Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/275

] the consciousness of a certain act called drinking; the next following moment we have the further consciousness of relief from thirst. The succession of the three steps is a fact or experience; but we cannot believe it, unless we believe in the recent fact given in memory, as well as the present, given in consciousness." Hence the belief in memory is a primary assumption.

But what is meant when it is called an assumption? I mean that what I believe because of memory I do not see to be true, that I can give no reasons for such beliefs which would at all satisfy a cold, critical intellect, an intellect indifferent to consequences, an intellect that believes only in so far as it sees grounds for certainty or for probability. Such an intellect would describe its various acts of memory as blind, unreasoned impulses to believe that certain present states of consciousness were representative of past realities.

Many men will admit that the asseverations of memory are not certain, who will nevertheless contend that they have a high degree of probability, so high as, under certain circumstances, to be practically undistinguishable from absolute certainty. Leslie Stephen, for example, says: "I quite agree that when I have to consider any past or future event, or indeed to explain any present event, there is always a difference between my knowledge and absolute certainty. The conviction may approach such certainty as the curve approaches the asymptote, but there is always some room for doubt." My dissent from this doctrine is radical and fundamental. The reports of memory have just as much of absolute certainty as they have of absolute or theoretical probability. In the same sense in which they have no certainty, they have no probability; in the same sense in which they are probable, they are certain. From the point of view of the pure intellect, the intellect seeing, not trusting, they have neither certainty nor probability; from the point of view of the practical intellect, the intellect yielding to the native instincts and unreasoned tendencies of the mind, they are not only probable but certain. From the