connecting systems all destroy'd,
Unballanc'd worlds would strow the void,
To atoms burst! restor'd again
Old Chaos to his ancient reign,
Unless, in time, the God attend
The works of his own hand to mend.
Alas, how blasphemous to say
That heaven can save no other way;
Or that, for trifles or in joke,
Creation's sacred order's broke.
For do we not, in fact, confess,
If God may nature's laws transgress,
The wise creator wanted skill
His vast intentions to fulfil,
Or that th' intention, tho his own,
Was in th' extent to him unknown?
Or, still more impiously, imply
That heaven can give itself the lie?
Say, then, that miracles there be;
They're but miraculous to thee:
So many links conceal'd remain,
Which form the complicated chain,
True causes and effects between,
In nature's providential scene.
What tho without an obvious cause
We see inverted custom's laws,
Must we immediately infer
That nature from itself can err?
Commanded by the word divine,
Say water chang'd itself to wine;
Graves open'd wide their pond'rous jaws;
A breath the sole apparent cause.
Ah, who shall boast, that God revere,
Creation's laws were broken here?
Might not ten thousand springs unite,
Causes too fine for mortal sight,
Such varied wonders to produce;
To providential ends of use:
Form'd when by heaven, its power display'd,
The earth's foundation first was laid:
Or when that logos was design'd
By miracles to save mankind.

Think not, Lorenzo, nature strays
Whene'er the world is in amaze.
Extend thy view from pole to pole:
See one great miracle the whole;
Where all events their cause succeed,
As once the great, first-cause decreed;
Where order still from order flows,
And never interruption knows;
Capricious but to mortal sense
The harmony of providence.

How strangely, therefore, bigots err
Who wonders to plain facts prefer;
With list'ning ear, who love to range,
And greedy eye, for all that's strange;
Rejecting their creator's plan,
The voice of God for that of man!

Besides, thy miracles confin'd
To former ages of mankind,
Nature in these our latter days
Unmov'd by prayer, and deaf to praise,
Ne'er turning back, nor led aside,
To help our wants, or sooth our pride;
But keeping, pack-horse like, its track,
Bearing the world upon its back:
Say such to revelation guide;
For these on hear-say we confide:
In want of proof, on trust must take
For honest jew or gentile's sake;
Since, howsoe'er the truth's conceal'd,
None trust in miracles reveal'd;
Unless learn'd Jortin's scheme may pass
Of dreaming Balaam's talking ass.
Dost thou, secure, historians trust?
How know we if their tale be just?
From num'rous causes prone to err,
Dubious, alas, what these aver.
What from deception e'er can save
The man whose trust is in a knave?
To falsehood he how oft a tool
Whose confidence is in a fool!
And should, themselves, the honest speak;
The honest may be blind or weak;
Be led a visionary dance,
Like Peter, in prophetic trance;
Or Paul, that sometimes hardly knew
If what he said was false or true;
Inconscious, his own word to take,
If fast asleep or wide awake.
My friend, no wonder, then, at all,
Adventures strange should such befal;
Or that, by wild opinions, they
From truth are blindly led astray,
Who, like old wives in winter nights,
Hear, see, and feel, and chat with sprights.
Their prudent caution, therefore, just,
Who waking dreamers seldom trust;
To whom light visions fact may seem,
And fact itself an idle dream.

In awful reverence, yet, we own
The power and will of God unknown;
Confin'd not to the narrow bound
Of reason's most extensive round;
Active a thousand ways beside;
Beyond, unknown how far and wide.
From grey experience, hence, conceal'd
The gifts of grace to babes reveal'd;
From science hid that sacred fire
Heaven's chosen servants doth inspire;
Who, highly favour'd from above,
Behold descend th' all-quickening dove,
Or cloven tongue; the spiritual boast
Of brethren in the Holy Ghost.
Lorenzo, then let you, nor I,
Unless we can disprove, deny.
And yet, in search of truths unknown,
Experience be thy guide alone;
Nay held perception in suspense
Till reason may confirm the sense:
By science only unconfin'd
When God, himself, informs the mind.