Probabilities

Probabilities

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Title: Probabilities The Complete Prose Works of Tupper, Volume 6
(of 6)
Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper
Release Date: October 13, 2005 [EBook #16857]
Language: English
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PROBABILITIES ***

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PROBABILITIES;

AN AID TO FAITH.

BY
Martin Farquhar Tupper, A.M., F.R.S.
THE AUTHOR OF
"PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY."
"ALMOST THOU PERSUADEST ME TO BE A CHRISTIAN."

HARTFORD:
PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON.
1851.

PROBABILITIES.

AN AID TO FAITH.
The certainty of those things which most surely are believed among us,
is a matter quite distinct from their antecedent probability or
improbability. We know, and take for facts, that Cromwell and
Napoleon existed, and are persuaded that their characters and lives
were such as history reports them: but it is another thing, and one
eminently calculated to disturb any disbeliever of such history, if a man
were enabled to show, that, from the condition of social anarchy, there
was an antecedent likelihood for the use of military despots; that, from
the condition of a popular puritanism, or a popular infidelity, it was
previously to have been expected that such leaders should have the
several characteristics of a bigoted zeal for religion, or a craving
appetite for worldly glory; that, from the condition liable to revolutions,
it was probable to find such despots arising out of the middle class; and

that, from the condition of reaction incidental to all human violences,
there was a clear expectability that the power of such military monarchs
should not be continued to their natural heirs.
Such a line of argument, although in no measure required for the
corroboration of facts, might have considerable power to persuade _à
priori_ the man, who had not hitherto seen reason to credit such facts
from posterior evidence. It would have rolled away a great stone, which
to such a mind might otherwise have stood as a stumbling-block on the
very threshold of truth. It would have cleared off a heavy mist, which
might prevent him from discerning the real nature of the scene in which
he stood. It would have shown him that, what others know to be fact, is,
even to him who does not know it, become antecedently probable; and
that Reason is not only no enemy to Faith, but is ready and willing to
acknowledge its alliance.
Take a second illustration, by way of preliminary. A woodman,
cleaving an oak, finds an iron ball in its centre; he sees the fact, and of
course believes; some others believing on his testimony. But a certain
village-pundit, habitually sceptical of all marvels, is persuaded that the
wonder has been fabricated by our honest woodman; until the parson, a
good historian, coming round that way, proclaims it a most interesting
circumstance, because it was one naturally to have been expected; for
that, here was the spot where, two hundred years ago, a great battle had
been fought: and it was no improbability at all that a carbine-bullet
should have penetrated a sapling, nor that the tree should thereafter
have grown old with the iron at its heart. How unreasonable then would
appear the pundit's incredulity, if persisted in: how suddenly
enlightened the rational faith of the rustic: how seasonable would be
felt the useful learning of him, whose knowledge well applied can thus
unfetter truth from the bandages of ignorance.
Illustrations, if apt, are so well adapted to persuade towards a particular
line of argument, that, at the risk of diffuseness, and because minds
being various are variously touched, one by one thought and one by
another, I think fit to add yet more of a similar tendency: in the hope
that, by a natural induction, such instances may smoothe our way.

When an eminent living geologist was prosecuting his researches at
Kirkdale cave, Yorkshire, he had calculated so nicely on the antecedent
probabilities, that his commands to the labourers were substantially
these: "Take your mattocks, and pick up that stone flooring; then take
your basket, and fill it--with the bones of hyænas and other creatures
which you will find there." We may fancy the ridicule wherewith
ignorance might have greeted science: but lo, the triumph of
philosophy, when its mandate soon assumed a bodily shape in--bushels
of bones gnawed as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull
that looked like a hyæna's! Do we not see