Rick Kennedy
ISBN 1-58046-152-2
ISSN 1529-188X
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
The King of Siam and Assent 1
to the Existence of Ice
Bibliography 255
Index 269
LIST OF FIGURES
This book was begun in the early 1990s among supportive colleagues at
Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, Indiana, especially J. Barry, Bill
Rumsey, Stephanie Bower, John Findling, Frank Thackeray, and Andrew
Trout. The book was mostly written among supportive colleagues and
administrators at Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California,
especially Dwayne Little, Ron Kirkemo, Bill Wood, Diana Reynolds, Linda
Beail, Rebecca Flietstra, Gerard Reed, Sam Powell, John Wright, Maxine
Walker, and Patrick Allen. The libraries and librarians of both of these
small universities were, day in and day out, the places and people at the
foundation of this work. Indiana University financially supported research
in English, Scottish, and New English archives, although accumulating chil-
dren hampered any extended use of distant manuscript collections. The
project was not stalled, however, thanks to the extensive microfilm collec-
tion at the University of California, San Diego, and the wonderful rare book
and manuscript collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
The continuing encouragement for this book came from the regularly
teaching a methods class to history majors. To my students who have been
willing to read and discuss old books, I owe much of the thinking behind
this book and my professional happiness.
INTRODUCTION
“Let us raise our sail before the wind and fervently pray for a
good end.”
—Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, “Greeting to Trypho”
This book describes a lost tradition that can be called reasonableness. The
tradition began with Aristotle, was recommended to Western education by
Augustine, flourished in the schools of the Renaissance through the nine-
teenth century, then got lost in the academic and philosophic shuffles of
the twentieth century. The modern critical thinking movement has tried to
reclaim some of the tradition, but the central idea of reasonableness—the
part that makes it broader than mere reasoning—remains gutted. For
Aristotle and the subsequent tradition of Western education the difference
between reasoning and reasonableness was partly a matter distinguishing
three sources of information, the methods for handling those three sources,
and understanding the levels of certainty available in each. The three
sources can be generically called intuition, experience, and testimony. The
first two were available to an individual reasoner, but the third was social.
Testimony required the individual to trust information gained from other
people. The first two were the stuff of reasoning, but the third was the key
to a broader reasonableness.
One of the most provocative parables used to teach the subtleties of
this aspect of reasonableness was first offered by John Locke in An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689). Locke has a King of Siam,
while listening to a Dutch ambassador tell of the far north, suddenly recoil
at the report that water gets so cold in Holland that it turns hard enough
for an elephant to walk on it. Astonished, the king replies, “Hitherto I have
believed the strange Things you have told me, because I look upon you as
a sober fair man, but now I am sure you lye.”1 The story’s goal is to help
2 A History of Reasonableness
The heroes of this book are Aristotle and those who have followed him
in teaching a reasonableness that includes methodical thinking about testi-
mony. The book, therefore, is a history of the way reasonableness was tra-
ditionally distinguished from reasoning and the way it was especially
oriented toward practical matters such as jurisprudence, diplomacy, geogra-
phy, and history. This is not a philosophical study of the epistemology of
trust, belief, or assent; rather, it deals with the long tradition of how such
matters were taught in beginning classes on the art of thinking. In other
words, this book is about an Aristotelian tradition of rules and structures for
handling testimony and authority that eventually flourished in the seven-
teenth through nineteenth centuries. My strategy for finding these rules and
structures is to follow the history of textbooks teaching what has been var-
iously called dialectic, logic, rhetoric, and, most recently, critical thinking.
Aristotle founded a set of terms and described a structure useful for his
students who needed to understand the role of testimony in the art of think-
ing. In his lectures on topics and rhetoric he distinguished that which could
be accomplished alone from that which was social, using the terms techni-
cal and nontechnical. Later Cicero used intrinsic and extrinsic and
Quintilian, artificial and inartificial. These three sets of terms recur
throughout the history of education in rhetoric and dialectic. Although awk-
ward and never fully stabilized with clear definitions, the terms were used
to get at the difference between the pure art of thinking and the messier
aspects of the art. The pure art—the technical, intrinsic, or artificial—was
constructed out of what could be known by one’s self and could yield the
strongest knowledge. Mathematics using self-evident truths was a pure art
of thinking. Experience, such as learning that animals are not plants and hot
is not cold, or watching an event, was also the stuff used in a purely indi-
vidual art of thinking that yielded absolute certainty. Aristotle was most
interested in codifying the art of pure thinking, but he recognized that most
thinking was less pure and yielded weaker conclusions. There were non-
technical, extrinsic, or inartificial aspects of the art of thinking that required
acts of trusting information gained from other people through written and
oral testimony. The messiness of trusting, the messiness of what was some-
times taught as the duty, responsibility, and submission required in the full-
ness of the art of thinking, seems to have been behind the designations
nontechnical, extrinsic, and inartificial. The Aristotelian tradition distin-
guished individual reasoning from social reasonableness using these terms.
For two thousand years it was common to teach young people in general
education that there is individual reasoning and also a larger art of thinking
that was socially broader and fuller. There is reasoning, but there is also
being reasonable.
The place in the curriculum where the distinction between reasoning
and reasonableness was regularly taught was in topics. Aristotle developed
4 A History of Reasonableness
taught in the logic textbooks of England. But more often, authority is con-
sidered a weak foundation for knowing.
In following a two thousand-year textbook tradition we cannot be too
precise with the definition of words. For a thousand years there is prefer-
ence for the word authority, then there is a renewed preference for the
word testimony. Beginning in the seventeenth century there is a preference
for the word information in the place where previously had been used the
word knowledge. There are types of recent textbooks that prefer the term
evidence. Some textbooks have made elaborate distinctions demanding that
testimony applies to facts and authority applies to opinions. Most textbooks
have jumbled such matters together. Key words used throughout this tradi-
tion are assent, belief, faith, and submission, along with key phrases such
as compelled assent, honest error and assent without fault. Each of these
words and phrases can be dissected but, frankly, at the elementary text-
book level, I believe we murder to dissect such things. The books I study
are mostly written for what we would call teenagers.
The history of educating kids about testimony and authority, at its
deepest, is about the way societies have wanted communication and trust,
along with the risks inherent in such trust, to be taught as part of the art of
being a reasonable person. The ultimate hope is the creation of a reason-
able society. For leaders to act, for juries to decide, and for history to teach,
people have needed to trust testimony and authority. The flip side of trust
is risk. When does responsible thinking advise taking a risk on the truth of
information? If the information proves eventually to be false, what delineates
an “honest error” and when is there “no fault” in being wrong? The craft of
thinking takes much that is weakly known only by trust to construct some-
thing credible, a best explanation that is socially acceptable.
In the Hellenistic curriculum of arts that developed after Aristotle, top-
ics was placed at the beginning of a student’s education. Early Christian and
medieval education had much reason to support a liberal arts system that
taught the reasonableness of using testimony because the historical event
of the Resurrection was crucial in their apologetics. Augustine is second
only to Aristotle in importance to our story. Augustine clearly declared that
there were only two ways humans know anything—by reason and by
authority. Reason mined what could be known by using only one’s own
mind and senses. Authority was the source for everything else—even know-
ing who your parents are. Reasonableness demanded a healthy mixing of
reason and authority. Augustine also gave greater psychological depth to
assent and the Aristotelian critique against too radical a skepticism. He also
fully supported and enhanced the Roman development of distinguishing
divine from human testimony.
Elementary textbooks in the Middle Ages, although informed by
Augustine, followed two patterns of teaching testimony developed by
6 A History of Reasonableness
NOTES
1. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H.
Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), IV.xv.5–6.
2. See Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The ‘Indian Prince’ in Miracle Arguments of Hume and
His Predecessors and Early Critics,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 31 (1998): 175–230.
3. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.xv.6.
4. See Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam des Peres Jesuites (London: 1688);
Mr. Glanius, A New Voyage to the East-Indies (London: 1682); and Francois Caron
and Joost Schorten, A True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam,
trans. Roger Manley (London:1671).
8 A History of Reasonableness
5. Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Robert Latham and William
Matthews (Berkeley: University of California, 1972), VII, 251.
6. Isaac Walton reported this quote in his Life of Wotton, first published in
1651. See Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Henry Wotton.”
7. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 40 of
Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 324.
CHAPTER ONE
Greek and Roman dialectic and rhetoric taught that the art of being rea-
sonable and persuading people toward reasonable conclusions required an
understanding of the relationship between what we know from within our-
selves and what we learn from others. The former was our strongest knowl-
edge—a boy mathematician could wield such knowledge with great force.
The latter was weaker—wisdom and the experiences of long life were
required for its best use. The former was individual, the latter was corpo-
rate. The former was solipsistic, the latter, forensic. For Aristotle and the
classical liberal arts tradition that later developed, the disciplines of dialec-
tic and rhetoric were responsible for teaching this relationship. Aristotle
ingeniously created an intellectual device that served this and other
purposes. He called it topics.
Topics was a schematic structure to be used mentally for analyzing,
storing, and retrieving information. Organized in a triangular structure, the
student entered it at the narrow top and descended through the structure
adding to the breadth and depth base of the triangle as needed. Aristotelians
for two thousand years explored this malleable structure, and at times let
it dominate all of logic and epistemology, but more often hedged it in
beside other Aristotelian categorization strategies. Sometimes it was
described as a storehouse of all knowledge in which a student could be
surrounded library-like with every bit of information in spacial relation to
its related bits. Topics could help a person analyze and categorize knowl-
edge. It could also help an orator preparing a persuasive argument gather
diverse bits of evidence to support a larger point. At minimum it was
supposed to help a person’s memory. The fundamental organizing princi-
ple of topics was epistemological, with the kinds of knowledge separated
first according to their sources. At the entrance to the storehouse, the first
division of everything to the left or to the right was a distinction between
10 A History of Reasonableness
technical and nontechnical sources of knowledge. To the left was all the
knowledge that was worked up personally within oneself. To the right
was all the knowledge gained from outside sources, from authorities. The
whole system of topics was driven by distinguishing information gained
from within oneself and from various testifiers and authorities.
Diogenes Laertius wrote that Aristotle said that Zeno of Elea was the inven-
tor of dialectic. But Diogenes Laertius is a not-so-reputable authority who
lived about four hundred years after Aristotle.1 Sextus Empiricus, a more
reputable source, made the same report, but he also lived some three hun-
dred years after Aristotle.2 There does seem to be some evidence to sup-
port attribution to Zeno.3 On the other hand, at the end of the Organon,
Aristotle’s lectures on logic collected long after his death, Aristotle claims
that he, himself, developed dialectic without relying on any earlier work.4
Who invented dialectic is a dialectical problem. Dialectic is charged, in
part, with making rational judgments from and about information that has
no self-evidence and yields conclusions of varying degrees of certainty. In
the statements by Aristotle, Diogenes, and Sextus there is nothing that is
self-evident. All the information comes in the form of testimony from
authorities. Certainly Aristotle’s statement about Zeno, if he really said it,
seems trustworthy. But we also have his contradictory statement in the
Organon—which in turn is an uncharacteristic statement in a conclusion
with an editorial tone in a book put together long after his death. (Added
to the layers of testimony is my endnote number 3 that draws on the
authority of modern scholarly assessment).
The invention of dialectic is hard to pinpoint, tangled as the question
is in testimonies and authorities. However, the invention of topics, the core
of Aristotelian dialectic, can be traced to two of Aristotle’s dialectical works:
Topics and The Art of Rhetoric.5 In these books, Aristotle inaugurated the
tradition of teaching a role for testimony in the art of thinking. Quintilian,
an authority on the subject, wrote that Aristotle was the first to distinguish
a special epistemological place for testimony in dialectic, a place desig-
nated as nontechnical (atechnoi).6
ARISTOTELIAN OPTIMISM
Many people before Aristotle had thought about the use of testimony—
Herodotus usually rated the quality of the testimony with which he worked,
and the laws of ancient peoples often had some rules about witnesses—
but it was Aristotle who inaugurated the educational support-structure
that established a specific place for testimony in the craft of dialectical
reasoning. The system he called topics and the place was designated
nontechnical.21
Topics has a long but unstable history. William and Martha Kneale’s
standard work, The Development of Logic (1962), describes topics as a “log-
ical theory in solution.”22 Ann Moss calls Aristotle “slippery” on the subject.23
Apparently Aristotle thought of topics as “all of three things: the universally
applicable procedures of dialectical reasoning; the subject-specific heads
apparently more useful for rhetoric; and propositions which form the prem-
ises of different areas of philosophical and scientific enquiry.”24 Essentially
topics was supposed to be malleable and broadly useful. Aristotle offered
it up differently in two different books: Topics and Rhetoric. In the long run
the lack of focus may have made topics more useful than it would have
been otherwise. We shall see how topics is amoeba-like in dialectic, chang-
ing shape and endlessly versatile. At bottom is one of the options Aristotle
offered in his constant quest to divide things up and put them back together
again. In the history of reasonableness, many textbook writers found the
structure generally helpful. For those interested in testimony and authority,
topics was the only Aristotelian structure that took into account the differ-
ence between internal and external sources of knowledge.
Aristotle thought most about topics when offering help to orators.
Cicero would later popularize topics as the foundation of a broad idea of
the orator as gentleman thinker. Both he and Aristotle described topics in
prose. It was not until the medieval and Renaissance textbooks that authors
Classical Tradition of Testimony 15
In the long run, topics was kept alive primarily in textbooks teaching the
art of dialectic. Its downfall would come when the writers of elementary
textbooks no longer thought it useful. The most influential critic of topics
was a seventeenth-century textbook titled The Art of Thinking but most
often called The Port-Royal Logic (1662). This book criticized the system as
unnatural and pointed out that reasonable people don’t actually consult a
scheme of topics when thinking. Aristotle’s plot-map of information
management may look good on paper but could not be actually imposed
on human nature.
It was the relative naturalness and unnaturalness of thinking that
inspired Aristotle to formulate his rules and structures of formal and dialec-
tical logic. For Aristotle, the highest levels of reasoning were not natural
and required tools and skills that had to be codified and taught. Thinking
was a techne—a craft or art. When eventually his lectures on reasoning
were collected into one book, that book was called the Organon, what we
might call the “toolbox.” His lectures on topics were part of the Organon.
If reasoning were simply natural, there would be no craft, no art, no tech-
nology. One of the traditional tenets in the history of education is that while
low-level reasoning abilities are natural to humans, the duty of education
is to enhance reasoning with tools, skills, and an organization that makes
it into an art or craft.
Understanding the role of techne in reasoning is crucial for under-
standing why Aristotle called testimony and authority “nontechnical.” At the
forefront of the whole system of topics was the recognition that there was
a fundamental epistemological distinction between information worked up
by the reasoner out of the reasoner’s own resources, and information taken
in ready-made. Evidence gained ready-made from an outside source is
atechnoi (nontechnical), broadly meaning that which is not one of the
techniques. Individual reasoning is a technical skill, an art, or a craft that takes
self-evident truths, sense perceptions, or intuitions and combines such
materials into successive levels of knowledge. Testimony; however, is non-
technical. Testimony comes from outside the individual mind and carries its
own authority that has nothing to do with the mind or skill of the reasoner.
Some proofs “belong to the art and some do not,” Aristotle lectured; the
latter “are not contrived by us but pre-exist, such as witnesses.”28 In the
writings available to us, Aristotle does not go very far in explaining himself;
however, his distinction between what is individually contrived and what
is gained ready-made begins the tradition of teaching testimony in the art
of being reasonable.29
When applying his principles of rhetoric to the courtroom, Aristotle
taught that there were five types of nontechnical or ready-made proofs:
“law, witnesses, contracts, tortures, and oaths.”30 By “laws” he meant “writ-
ten laws” for which he had little respect. “A better man,” Aristotle believed,
Classical Tradition of Testimony 17
follows “the unwritten rather than the written laws,” and he used the exam-
ple of the woman Antigone as the better man for not following the written
laws of Creon.31 Aristotle’s discussion of the rhetorician’s responsibility to
written law sets the tone for the rhetorician’s responsibility to nontechnical
proofs in general. He believed there was little in such proofs per se to
recommend confidence. Contracts and oaths can be easily undermined and
the statements of people being judicially tortured are as likely to be false
as true.32
Nontechnical information might be weak stuff, but a courtroom could
not function without it. What is important for the tradition of topics is that
Aristotle recognized a distinct epistemic status for such information. He inau-
gurated a long tradition of discussing the weakness in relation to evidence
used and misused in courtroom situations.
The testimony of witnesses, however, deserved to inspire more confi-
dence. When dealing with witnesses, Aristotle rose above mere litigation to
discuss forensics in general. Forensics he defined as “about the past.”33 We
learn much from witnesses about the events that surround us and histori-
cally shape us. There are two kinds of witnesses, he wrote, ancient and
modern. Ancient witnesses are poets and famous men, even “proverbs,”
that attest to some truth. Aristotle used examples of the elegies of Solon
to show that Critias must obey his father and support the proverb that it
is “foolish to kill the father [but] spare the sons.”34 In these examples an
ancient witness offers more than an attestation to an event. The witness
testifies to historical lessons for right living.
Modern witnesses, on the other hand, are notables whose judgment is
useful in a controversy about some point. Aristotle taught that such wit-
nesses can only attest to an event, not “the character of the events, such as
whether they are just or unjust.”35 Of these modern witnesses, Aristotle
believed that the “remote are more convincing” and, he iterated, “most of
all the ancients; for they cannot be corrupted.”36 Geographical and chrono-
logical distance enhanced the authority of testimony.
Ready-made information was communicated information. Because it
was communicated it required special considerations about who was doing
the communicating and what the circumstances were. An oath was one
thing, an oath under torture another. A live witness was one thing, an
ancient witness another. Another type of communication deserving consid-
eration was divine communication. Aristotle gave the example of a proph-
esy from the Oracle of Delphi, which Themistocles interpreted to mean that
the “wooden walls” of Athens’s ships would hold against the Persians.
Aristotle offered no comment on the general credibility of oracles and
prophets; however, prophets, prophesy, oracles, augury, holy scripture,
and eventually church authority would play an important part in discus-
sions of testimony in textbooks from Aristotle up through the middle of the
18 A History of Reasonableness
STOIC ASSENT
The most intellectually exciting region of Athens was along the colonnaded
porches that surrounded the central marketplace, especially the stoa poikile
Classical Tradition of Testimony 19
or “painted porch.” Stoics gathered there to walk, discuss, and hear public
lectures along with Cynics, Epicureans, and the skeptics who now domi-
nated Plato’s Academy. Of these, the Stoics were the most influential stu-
dents of reasoning methods. The Stoics split philosophy into logic, ethics,
and physics so that logic was likened to the bones of an animal, the shell
of an egg, and the wall circling a city. Logic was divided into dialectic and
rhetoric.39 This emphasis on dialectic rather than formal syllogistic seems to
have come from the influence of Zeno of Elea (c.490 B.C.) and his follow-
ers the Megarians—predecessors to the Stoics who concentrated their atten-
tion on “everyday argumentative encounters.”40
Such everyday argumentative encounters were the daily bread of the
Hellenistic and Roman empires. Multicultural empires are good for dialec-
tic. Zeno of Citium (c.336–c.265 B.C.), the founder of Stoicism, had a grand
political vision much broader than Plato’s and Aristotle’s narrow city-state
programs. Zeno’s Politea, we are told by Plutarch, reached for a “cos-
mopolis” where “we should regard all men as our fellow-citizens and local
residents.”41 Given such a high communal vision, it is understandable that
dialectic would flourish in the Hellenistic Empire. Sadly, we know very lit-
tle directly about the logic of this creative period.42 Diogenes Laertius lists
many works of logic from this era that are lost. Chrysippus the Stoic is sup-
posed to have written some three hundred books dealing with logic. “So
renowned was he for dialectic,” Diogenes wrote that “if the gods took to
dialectic, they would adopt no other system than that of Chrysippus.”43 We
can guess that much that was written in this era made its way into the writ-
ings of Cicero and Quintilian; however, it will be those two Romans who
will become the most influential dialectic textbook writers. What we do
know is that Cicero used the term assent in the Stoic manner. Paul Oskar
Kristeller writes that the Stoic innovation of emphasizing assent “has not
been clearly understood or appreciated.”44 Given the Aristotelian problem
of how to think about outside, nontechnical, information, the Stoic view of
assent needs more understanding and appreciation.
Zeno of Citium developed the concept of assent in dialectic. For Plato
and Aristotle, when the mind grasped knowledge, truth was persuasive and
almost unavoidable. But the Hellenistic age was more skeptical and pes-
simistic. For Stoics the mind was more passive and truth more elusive. For
them knowledge presented itself to humans. Knowledge was a perception
or, more precisely, a comprehending representation ( phantasia katalep-
tike), that was not necessarily reliable or trustworthy. Zeno of Citium used
the concept of assent (Greek: synkatathesis, Latin: adsensio) as a circum-
spect way to handle what Plato and Aristotle thought was more direct.45
Although less optimistic than Aristotle and Plato, Zeno and the Stoics
were much more hopeful about the abilities of reason than the radical
skeptics. For this reason they did not abandon dialectical logic. Stoics
20 A History of Reasonableness
Assent was the key to all dialectic. The risks of assenting were the risks
wise people were willing to accept.
The skeptics rebelled at this. The wise man, Arcesilaus, scholarch of
Plato’s academy, insisted, “is not in the class of assenters.” He does not
assent to what are just opinions and then construct elaborate syllogisms on
foundations of mud. “Opinion is a mark of folly and a cause of sin.” The
wise man, instead, should suspend judgment.49 Arcesilaus’s position reap-
pears often in history. The debate is epistemological and rooted in notions
of wisdom and folly. In the long run, the Stoic notion of assent proves to
be a productive way to bow to the deep truth of human limitations while
retaining the optimistic and productive spirit of Aristotle’s dialectic.
Different from Aristotle, however, is that the reasoner is not passive. Any
emphasis on assent is an emphasis on the power of the reasoner to pick
and choose what information to take in and what to reject. In the history
of testimony, the concept of assent will be emphasized by those who desire
to empower the reasoner while diminishing the power of the authority that
gives the testimony.
The first and lowest is that which involves belief but has no
support from other representations. A higher kind excites
belief but is also consistent with, and supported by, other rep-
resentations. The highest degree of probability occurs when
a given belief not only is plausible in itself, and related to
other representations, but is such that an investigation of
these other, supporting representations reveals each of them
to be as vivacious and distinct as our first representation.50
Cicero had a knack for synthesizing philosophies and presenting them well.
He may have been an heir to the tradition of Arcesliaus and Carneades, but
he also remained a proponent of Aristotle, and was largely responsible for
a revival of Aristotelianism in the last half of the first century B.C. As we
have noted, Aristotle’s dialectic, if not his science, diminished in influence
as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and skepticism dominated the Hellenic era.
During that time Aristotle’s works were largely unavailable and their influ-
ence circumscribed. A former student of the Lyceum is supposed to have
taken Aristotle’s books to Asia Minor and hid them. Later the works were
returned to Athens in bad condition. The Roman general Sulla brought
Aristotle’s works to Rome where a librarian (who sometimes worked for
Cicero) along with the eleventh scholarch of the Peripatetic school pub-
lished them between 43 and 20 B.C. A student of the librarian, Strabo, is
the main source of this story.55
Cicero textbooks link Stoic-Roman dialectic and Aristotlian topics.
Cicero and his compatriots believed that they were merely advocating the
system of “that godlike genius,” Aristotle.56 Topics itself they considered a
valuable and practical method for comprehensively organizing arguments.
In De Oratore Cicero advised the orator to keep the structure of topics
“firmly established in his mind and memory” because with it “nothing will
be able to elude the orator, either in our own contentions at the Bar, or in
any department whatever of speaking.”57 Aristotle’s distinction between tech-
nical and nontechnical information was, for Cicero, the principal division in
topics that every young thinker and speaker must “firmly establish in his
mind and memory.” He therefore discussed it in each of his three books.
Topica, probably written in 44 B.C., was the most straightforwardly
Aristotelian of Cicero’s three textbooks. He reported to Trebatius the cir-
cumstances of writing it:
Cicero recognized that Aristotle’s works, which “were ignored by all except
a few of the professed philosophers,” needed to be better known, and he
promised to write a guide to Aristotle’s topics. However, he did not have
24 A History of Reasonableness
time to write his Topica until he was on a voyage, and then had to rely on
memory.59 Cicero’s Topica emerged more as a comprehensive textbook
than as a mere guide to Aristotle’s work.
Testimony appears in Cicero’s Topica as it did in Aristotle’s Rhetoric: as
first and foremost an epistemological distinction between technical and
nontechnical arguments. Cicero, however, changed the Aristotelian terms
to intrinsic (haerent) and extrinsic (extrinsecus). An argument is intrinsic
when it is “inherently in the very nature of the subject which is under dis-
cussion” or at least “in some way closely connected with the subject.”60
Extrinsic arguments are “removed and widely separated from the subject”
and “depend principally on authority.” The Greeks, Cicero noted, call such
an argument “atechnoi, that is, not invented by the art of the orator.”61
More than Aristotle, Cicero emphasized the personal and practical ways
testimony and authority interacted. Because of its long influence, here is
the complete text of the main section on testimony and authority:
Such is the basic structure of Cicero’s topic for testimony and author-
ity. The overall legacy of Aristotle is evident in the distinctions between
nature and circumstance, with the latter including such examples as torture,
26 A History of Reasonableness
Extrinsic
Considerations for
authority of a witness
Nature/Character Circumstances
Talent
Wealth
Divine Human Skill
Opinion of Virtue is Experience
more important than fact Necessity
Concurrence of
fortuitous events
Positions of authority
Public office and public opinion
Revealed by Orators
Philosophers
Poets
Historians
experience, and public opinion. The legacy of Stoic assent and skepticism
is also evident in Cicero’s emphasis on the authority. The mere fact of a
testimony is not enough. To win conviction, Cicero taught, testimony must
be joined to authority. In this way we see Cicero mitigating Aristotle’s
bald statements about the persuasiveness of truth with the more subtle
Stoic interest in the problems of creating credibility and giving warrant to
beliefs.
Although Cicero’s Topica was more influential in the long run of his-
tory, his other two books were much read and quoted in the centuries fol-
lowing the Renaissance. De Inventione was written by Cicero as a teenager
and most of it seems to be a notebook transcription of his teacher’s
lectures. As such it reflects common Roman education along with Cicero’s
youthful commitment to the system of topics. As for testimony and author-
ity, the treatment remains highly consistent between this youthful work and
the two textbooks of his old age. Even the three examples—Cato, Laelius,
and Scipio—of “men possessed the highest virtue and an authority
strengthened by their virtue” remained the same.63
Classical Tradition of Testimony 27
Junior perceptively notes the awkwardness of the idea that non-art is part
of art and that art must be involved with the non-art. Cicero agrees, but
affirms the traditional distinction and the separate rules that go with that
distinction. Cicero tells his son that the issue is the source. Even though
the reasoner handles the non-art with art—most blatantly by deciding to
Classical Tradition of Testimony 29
ideas of individual thinkers and their textbooks and wary that the high road
of discussion between the philosophical elite might be very different from
the lower road of discussion in classrooms and courtrooms.
As already quoted in Topica and seen in figures 1.1 and 1.2, Cicero
described several types of divine testimony useful “in order to win con-
viction.”70 In Topica he listed five forms: 1) astrology, 2) the flight and songs
of birds, 3) thunder and lightning, 4) portents revealed by earthly objects
such as entrails of sacrificial animals, and 5) dreams. In the Renaissance,
Petrus Ramus would popularize Cicero’s list from De Inventione: “casting
lots, from oracles, soothsayers, portents, prodigies, responses and the like”
(ex sortibus, ex oraculis, vatibus, ostentis, prodigiis, responsis, similibus
rebus).71 Cicero, himself, it should be noted, had held a public office as a
vaticinator or soothsayer—an office that held much political power.
Cicero was more free with his ideas about divine communication in
On Divination, a dialogue between Quintus, Cicero’s brother, and himself.
Quntus presents a long, sober, and sophisticated defense of divination
founded on human and divine testimony. Careful to cite testimony from
well-respected human authorities and note the large mass of testimonial
evidence for communication with divinities, he goes so far to implore
Cicero: “Shall we wait until brute beasts are ready to speak—being unsat-
isfied with the universal testimony of human beings?”72
Cicero was unmoved by this appeal. He refused to give assent to any
report of divine communication no matter how well-respected the author-
ity or how many testimonies were reported. He simply ranked all such
testimonies as incredible. In a style and with reasons similar to David
Hume’s eighteenth-century essay On Miracles, Cicero denied the authority
of testimony in matters that he had already decided were “beyond the
range of possibility.”73 Even though Cicero here denied the role of divine
testimony, his argument does not contradict his textbooks’ position that
authority ultimately rests on assent. By implication, the truth of a testimony
is not always sufficient to persuade; rather, the willingness of the receiver
to grant authority to the witness is necessary as well.
David Potter, in Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority
from Augustus to Theodosius, writes that “The Roman republican aristocracy
was loath to admit any that any of its members could be in direct, personal
communication with a god,” while the Roman people “seem to have been
deeply fascinated by this possibility.”74 Potter uses Cicero’s On Divination
as evidence for this assertion; however, the dialectic textbooks of the
Roman empire—designed to train that republican aristocracy—were not
hesitant to teach the authority of divine testimony. Quintilian later noted in
a discussion on oaths that it is possible to find philosophers who “deny that
the gods intervene in human affairs” but he implies that such philosophers
are hard to find.75
Classical Tradition of Testimony 31
Cicero’s textbooks have had long influence in the history of teaching the art
of being reasonable, but there was another Roman author with equal and
may be greater influence: Marcius Fabius Quintilianus (A.D. c.40–c.96). His
De Institutio Oratoria begins with the qualifications for a child’s tutor, is
sprinkled throughout with practical wisdom, offers a description of topics,
and extensively discusses the uses of testimony and authority by lawyers
with a shorter discussion for historians.
We know little about him other than what can be gleaned from his text-
book. Born in Roman Spain, he apparently first worked as a lawyer, moved
to Rome in 68, and was soon named teacher by the Emperor Vespasian of
what is often called Rome’s first public school. It is not clear what his duties
were or who he actually taught. George Kennedy tells us that
Cicero’s and one more calmly supportive of virtuous public service. Cicero
seems to have always had an axe to grind while Quintilian was a comfort-
able man without aspirations to power. Soon after retiring from his public
post, Quintilian wrote the Institutio (c.92), a book that probably represents,
better than anything Cicero wrote, Roman education at its best.
Quintilian cited Aristotle as the source for distinguishing internal from
external sources of information, and wrote that in his own era the distinction
“has met with almost universal approval.”78 Almost universally approved.
Quintilian reported that there were some who would eliminate testimony
and authority from the rules of oratory, but he believed they deserved “the
strongest condemnation.”79 His argument against them is simple: Most
forensic arguments are concerned with “rumours, evidence extracted by
torture, documents, oaths, and witnesses.”80 The courtroom, if nothing else,
demanded that reasonable people recognize the importance of distinguish-
ing external sources of evidence.
Where Quintilian differed from Aristotle and Cicero was in his choice
of terms. Whereas Aristotle used the terms technical and nontechnical
(technoi and atechnoi) and Cicero used the terms inherent and extrinsic
(haerent and extrinsecus), Quintilian preferred the terms artificial and inar-
tificial (artificiales and inartificiales). All three English terms, nontechnical,
extrinsic, and inartificial, refer to information that a reasoner does not, and
often cannot, know by self-reliance; rather, such information can be known
only by openness to external sources. Because of Quintilian’s great influ-
ence, the term inartificial has been the most widely used term in textbooks
for describing testimony and authority. Although an awkward term, it
means essentially the same as Cicero’s son referring to testimony as “with-
out art” (sine arte).
Quintilian wrote that he learned his material on testimony and author-
ity primarily from Domitius Afer: “I attended his lectures when he was old
and I was young, and consequently have the advantage not merely of
having read his book, but of having heard most of his views from his own
lips.”81 Afer was a lawyer and taught the young Quintilian the importance
of establishing or demolishing the credibility of witnesses. Cases often
hinge on “the direction of believing the witness or the reverse.”82 Quintilian,
therefore, did not follow Aristotle in simply teaching the persuasiveness
of truth—especially true testimony; rather, he followed Cicero in teaching
the arts of manipulating testimony and authority. Certainly Quintilian, like
Cicero, was not interested in teaching orators to lie or deny known truths;
however, in the courtroom testimony and authority were always weak
sources of knowledge deserving of careful scrutiny and even refutation.
Quintilian devoted several sections of his text to the weakness of tes-
timony and authority and the methods of refutation. For the purposes of a
defender or prosecutor, every kind of inartifical proof can be argued for or
Classical Tradition of Testimony 33
similarities, the historian was different from the poet and lawyer. History for
Quintilian,
Recording events for the benefit of posterity was the high responsibil-
ity of a historian. And such a responsibility required a different attitude
toward evidence drawn from testimony and authority. At the beginning of
the Institutio, before he began teaching how lawyers can undermine the
authority of written documents and the testimony of witnesses in the court-
room, Quintilian held up the authority of orators and historians in the use
of language. “Authority as a rule we derive from orators and historians.”90
Their judgment “is placed on the same level as reason.”91 Historians are
especially charged with the duty of teaching the lessons and wisdom of the
past. “As for Antiquity,” he declared, “it is commended to us by the
possession of a certain majesty, I might almost say sanctity” (Vetera maies-
tas quaedam et, ut sic dixerim, religio commendat).92 History is of such
sanctity that if a student errs in his judgment because he follows the author-
ity of antiquity, it is an honest error that should not be held against the
student. “Error brings no disgrace (error honestus),” Quintilian declared, “if
it result from treading in the footsteps of such distinguished guides.”93
This is an important passage. Quintilian, working with the two standard
models that necessarily use testimony, distinguishes historical from lawyerly
treatment of witnesses. Both depend on using inartificial knowledge, which
is always weak and easily undermined. The weakness is what makes it so
vulnerable in courtroom forensic. When teaching the short-term, case-winning
methods of a lawyer, Quintilian emphasized capitalizing on the weaknesses.
When teaching the long-term responsibilities of the historian, Quintilian
emphasized the sanctity of what we know from the ancients, the honor of
assenting to worthy authorities, and that there is no dishonor in being wrong
if a historian must risk making a judgment based on weak evidence. In the
art of handling reports from witnesses, the lawyer’s short-term responsibili-
ties are very different from the historian’s long-term responsibilities. The
lawyer must win a case. Weakness must be pounced on. Historians teach
the values and traditions that undergird society, they must not pounce as
readily on the weakness of testimony. Historians have a duty to work more
softly and respectfully with testimony. In the context of the historian’s
responsibility, Quintilian also proposed the important notion of honest error.
The art of being reasonable requires the use of the doubtful as warrant for
Classical Tradition of Testimony 35
the reasonable. The art requires allowance for acceptable risk of error. After
the Stoics emphasized the role of assent in the process of bringing the inar-
tificial into the art of reasoning—essentially increasing the responsibility of
the assenter—Quintilian thought it appropriate to offer no-fault insurance to
protect the respectability of a historian who, honoring the testimonial evi-
dence available, might affirm something that might later be proven wrong.
This respect for the authority of testimony coming down through his-
tory can be seen in Plutarch’s life of Coriolanus. Plutarch (c.46–c.120), a
contemporary of Quintilian, modeled the kind of long-term responsibility
of a productive historian instead of Cicero’s dismissive lawyerly methods.
In his sketch of Coriolanus, Plutarch writes about reports of a talking statue,
a statue of the goddess Fortune who declared to a woman publicly:
“Blessed of the gods, O woman, is your gift.”
Plutarch, predisposed to refuse assent to such a story, did not simply sum-
marily dismiss it in the manner of Cicero in On Divination or submit it to the
lawyerly cross-examination that Cicero and Quintilian showed can always
weaken any evidence from a witness. Acting as respectful historian, he treads
more lightly. If short-term lawyerly methods are used in writing history, not
only divine things but history itself will be lost by incredulity. Plutarch here
exemplified Quintilian’s teaching about respectful history and honest error.
Roman education, as modeled by Quintilian and Plutarch, made the
acceptance and rejection of credible and incredible testimony more fuzzy
in history than law. Plutarch, in his life of Cato the Younger, a man famous
for his virtue and truth-telling, reported that “it was a sort of proverb with
the people, if any very unlikely and incredible thing were asserted, to say
they would not believe it, though Cato himself should affirm it.”95 David
Hume would later quote this passage to support his own refusal to assent
to anything he deemed impossible. But Plutarch was not proposing that he
or other historians should follow such a proverb, and Quintilian did not
place such strictures on assent to testimony. “All proofs (probationum)”
Quintilian wrote, “fall into three classes, necessary, credible, and not
impossible (necessariae, aliae credibles, aliae non repugnantes).”96 This last
category did not imply that what people feel is impossible is excluded;
rather, it was a category to separate self-evident impossibilities. Dialectic in
general, for Quintilian, was where “doubtful things yield faith (dubiis adfer-
ens fidem).”97 Quintilian listed the inartificial doubtful things as “the opin-
ions of nations, peoples, philosophers, distinguished citizens, or illustrious
poets,” and even “common sayings and popular beliefs.”98 Lawyers were
necessarily trained to work for their clients by attacking or supporting evi-
dence presented by a witness. Historians necessarily worked also from
weak testimony; however, their job required more respect for testimony—
especially testimony that has passed into the lore of the country.
two enormous crags coming out of the sea, and Charybdis was the nearby
whirlpool that gulped down water and ships. Circe advised Odysseus on
how to get between the two and on to Ithaca. Odysseus had his own plan
of how to flee Charybdis and fight Scylla, but Circe rebuked him: “So stub-
born!” she cried out—the only way to get through was to “row for your
lives.”99 Odysseus was a famed thinker, a strategist upon whose wit the
Achaeans relied. He was a prone to trust his own personal intelligence rather
assent to an outside authority. But his frustrating years at sea were designed
by the gods to teach him some humility. The human mind’s powers are great;
however, a wise man must sometimes bind himself to the mast, accept his
weakness, submit to outside authority, and command his men to simply row
for their lives. Quintilian opened the Institutio with a similar plea: “Let us
raise our sail before the wind and fervently pray for a good end.”
Essentially, such is the situation of nontechnical, extrinsic, and inartifi-
cial topics. The picture of Odysseus is the picture of Aristotle recommend-
ing the authority of the majority of the best philosophers, or Cicero
demanding that Verres be convicted on basis of evidence of records, wit-
nesses, and written testimonies, or Quintilian humbly recommending that a
historian must be willing to make an “honest error.” Sometimes being rea-
sonable requires simply tying oneself to the mast and accepting authority.
Aristotle praised the mathematical logic of demonstrations from self-evident
truths, but self-reliant boys could do it. Political leadership, courtroom jus-
tice, and even teaching history required working with information gained
from outside of ourselves—a special and complex kind of knowledge with
no self-evidence or personal experience.
The heritage of classical topics offered a model for teaching people to
navigate between the Scylla of gullibility and Charybdis of skepticism. If
Ithaca was to be attained, the role of testimony in the art of being reason-
able had to be affirmed and handled with care. Neither Cicero nor Quintilian
pretended to be original or innovative in what they wrote. Their dialectical
works were part of a Roman “handbook movement” that produced many
manuals of instruction, most of which are lost.100 The textbooks of Aristotle,
Cicero, and Quintilian, however, were never completely lost and had long,
direct, and regenerating influence in the history of education.
NOTES
1. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, vol. 2
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), 435.
2. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, trans. R. G. Bury, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Harvard University, 1935), bk. 1, 7–8.
38 A History of Reasonableness
3. See Plato, Phaedrus, 261d, and William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The
Development of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 7–8.
4. Aristotle, De Sophisticis Elenchis, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge in The
Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928),184b.1–5.
5. See Gilbert Ryle, “Dialectic in the Academy” in Aristotle on Dialectic: The
Topics, ed. G. E. L. Owen (Oxford: Oxford University, 1968), 69–79.
6. Quintilian, Instutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1921), V, preface, i.1–3.
7. Anthony Kenny, Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992), 1.
8. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New York:
Penguin, 1991), 1355a.15–20, 35–40.
9. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, “Greeting to Trypho.”
10. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001), 164–65.
11. Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, trans. G. R. G. Mure in The Works of Aristotle,
ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 88b.30–89a.5.
12. Aristotle, Topica, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge in The Works of Aristotle,
ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 155b.5–15.
13. Ibid., 100a.25–100b.25.
14. Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing,
1998), 1275b.
15. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1142a.15–20.
16. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1985), 1143b.5–15.
17. Aristotle, Politics, 1326b.15.
18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1139a.20–25.
19. Ibid., 1139a.35.
20. Ibid., 1144a.30–35.
21. The fullest description on nontechnical proofs is in Rhetoric 1.15. H. C.
Lawson-Tancred gives a good definition of technical and nontechnical in the
introduction to his translation of The Art of Rhetoric (New York: Penguin Books,
1991), 14–21.
22. Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, 33.
23. Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structure of Renaissance
Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 5.
24. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books, 5.
25. Aristotle, Topica, 163b.20.
26. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1398b–1399a (p. 202).
27. Aristotle, Topica, 101a.25–30.
28. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1355b.35–40.
29. In the long history of making a place in textbook descriptions of topics,
three other pairs of terms were applied to the distinction Aristotle created between
the technical and nontechnical. In English (as discussed in the Introduction) they
are intrinsic and extrinsic, artificial and inartificial, and artistic and inartistic. The
ambiguities of the relationships within each pair of terms are discussed more fully
Classical Tradition of Testimony 39
in later chapters. Aristotle, himself, dealt most fully with the distinction as part of
his section on litigation in the Rhetoric.
30. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1375a.20–25.
31. Ibid., 1375a.25–1375b.25.
32. Ibid., 1377a.1–5. For an overview of this perspective on torture as evi-
dence, see James Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability
Before Pascal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2001), 12–40.
33. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1418b.20–25.
34. Ibid., 1376a.5–10.
35. Ibid., 1376a.15–20.
36. Ibid., 1376a.15–20.
37. The Hellenistic Philosophers, eds. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, vol. 1
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1987), 1.
38. Ibid., 2. Felix Grayeff in Aristotle and His School: An Inquiry into the
History of the Peripatos (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) dates the decline of
Aristotelianism a little later and emphasizes the success of the Lyceum under
Theophrastus (322–287/6 B.C.). However, under the leadership of Strato (287/6–
268/7 B.C.) the school took a more scientific turn with less interest in logic and lost
influence in Athens while still being powerful in the Hellenic world.
39. Diogenes Laertius, vii.39–43, pp. 151, 153.
40. Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, 113.
41. The Hellenistic Philosophers, 429.
42. For rhetoric, as opposed to dialectic, see George A. Kennedy, A New
History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 81–102.
43. Diogenese Laertius, vii.180–81.
44. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age, trans.
Gregory Woods (New York: Columbia University, 1993), 27. See also Richard Bett,
“Carneades’ Distinction between Assent and Approval,” Monist, 73 (1990):3–20, and
Michael Frede, “Two Skeptic’s Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the
Possibility of Knowledge,” in Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota, 1987).
45. See F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New
York: New York University, 1967), 126. When Plato has Socrates describe what
passes between an eyewitness and listeners, he states “the facts which can be
known only by an eyewitness” whereas the listeners are only “accepting a true
belief,” Theaetetus, 201b.
46. What we have are second-hand accounts of debates primarily from Sextus
Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius involving Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus on the
Stoic side and Arcesilaus and Carneades on the skeptic side.
47. Diogenese Laertius, vii.47–48.
48. Ibid.
49. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I.156–58.
50. Philip P. Hallie, “Carneades,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul
Edwards (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), vol. 2, 34.
51. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I.171–85.
52. See James Franklin, The Science of Conjecture, 1–12, 102–14, 195–200.
40 A History of Reasonableness
53. Paul MacKendrick in The Philosophical Books of Cicero (New York: St.
Martin’s, 1989), 3–4, notes the effect of Theodore Mommsen’s dismissal of Cicero
and cites a number of similar modern estimates in footnote 22. See also Kneale and
Kneale, The Development of Logic, 177–82.
54. Cicero, De Partitione Oratoria, trans. H. Rackham, vol. 4 of Cicero
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1942), XL.139.
55. See Feliz Grayeff’s chapter on “The Library of the Peripatos and its History”
in Aristotle and His School, 69–85. Jonathan Barnes notes the way modern scholars are
interpreting Strabo’s story in a way that allows that copies of Aristotle’s works were
available even though Aristotle’s library might have been hidden. See Jonathan Barnes,
Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995), 10.
56. Cicero, De Oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, vol. 3 of Cicero
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1942), II.xxxvi.152.
57. Ibid., II.xl.175.
58. Cicero, Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell, vol. 2 of Cicero (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1949), I.1–5.
59. That Cicero was working from memory with a large number of sources
is emphasized by Pamela M. Huby in “Cicero’s Topics and Its Peripatetic Sources”
in Cicero’s Knowledge of the Peripatos, eds. William W. Fortenbaugh and Peter
Steinmetz (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 61–76.
60. Cicero, Topica, i.8.
61. Ibid., ii.8, iv.24.
62. Ibid., xix.73–xx.78.
63. Cicero, De Inventione, trans. H. M. Hubbell, vol. 2 of Cicero (Cambridge:
Harvard University, 1942), I.iv.5. The Cato is the Elder or Censor. The odd aspect
of citing these three is that Plutarch reports that Cato hated Scipio and openly
attacked Scipio’s lack of virtue.
64. Cicero, De Inventione, I.vii.9.
65. Cicero, De Partitione Oratoria, ii.5.
66. Cicero asserts that the act of assent is in the power of the receiver in De
Fato, xix.43–44.
67. Cicero, De Partitione Oratoria, xiv.48.
68. Cicero, Topica, xix.73.
69. Cicero, De Partitione Oratoria, xiv.51.
70. Cicero, Topica, xx.77.
71. Cicero, De Inventione, I.liii.101.
72. Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Divination, trans. Hubert M. Poteat and intro.
Richard McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1950), i.39.
73. Cicero, On Divination, ii.12.
74. David Potter, Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from
Augustus to Theodosius (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1994), 149.
75. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, V.vi.3.
76. Cicero, Selected Works, ed. and trans. Michael Grant (New York: Penguin
Books, 1960), 172–77, 49.
77. George A. Kennedy, Quintilian (New York: Twayne, 1969), 19.
78. Quintilian, Instutio Oratoria, V, preface, i.1–3. Note that at times I will not
be using Butler’s translation and will give the Latin in parenthesis after offering my
Classical Tradition of Testimony 41
The Greeks and Romans developed a place for testimony and authority in
topics manuals as nontechnical, extrinsic, or inartificial arguments. The
early Christians, dependent upon Jewish history and reports of Jesus’ work
and resurrection, had reason to emphasize the reasonableness of reliance
on testimony. Luke in his sketch of Jesus’ life and the early church bases
his authority on eyewitness accounts. Paul, outlining his authority to teach,
claims access to divine testimony. As Christians came to dominate Western
education, they had good reason to retain Greek and Roman ways of teach-
ing testimony and authority in the art of being reasonable.
St. Augustine is the most important figure in this creating a Christianized
version for the dialectic using testimony. Augustine did not simply baptize
classical traditions. He created a new tradition that was psychologically
deeper, epistemologically more sophisticated, and ecclesiastically anchored.
In medieval Europe the classical and Augustinian traditions of testimony
and authority were constricted within two lesser traditions, the Boethian
and Cassiodoran. In both cases, the traditions were stripped down and pre-
sented without the rich examples, discussion, or analysis of earlier writers.
Boethius encouraged a philosophical and theological tradition that held
extrinsic knowledge at arm’s length. He also tantalizingly but without
explanation proposed a position between Aristotle’s persuasive truth and
Stoic assent that depended on a spontaneous and willing belief. Cassiodorus
was the most significant developer of a pedagogical tradition that encour-
aged emphasis on testimony and authority. Working in the Hellenistic
tradition of encyclopedists who wrote economical and comprehensive
guides to the liberal arts, Cassiodorus provided an overview of what should
be taught in each of the seven arts, which became the model for the tightly
packaged form of dialectic that came to dominate Renaissance and early
modern education. Given the centrality of historical reports in Christianity,
44 A History of Reasonableness
The earliest Christian apologists, desiring to create credibility for the truth
of Jesus’ life, teachings, and resurrection among those educated in the
empire, recognized the need to appeal to the traditional role of human and
divine testimony in classical dialectic.
Three Medieval Traditions 45
Although the authors of the New Testament used the dialectic of testi-
mony to promote Christianity, the early church fathers did not. Two extreme
options interested them most: a fideist rejection dialectic and a rationalist
embrace of scientific logic. Of the former, the rhetoric of Tertullian (160–220)
soared highest: “Unhappy Aristotle! who invented [for the philosophers]
dialectic, the art of building up and puling down.” To Christians he asks,
“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”7 Another example is
Jerome’s near-death experience when before the judgment seat he declared
“I am a Christian,” and the judge retorted: “Thou liest, thou art a follower
of Cicero and not of Christ.”8 Paul’s declaration that Christianity was “fool-
ishness to the Greeks” encouraged some of these fideist tendencies in the
early church.9
On the other hand, famous theologians under the influence of the
Platonic schools in Alexandria sought more than mere cordial relations
with Greco-Roman intellectual elite. They embraced rationalism in its
highest and strongest forms. If Christ was the logos as the gospel of John
stated, then the probabilities and uncertainties of apologetics based on
testimony could be superseded by the certainties of scientific logic. Of
course Christianity was a faith, but the term faith (Greek pistis, Latin fides)
was a loose word in logic that could be applied to the weak credibility
created by inartificial arguments or the certainty resulting from scientific
demonstration.
The best example of the tendency to present Christianity in the
strongest form of Greek formal logic is Stromateis or Miscellanies of Notes
of Revealed Knowledge in Accordance with the True Philosophy by
Clement of Alexandria (150–215). Clement dealt directly with the problem
of faith and logic in book eight of the Stromateis, and the collection in
general is concerned with logical inquiry to support Christianity.
Salvadore R. C. Lilla notes that Clement got his logical doctrines from
school handbooks that were popular at the time.10 The three definitions
of faith used by Clement delineated by Lilla were derived from the clas-
sical tradition:
All three definitions were derived from classical logic with the third being
the weak logic of dialectic. The third definition was faith based on assent
to inartificial information and was the weakest way for reasonable people
to create credibility for themselves and for others. For Clement the highest
goal was a Christian faith secure in scientific demonstration that is secured
by self-evident truths, personal experience, and introspection. Note that
only superficial believers simply “accept the truths contained in the teach-
ings of Scripture.” Such trust was reasonable, but not the kind of thing a
respectable theologian in Alexandria sought. Alexandrian theologians like
Clement were mostly interested in a Platonic-style apologetic that had noth-
ing to do with the vagueries of Roman topics.12
Clement created a Christian school in Alexandria, and we can assume
that topics was taught to the children in the manner of Cicero and Quintilian.
However, like the later universities of medieval Europe, the teachers and
students tended to have the higher aspiration of the stronger faith that
comes from introspection and formal demonstration. The general tendency
of the Christian intellectual elite throughout history has been to seek a
stronger and more certain faith than that offered by a dialectic rooted in
trusting human and divine testimony. However, as in so many other matters,
St. Augustine did not fall into the general tendency of his peers.
Note the practicality and social character of the argument. Humans need
testimony in order to know beyond the limits of themselves. Jesus has
produced a set of testimonies with highest authority to give humans more
knowledge. The churches, by agreeing on canonicity, guide the individual
to the scriptures Jesus has produced. “It behooves,” then, to accord the
authority of divine testimony to what would appear to be mere human
testimony.
elite also deserved much authority. Correlating the two offered an author-
ity worthy of submission.
Augustine sided with Aristotle on the spectrum of optimism. Cicero,
however, was certainly less optimistic. He was also less interested in the
dynamics of submission. Cicero had written much on authority, but had
emphasized the role of the reasoner as assenter. Augustine often advised
assent and fully embraced a role for assent in handling knowledge
gained from external sources; however, more optimistic about the per-
suasiveness of truth but believing that deceivers worked to lead people
astray, he pushed the role of assent further into the responsibility of
submission.
But submission should not be blind. Nor was assent simply a black and
white matter. The Roman tradition went further than Aristotle in thinking
about the relationship of probability and assent. Augustine went further than
his Roman predecessors.
was superficial. From his own life he found that “the arguments of the
[skeptics] seriously held me back” from true knowledge.38 Skepticism held
him back from having the necessary will to be persuaded by the truth.
Augustine’s correlation of three levels of knowledge to five types of per-
sons must be understood in the context of his struggle against Carneades
and skepticism. Augustine’s emphasis on two levels of knowledge without
fault and sometimes without fault directly responded to skeptics who
believed it always faulty to declare with confidence any knowledge or
understanding.
On the Profit of Believing was written to a friend who criticized the
church for demanding belief and not teaching a consistent rational method
of attaining truth. Augustine set out to defend the dialectical rationality of
Christianity, confidently asserting that “I can persuade any, if they apply to
me a mind fair and no way obstinate: and this I will do, when you shall
grant to me your ears and mind well disposed.”39
The dialectical heart of On the Profit of Believing is section 25.40 The
section begins with the fundamental question: how can we be rational and,
at the same time, “without fault follow those who bid us to believe” (my
emphasis).
The term without fault is related to Quintilian’s honest error. Both
respond to the fears of a reasoner and are meant to instill confidence.
Skepticism should not hinder progressive logic. Errors caused by human
epistemological weaknesses are inevitable; however, there is no fault or
dishonor in an error that arises while conscientiously abiding by the rules
of reasoning. Those rules required acknowledging three categories of
knowledge each with its own level of faultiness: understanding, belief, and
opinion. Understanding “is always without fault.” Belief is “sometimes with-
out fault.” And Opinion is “never without fault.”41 The level of faultiness of
the first two was tied to the distinction between artificial and inartificial
knowledge. “What we understand, we owe to reason; what we believe, to
authority, what we have an opinion on, to error.”42 Belief is the category of
testimony and authority.
Like Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, Augustine thought that the realm
of testimony and authority was more dangerous than pure reasoning. A
belief was faulty or “worthy of blame” when a person “over easily” assented
to dubious divine or human testimony. “Rashness” was a problem in this
category; however, understanding and belief could have the same level of
credibility. For Augustine, knowledge gained from the testimony of divine
scripture was as sure as anything gained from pure reasoning. Awareness
of the easier possibility of error necessitated the lesser designation.43
Beliefs were derived from authority and believers walked a tightrope
between sharing the high rank of understanding or low rank of opinions.
Augustine believed that skeptics lacked the will to walk the tightrope and
Three Medieval Traditions 55
wrongly jumbled knowledge gained by good authority with the mere mass
of opinion spouted by people who think they know something but don’t:
For [skeptics] who say that we are to believe nothing but what
we know, are on their guard against that one name “opining,”
which must be confessed to be base and very wretched, but
if they consider carefully that there is a very great difference,
whether one think that he knows, or moved by some author-
ity believe that which he understands that he knows not,
surely he will escape the charge of error, and inhumanity, and
pride.44
Augustine further declared, clearly delineating the two legs of dialectic and
the role of divine testimony: “Seeing therefore mankind too weak to find
out the truth by the way of evident reason, and for this cause was there
need of the authority of Holy Writ [auctoritate sanctarum litterarum.]”50
Christianity guided Augustine to emphasize the role of testimony and
authority in logic, the importance of a person’s will in being open to testi-
mony, and the submission it behooved a person to give to the authority of
a socially agreed-upon divine testimony. For Augustine, Christianity
demanded an emphasis on knowledge “we cannot know ourselves.” But
he was not teaching a new Christian form of dialectic; rather, he was affirm-
ing the Roman dialectic he taught before he became a Christian. It was the
Roman dialectic of Cicero and Quintilian that emphasized the authority of
divine testimony. Augustine baptized Roman dialectic into the service of
Christian apologetics.
Augustine’s long influence in Western education rivals the influence of
Aristotle and Cicero. Among the three of them, testimony and authority
were assured a role in the curriculum and ideals of education in the West.
All three taught that there was an essential distinction between what a
person knows by reason and what that person knows by authority. The
former was intriguing to those who wished to push the powers of the
human mind the farthest, but the latter was the bread and butter of being
a reasonable citizen and reasonable Christian. The former empowered the
individual; whereas, the latter discouragingly reminded individuals that
their minds are limited, they need to listen to others, and their conclusions
are founded on risking assent and even submission.
from the Catholic Fathers.51 What began as a contest to see how far a
Christian logician could go with only the use of one of his two intellectual
legs resulted first in the Monologion then in the Proslogion, two of the
monuments of medieval philosophy and theology. St. Anslem, the author
of these works, became the abbot of Bec and eventually archbishop of
Canterbury.
The chapter-house challenge from the monks of Bec manifests the ten-
dency of medieval philosophers to pursue higher certainties than those that
could be constructed out of testimony or authority. Certainly, in theology
and in society, it was an Age of Authority where use of inartificial argu-
ments was common and their persuasive power understood. The elemen-
tary dialectic textbooks that children studied explained the rules of
inartificial knowledge, and the leading philosophers and theologians were
well trained in topics. But when doing philosophy, the most interesting
challenges were formal and individualistic. Of the two legs of reasonable-
ness—reason and authority—the leg of reason was more tantalizing.
The philosophers at the universities found the challenge of pure
reasoning an inspiration to great work, and the theologians were often sim-
ilarly inspired. But Christian apologists, for the most part, could not get
away from the fact that their religion relied intellectually on both reason
and authority. Thomas Aquinas began his great apologetic work, the
Summa Theologica, in the manner of topics by starting with the distinction
between artificial and inartifical knowledge. Discussing the use of author-
ity, Aquinas had his objector quote Boethius that “authority is the weakest
form of proof.” Aquinas then trumped the objector with the traditional two-
sided response of classical dialecticians that Augustine had enhanced:
“although the argument from authority based on human reason is the
weakest, yet argument from authority based on divine revelation is the
strongest.”52 He then proceeded to rely heavily on divine testimony and
the authority of the Church Fathers when proving his arguments.
Like the Christian apologists, the good historians of the era understood
that the authority of their work depended upon proper handling of testimony.
Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, often offered long quotes, cited
authorities, and, like Augustine, distinguished things he witnessed himself
from that which he was “told by the faithful.”53 The Venerable Bede in the
eighth century began his history of the church in England not only noting
the authorities he relied upon, but also the character and access to records
of those authorities. Bonaventure in his thirteenth-century biography of
St. Francis of Assisi, wrote that in order to gain “a more certain grasp of the
authentic facts of his life . . . I had careful interviews with his companions
who were still alive, especially those who had intimate knowledge of his holi-
ness and were its principal followers. Because of the acknowledged truthful-
ness and their proven virtue, they can be trusted beyond any doubt.”54
Three Medieval Traditions 59
Topics
Intrinsic Extrinsic
From the whole From authority
From parts
From a sign
From conjugates
From genus
From kind
From similarity
From differentia
From a contrary
From associated things
From antecedents
From consequents
From incompatibles
From causes
From effects
From comparison
either of greater things or
of lesser things or of equal things
Topics
He never fully explained himself, nor did he advocate the Themistian sys-
tem over the Ciceronian. He even specifically criticized the Themistian idea
of treating from similars as extrinsic in his commentary on Cicero.63 In
the Renaissance, the weight of Cicero and the lack of any condemnation
by Boethius would combine to undermine the influence of Themistian
topics.
In Ciceronis Topica describes authority in three places. Early in the
book, Boethius summarizes Cicero’s position: “He asserts that an external
Topic consists in testimony; the force of testimony he locates in authority,
and authority he draws out into its appropriate parts.”64 Later at the close of
book 2, Boethius listed the “ready-made” arguments available to an orator:
“testimonies, official documents, public opinion, and other things.” Finally
at the end of the whole work, he gives his most comprehensive discussion
of the subject. There he explains why testimony and authority must be con-
sidered extrinsic and gives a short overview of the two sources of author-
ity that produce credibility in testimony.
The first source of authority “comes either from things that are great or
excellent and best by nature.”65 The only example of this he gives is virtue.
The other source of authority is “beliefs held by common people.”66 This
latter includes credibility produced by a testifier’s intelligence, wisdom,
age, wealth, skills, or experience. It also includes credibility produced by
Three Medieval Traditions 63
“necessity” as when people confess the truth because they are drunk, agi-
tated, guileless, unaware, or being tortured.
The Themistian structure makes fuzzy the line between intrinsic and
extrinsic by jumbling the handling of authority with the general handling
of multiple comparisons. Where Cicero or Augustine would have taught
that comparing the size of two items was strictly a matter of senses and thus
intrinsic, Themistius had his as extrinsic apparently because one item is
outside of the other item. However, speculating on the intent of Themistius
and Boethius is not germane to the traditional teaching of testimony and
authority in the art of being reasonable. Although the Themistian structure
reappears in the high Middle Ages, his Ciceronian model supported the
dominant tradition. Also, whether clearly distinguished or cloudied,
Boethius taught a role for testimony and authority in all three of his mod-
els. The teachings were perfunctory, but they did hold a place in the struc-
ture. As seen in the quote from Aquinas, Boethius was known long into the
Middle Ages as an authority on authority. His two textbooks on topics and
his theological writings were known for distinguishing reason and author-
ity as the two legs of reasonableness and for arguing that Christian theol-
ogy depended especially on the authority of holy scriptures and church
teachings.67
matters of probabilia, Boethius was offering a new criteria for valid assent
to testimony.
The implications of this spontaneity were not discussed fully by
Boethius, but Thomas Reid in the eighteenth century will offer similar
criteria. John Henry Newman’s Grammar of Assent will also press for a
Boethian immediacy as more true-to-life than deliberative assent. Boethius
himself offered two examples of extrinsic arguments that produce the
“readily believable” (probabilie):
had”: better to believe and teach too much than too little.
Another component of this oft-repeated formula: “Whatever
was both possible and eminently fitting for God to do, that he
did [potuit, decuit, fecit].”73
a queen with power over everything” could drive people where she
wanted.77 Both women were dangerous and armored for action in a messy
world.
In Capella’s story, Rhetoric, not Dialectic, describes the role of testi-
mony and authority. Testimony was mostly about communication, and the
Aristotelian tradition had taught that dialectic and rhetoric shared the topics.
The goddess Dialectic could have gone on endlessly at the wedding party,
but the audience cuts her off, saying she should stop “before you get entan-
gled in the complexities of your subject and its knotty problems.”78 The
goddess Rhetoric then speaks—a goddess of disputes, turbulence,
confusion, and conflict.
Rhetoric discusses the use of extrinsic arguments to produce credibil-
ity in a courtroom full of doubt. Capella has her present arguments “sup-
plied by the case or by the accused; they are located, as I have said, in
three areas: in documents, such as official records; in statements of author-
ity, such as those of witnesses; and in statements arising from compulsion,
such as those obtained under torture.”79 Authority is here equated only with
the second of the three types: testimony of witnesses. “Oracles and other
such statements,” according to Capella, should also be included under that
heading.80 He closes the section by noting that the prosecutor’s case and
personality is pondered against the quality of the extrinsic evidence. In
other words, working in the Aristotelian tradition, Capella delineated a role
for authoritative testimony in courtroom forensics. There was nothing new
in his discussion although it was much constricted. And like Aristotle,
Capella discussed testimony as part of rhetoric using the model of the
courtroom.
Capella’s example was influential; however, it was not as strong as is
sometimes implied in overviews of medieval learning. His story of armored
goddesses declaiming at a banquet might fire the imagination of boys and
girls, but the textbook tradition would latch onto something more straight-
forward, economical, and mundane. Cassiodorus’s utilitarian guide to
the liberal arts, complete with diagrams, was ultimately more influential—
especially in the way it placed testimony and authority under dialectic
rather than rhetoric.
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was probably the most
successful bureaucrat and certainly the most influential liberal arts advocate
to live during the fall of the western Roman Empire. Born around 480 in
southern Italy, he energetically served a succession of Ostrogothic kings.
His contemporary Boethius could not make it through even one reign
before being executed. Cassiodorus was more adaptable. He served in high
positions through several reigns while surrounded by executions, murders,
coups, and webs of intrigue. In old age, he retired from public service in
order to construct and administer a monastery dedicated, in part, to Christian
68 A History of Reasonableness
education. There he wrote his encyclopedia of the liberal arts in the sec-
ond half of an advice manual on what good students should read. Not until
the Renaissance’s Peter Ramus would a pedagogical simplifier have so
much influence.
In An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings, Cassiodorus gave
his monks “guidance” in the “extremely useful” liberal arts.81 With the con-
fidence of a high-ranking bureaucrat, Cassiodorus was a creative organizer.
Looking toward comprehensiveness, efficiency, and clarity, he developed a
six-part structure for dialectic and a three-part structure for testimony, and
seems to have invented the use of diagrams in textbooks.
The dialectic section of his Introduction to Divine and Human
Readings is not long. In the encyclopedist tradition, only an overview of
the subject was necessary. Students would later move on to more sophisti-
cated books—such as Boethius’s. As was traditional in the Hellenistic lib-
eral arts tradition, Cassiodorus fused formal logic and dialectic together.
Beginning students learned about syllogisms and testimony together in one
comprehensive system. Aristotle was presented as the founder of the sys-
tem. The first philosophers
Topics
Boethius and Cassiodorus were much read for a thousand years. Their text-
books were canonized in the liberal arts curriculum of the Middle Ages—
Cassiodorus’s for use among beginners and Boethius for the more
advanced. But as noted earlier, aspiring philosophers were usually more
interested in developing and using the more powerful formal logic taught
within dialectic and less interested in the weaker and messier parts—espe-
cially parts concerned with the sources of knowledge. Philosophers have
naturally tended to explore the power of their own minds rather than tin-
ker in the social arts of reasonableness. Rhetoricians also have tended to be
more interested in talking than listening. In the age of developing univer-
sities the Great Thinkers were seldom interested in the art of being rea-
sonable, of listening, of assent and submission. Augustine was a great
model; however, few who aspired to be philosophers, rhetoricians, or even
theologians like him were as interested in the mundane matters that inter-
ested the Bishop of Hippo. The curriculum, as it was developed beyond
the elementary liberal arts, supported special fields of philosophy and the-
ology that tended to chart a high road that left behind small matters of
social reasonableness. Plotinus, the Egyptian neo-Platonist, had advocated
the high road in his essay “On Dialectic.” He began by declaring that dialec-
tic “will take us up there” to “the Good, the First Principle.”90 Dialectic was
The call of the Platonic high road empowered most of the philosophers and
theologians of the Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, the call can be
heard in the work of Alcuin and John Scottus Eriugena.
Alcuin (732–804), aside from being a textbook writer, was the private
tutor to Charlemagne and his family, and organizer of Carolingian schools. In
Alcuin’s dialectic and rhetoric textbooks we see the beginnings of how
medieval education emphasized the high road of Plotinus while it deem-
phasized extrinsic topics in logic. In a letter written in 798, Alcuin told
Charlemagne that some of his students at Tours asked him why certain eccle-
siastical terms should be used:
If I reply that this is the practice of the church and that the
rule is established by the authority of Rome, they think it an
insufficient answer, based on custom and authority alone,
unless some reason supports the authority.92
At this point, the Christian backtracks on his point and agrees. He and the
Philosopher then carry on for several paragraphs of dialogue denigrating
testimony, authority, and opinion and those who build a foundation on
them. It is impossible to imagine Augustine responding in the same way.
Citing definitions directly from Boethius, Themistius, and Cicero, the
Philosopher dismisses orators who do not seek true arguments and lazily
use “prepared and given testimonies.”105
The Philosopher and the Christian then combine against the Jew! It is
the Jews who rely on authority rather than reason. Jews “put their defense
in another person’s words” and think it is “easier to judge about the author-
ity or text of someone absent than about the reasoning or view of some-
one present.”106 The Christian then agrees that, though using scripture is
important to Christians, “the declared truth of reason is stronger than point-
ing to an authority.”107
Abelerd’s Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian
exemplifies an attitude among the most famous of the medieval philoso-
phers that reasoning was weakened by testimony, so much weakened that
Abelard believed it should be avoided even in Christian apologetics. The
historical aspects of Christianity that relied on scriptural testimony of events
were the weakest parts of Christian apologetics. Although St. Paul had
rooted Christianity in the historical event of the resurrection and the role of
eyewitness accounts was initially emphasized in the New Testament, we
saw with Clement of Alexandria how Christian theologians tended to seek
a faith based on a higher certainty. Plotinus’s call to the high lonesome road
of reasoning without recourse to others became so much the highest stan-
dard of The Thinker that authority was no longer one of the two pillars of
knowledge. Authority seemed only to drag reason into the gutter. For
Abelard it was the Jews who allied reason with authority.
Certainly the boys at the cathedral and monastery schools—and prob-
ably the girls with their tutors and in convent schools—read Cassiodorus to
start learning the art of being reasonable. A little later in their education
they moved on to Boethius. With such an education they could become
teachers themselves, write history, join the bureaucracy of the government
and the courts of law, or become canon lawyers, inquisitors, physicians, or
missionaries. In all these duties the art of thinking learned from Cassiodorus
and Boethius would be useful. But in philosophy and in much of theology,
the student aspiring to the highest respect at the new universities put away
childish things learned from elementary textbooks.
Three Medieval Traditions 77
After the fourth century, Jewish systems for handling Midrash were
developed, but emphasis on personal transmission from teacher to student
did not lend itself to producing textbooks. Jacob Neusner finds within sixth-
and seventh-century Midrash compilations “four logics of intelligible dis-
course” but mentions no topic of extrinsic argument.111 There seems to have
been no systematic place for discussing the handling of testimony.
E. F. Peters’ catalogue of textbooks used among the Arabs and Muslims
indicates little emphasis on Aristotle’s topics or rhetoric. Even though the
Islamic emphasis on submission might have found resonance with
Augustine’s emphasis on submission to divine testimony and human tra-
ditions of testimony, a Muslim tradition of topics probably needed a
Boethius and Cassiodorus. The closest Muslim to fit this model was al-
Farabi (c.870–950). Al-Farabi wrote commentaries on Aristotle, including
his Rhetoric and Topics. Raymond Lull in the fourteenth century, and
some later Renaissance publishers brought some of al-Farabi’s commen-
taries into the Western textbook tradition. However, al-Farabi and Muslim
dialectic in general shared the medieval West’s intellectual interest in the
high road of individual philosophy rather than corporate trust. This anti-
probabilistic bent was described in the fourteenth century in ibn
Taymiyya’s polemic against Greek logic. Ibn Taymiyya specifically con-
demned Muslim logicians for undermining the divine testimony of the
prophet in the Quran and hadith. He condemned “those who claim that
what has been multiply transmitted from the prophets does not constitute
proof for them”112 and also the inconsistency evident in the way they
blindly accepted as propositions useful for proofs other things transmitted
by other authorities.
On the other hand, I must admit so much ignorance that I can only
encourage more study by others. Islam, like Christianity, is foundationally
constructed on historical knowledge being passed through generations.
Muslim concern for its history took the form of teaching the rational han-
dling of divine revelation (Quaran) and the reported sayings, deeds, and
decisions of the Prophet (hadith). By the ninth century, Muslim leaders
developed categories of authority for eyewitnesses (companions of the
Prophet) and hearsay transmitters (successors). Character and proximity—
chronological and geographical—were important factors in the authority of
companions and successors. Authoritative hadith had to begin with a
description of the chain of successors that culminated in a companion
before reporting the Prophet’s saying, deed, or decision.113
In practical Islamic religious education there has been both the need
and the interest in teaching methods of handling testimony and authority;
however, such religious education does not seem to have had a textbook
tradition accompanying it. The teaching of hadith in a madrasah tended
toward private instruction that led to “notarized attestation that a student
Three Medieval Traditions 79
had heard and had recited in the presence of an accredited scholar specific
traditions which he was then licensed to transmit himself.”114
Al-Ghazzali (1058–1111) in Deliverance from Error and Attachment to
The Lord of Might and Majesty, described four classes of seekers, the sec-
ond of which are the “Batiniyah who consider that they, as the party of
“authoritative instruction” (ta ’lim), alone derive truth from the infallible
imam.”115 He found the way of the Batiniyah mired in danger and weak-
ness. He quoted Muhammad himself as saying in one instance, “I judge by
the more probable opinion, based on the account of the witnesses, but the
witnesses may be mistaken.”116 In The Confessions of Al-Ghazzali he wrote
that certainty about a particular prophecy is attained by “reliable tradition.”117
The Aristotelian tradition was obviously strong in al-Ghazzali.
Later among the Jews of the twelfth century, Moses Maimonides
(1135–1204) had much interest in rules for handling testimony in legal
cases and related matters. In Guide to the Perplexed he advised that when
judging a prophet’s authority to transmit divine testimony,
the history of Jewish and Muslim education. What I have found in the
Christian West is a strong textbook tradition. Among the Jews, Arabs, and
Muslims, no strong textbook tradition is apparent—possibly due to the per-
sonal and oral character of education and the tendencies of the Platonic
philosophic tradition. Later in the Renaissance of the Christian West there
will be a boom in logic textbooks discussing testimony and authority based
largely on a revival of interest in Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine. I do not
have evidence that Jews and Muslims were influenced by this development
or experienced any boom in dialectic textbooks discussing testimony.
Given what evidence I have, the rest of this book will follow Western text-
book traditions designed to serve Christian education.
NOTES
1. Acts 7.
2. Acts 10:39 (New International Version).
3. Galatians 1:11 (NIV).
4. 1 Corinthians 15:14–15 (NIV).
5. Luke 1:1–4 (NIV). Debates about Luke as a historian and the historicity of the
Gospels in general are ongoing and illuminate modern struggles with handling inarti-
ficial knowledge. For good discussions of the struggles and the conservative conclu-
sions I favor, see Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987) and C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and The
Jesus of Faith: Incarnational Narrative as History (New York: Oxford University, 1996).
For the way the Gospels and Acts compare with Roman teachings on the dialectic of
historians, see Richard A Burridge, What are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-
Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992).
6. Hebrews 2:1–4 (NIV).
7. Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, trans. Peter Holmes in vol. 3
of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Cox (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
1995), chap. vii.
8. Jerome, Letters, trans. W. H. Fremantle in ser. 2, vol. 6 of Library of Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1952), 35.
9. 1 Corinthians 1:20–31 (NIV).
10. Salvadore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism
and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University, 1971), 123. See also Henry Chadwick,
“Philo and the Beginnings of Christian Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Later
Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1970), 169.
11. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and
Gnosticism, 119.
12. Herbert Braun’s article on pistis in the Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids:
Three Medieval Traditions 81
Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 1968) points out that there was a “decisive development” in early
Christian usage indicated in the Apocrapha to emphasize Jesus as the “liberator from
error” and ties this to Athanasius, the history of the Canon, and warnings against het-
erodoxy. Braun’s statements make no reference to Roman logic, but his evidence
seems to show that early Christian usage of pistis/fides did not emphasize a realm of
faith where the possibility of error existed. Robert M. Grant in Greek Apologists of the
Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988) writes that Theophilus used
Carneades’s images of “faith” as a farmer entrusting his seed to the soil and a sailor
entrusting himself to a ship, images that exemplify the probabilistic side of faith; but
otherwise, Grant’s book indicates a general early Christian lack of interest in the
technical matters of reasoning with opinions.
13. Long into the Renaissance, many assumed that Augustine was the author
of Categoriae Decem ex Aristotele Decerptae and De Dialecticae. The Categoriae is
no longer thought to be written by Augustine but in the Renaissance it served to
bolster the Christian use of Aristotelian categories. De Dialecticae was possibly writ-
ten by Augustine, but is an unfinished textbook with nothing on inartificial argu-
ments. Late in life, Augustine reported that as a young teacher he had begun a
dialectic manual as part of a curricular cycle of textbooks. The book was written
just after he was baptized. De Dialectica fits what we know from Augustine, in that
it is unfinished and not influenced specifically by Christianity. The book had few
direct ties to medieval European textbooks.
14. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. J. F. Shaw, ser. 1, vol. 2, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988), IV.i.2.
15. Ibid., II.xl.60.
16. Ibid., xxxvii.55.
17. Ibid., xxxi.48.
18. Ibid., xxxi.48, xxxvi.55.
19. Augustine, On the Trinity, trans. Arthur West Haddan, ser. 1, vol. 3 Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, XV.xii.22.
20. Ibid., 21.
21. Augustine, Faith of Things not Seen, trans. C. L. Cornish, ser. 1, vol. 3, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, sect. 4.
22. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II.xxiii.35. It should be noted that
Augustine accepts the authority of a Erythraean sibyl who supposedly prophesied
about Christ (The City of God, XVIII.23.)
23. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, ser. 1, vol. 2, Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, XL.i.
24. Ibid., XI.3.
25. Ibid., XIX.18.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Romans 13:1 (NIV).
29. 1 Peter 2:13 (NIV).
30. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II.vii.10.
31. Ibid., viii.12.
32. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1355a.15–20.
82 A History of Reasonableness
33. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, trans. R. G. Bury, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Harvard University, 1935), bk. I.171–85.
34. Quintilian, Instutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1921), V.viii.7–8, x.8–17.
35. Ibid., x.12–13.
36. Augustine, Against the Academics, trans. John J. O’Meara (New York:
Newman Press, 1951), III.viii.17.
37. Ibid., v.12, II.x.23.
38. Ibid., III.xx.43.
39. Augustine, On the Profit of Believing, trans. C. L. Cornish, ser. 1, vol. 3,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, sect. 12.
40. See also Dewey J. Hoitenga, Jr. Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga:
An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York,
1991), 57–69.
41. Augustine, On The Profit of Believing, sect. 25
42. Ibid.
43. In Letter147, Augustine stated that when it came to using information from
holy scriptures, that there was no need to say “believe”; people can instead say
“know.” See Letter147: Augustine to the Noble Lady, Pauline in Augustine of Hippo:
Selected Writings, trans. Mary T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 372.
44. Augustine, On the Profit of Believing, sect. 25.
45. Augustine, The City of God, I.xvi.
46. Augustine, On The Profit of Believing, sect. 25.
47. Augustine, Against the Academics, III.xx.43.
48. See Garry Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Lipper/Viking, 1999), and
Peter Brown’s review in The New York Review of Books 46 (24 June 1999):45–50.
49. Augustine, Confessions, trans. William Watts (Cambridge: Harvard University,
1912), VI.v.
50. Ibid.
51. Anselm of Canterbury, Monologion, in Major Works, trans. Brian Davies
and G. R. Evans (New York: Oxford University, 1998), 5.
52. St. Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York:
Random House, 1945), I.8.
53. Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (New York:
Penguin Books, 1974), v.6263.
54. Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis in Bonaventure, trans. Ewert Cousins
(New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 183.
55. Anselm of Canterbury, “Letter to Archbishop Lanfranc” and “Prologue,” in
Monologion; and R. W. Southern, St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1990), 65–66, 113–37.
56. Anselm, The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm, trans. Benedicta
Ward (New York: Penguin Classics, 1973), 244.
57. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. S. J. Tester (Cambridge:
Harvard University, 1973), I.85–95.
58. See Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology,
and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) and the pleasant character of Boethius
in Louis de Wohl’s historical novel Citadel of God (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987).
Three Medieval Traditions 83
59. See John Vanderspoel, Themistius and the Imperial Court: Oratory, Civic
Duty, and “Paideia” from Constantius to Theodosius (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1995).
60. Boethius, In Ciceronis Topica, trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1988), 4.23–24.
61. Niels Jørgen Green-Pedersen, The Tradition of Topics in the Middle Ages:
The Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ “Topics” (München: Philosophia Verlag,
1984), 107.
62. Ibid., 111.
63. Boethius, In Ciceronis Topica, 19.73.
64. Ibid., 2.8.
65. Ibid., 19.73–20.76.
66. Ibid.
67. Henry Chadwick comments on the paganess of Boethius when writing in
the pagan tradition in Boethius, 22. See Boethius, “The Trinity” and “On the Catholic
Faith” in The Theological Tractates, trans. H. F. Stewart, H. F. Rand, and S. J. Tester
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973), 33, 53, 57, 71.
68. Boethius, De Topicis Differentiis, trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1978), 1180d.30–35.
69. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1112a.5–10.
70. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, 16–22.
71. Boethius, De Topicis Differentiis, 1180b.15–35.
72. Ibid.
73. Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of
Culture (New Haven, Yale University, 1996), 196.
74. F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970),
378. See also David L. Wagner, “The Seven Liberal Arts and Classical Scholarship,”
in The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages, ed. David L. Wagner (Bloomington:
Indiana University, 1983), 17–18.
75. Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, trans. William
Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson with E. L. Burge, in Martianus Capella and the
Seven Liberal Arts, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University, 1977), 106.
76. Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, 110.
77. Ibid., 156.
78. Ibid., 153.
79. Ibid., 184.
80. Ibid., 185.
81. Cassiodorus Senator, An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings,
trans. and intro. Leslie Webber Jones (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), I (Divine
Letters), preface, 1.
82. Cassiodorus, II (Secular Letters), iii.1.
83. Ibid., 5.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., 19.
86. Isidore of Seville, in Patrologiae Latinae, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris:
1844–1891), v.82.132.
87. Cassiodorus, II (Secular Letters).ii.10.
84 A History of Reasonableness
in the 1520s and ’30s. By 1569, Petrus Ramus wrote that “thanks to Agricola
the true study of genuine logic had first been established in Germany and
thence, by way of its disciples and emulators, had spread through the
whole world.”2 Lisa Jardine, even though noting that the published version
of the book was probably a result of “collaborative editing” and its fame an
aspect of a pedagogic myth created by Erasmus, describes De Inventione
Dialectica as the logic textbook “most widely specified, bought, and used
in schools and universities throughout Protestant Europe, between the early
decades of the sixteenth century and the mid seventeenth century.”3 Jardine
warns against placing too much weight on De Inventione Dialectica as the
source of the new Renaissance emphasis on classical dialectic; but we are
not too concerned here with the sources of ideas. Textbooks are rarely
such sources. As we shall see, many influential textbooks, especially as the
education market proved lucrative, are cut-and-paste ventures, and author-
ship a loose concept. The value is in usefulness not in originality, and in
fact, originality can weaken a textbook. Societies usually want their chil-
dren taught what is common knowledge, not what is cutting edge. The
benefit of studying textbooks comes from their conservatism and sociality.
They are better indicators of the thought of their constituency than higher
forms of writing. So Jardine is correct to warn that Agricola’s De Inventione
Dialectica was not very original, but the fact that it was much used in class-
rooms is more important.
Important to note is the conflation of dialectic, rhetoric, and logic into
single textbooks. Logic had long been a rather loose term, but dialectic and
rhetoric had been more clearly delineated. Cicero had merged Aristotle’s
Topics and Rhetoric into general textbooks for orators without any space
given to formal syllogistic reasoning. The liberal arts tradition had initially
split dialectic and rhetoric in an Aristotelian fashion while inserting formal
syllogistic reasoning into dialectic. Inartificial matters involving testimony—
apparently because they involved communication—were first placed in
rhetoric. Cassiodorus, however, led the way in moving inartificial topics
over into dialectic. In Agricola’s revival of Cicero, all of what was earlier
and later distinguished as logic, dialectic, and rhetoric came into one dialec-
tic textbook. Dialectic became awash in all matters of reasoning and per-
suasion. As can be noted in the quote from Ramus in the above paragraph,
the term logic came to be equated with this overflowing dialectic. In the
nineteenth century there will begin an academic move to distinguish dialec-
tic from rhetoric and to distinguish probabilistic dialectic from the formal
structures of what will be called logic. But between 1500 and 1900, the term
dialectic and logic became commonly interchangeable. Cicero was consid-
ered a model logician.
Agricola’s De Inventione Dialectica opens by orienting readers to the
structure and terms of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Following Cicero,
Two Renaissance Traditions 89
late Roman or medieval periods, Ramus does begin the work in Cassiodoran
fashion with Porphyry’s five predicables and ten categories.8
Ramus’s Dialecticae Libri Duo honed the larger Scholarum down to an
efficiently organized two books, a clear Ciceronian division between
“invention” and “judgment.” Book one dealt with invention—listing the
types of places arguments could be found. The subject of inartificial argu-
ments was given a spot at the end of this first book, with all the various
manifestations of Ramist logic.
Ramus used the one term testimony to designate inartificial argument.
He notes that testimony is weak when seeking exact truth; however, in civil
and human affairs it can produce faith based on the moral character of the
source. Following Agricola’s lead when describing divine testimony, Ramus
uses the language of Cicero’s De Inventione to distinguish two types: that
which is received directly from oracles (fatidicorum) and those received
through prophets or soothsayers (vatum).9 Given the fact that Ramus would
soon be raised to the status of Protestant saint after his supposed martyr-
dom in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, it is surprising that he made
no attempt to give a Christian spin to divine testimony. Even the example
of divine testimony given by Ramus was not from the Bible; rather, he
offered Cicero’s description of natural portents—meteors, lightning, and
such—from Against Catiline.
Ramus was obviously committed to the classical tradition as developed
by Cicero. His famous pedagogical commitment to reducing complex mat-
ters to simple bifurcations can even be attributed to Cicero through the
mediation of Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica. Boethius appreciated the sim-
plicity of cutting things in two. (Note the bifurcations of figure 2.2 in chap-
ter 2 and Boethius’s statement that “every comparison is twofold.”10) In this
spirit, Ramus divides human testimony into two types: common or proper
(commune aut proprium).11 Common testimony is dichotomized into law or
proverbs. The laws can be either written or unwritten—he does not rank
them in the manner of Aristotle.12 The proverbs are simplistic: examples,
including “know thyself” and “you were born in Sparta, so adorn that city.”
Ramus then quickly moves to proper human testimony. Proper testimony
is dichotomized into that received from the dead or from the living. In clas-
sical fashion, testimonies from dead people have much force. The force of
testimonies from the living—whether by inquiry, obligation (promise), con-
fession, or oath—rely on the moral character of the testifier. Confession was
split into that freely given or extracted by torture (see figure 3.1). Harkening
back to Aristotle, Ramus focuses optimistically on truth telling rather than
on liars, forgers, or deceivers in any form. The structure implies Aristotle’s
dictum that truth is “naturally superior” and “more persuasive” than its oppo-
site.13 Ramus closes his discussion of testimony by including what he called
reciprocation—a traditional rule, more fully discussed later, that linked
Two Renaissance Traditions 91
Dialectic
Invention Judgment
Artificial Inartificial
Testimony
Divine Human
Free Coerced
testifier and testimony and was especially applicable in situations where the
testimony was hard to believe.
Agricola and Ramus exemplify the core of the Ciceronian version of
Renaissance teaching on testimony and authority. Medieval tenets of educa-
tion had limited divine testimony to theology and in philosophy had mini-
mized the role of trusting others for information. Following Cicero and
Quintilian, Agricola and Ramus reunited human and divine testimony in
their all-inclusive hope to teach a general art of reasoning. Their textbooks
were successful in supporting the vision of the fast-growing number of edu-
cational institutions being founded in the Renaissance. But given the fact that
much of the support for new schools and universities was coming from var-
ious churches adamantly advocating the reasonableness of Christianity, it
should not be surprising that mere reliance on Cicero and Quintilian would
92 A History of Reasonableness
not go far enough. Almost everybody could appreciate Cicero and Quintilian,
but many found a better model for the art of reasoning in the works of
St. Augustine. Philipp Melanchthon led the way in developing in textbooks
an Augustinian method of weaving the reasonable use of testimony into
deep matters of psychology.
came in his handling of topics and in the way he discussed testimony as part
of the Aristotelian category of quality. These technical innovations were
rather quirky and only pop up irregularly in later textbooks. However, the
second and larger manifestation of Melanchthon’s influence was in the gen-
eral way Christian concerns, terms, and examples replaced pagan classical
concerns, terms, and examples. The Ciceronian tradition exemplified by
Agricola and Ramus supported Christianity only tangentially. The Augustinian
tradition, popularized by Melanchthon, was specifically designed to support
Christianity. This larger model, more than his more technical innovations,
led the way to hundreds of religiously oriented and dogmatically inclined
logic textbooks that were written from the sixteenth through nineteenth
centuries.20
Melanchthon believed, a wise person could separate the uncertain from the
certain. A wise person can discern true from false human testimony. By
God’s grace, humans can also recognize divine testimony.23 Divine grace
working in the human will would guide assent to the divine authority
behind the teachings of the prophets, the scriptures, the church, and reports
of miracles such as resuscitation of the dead.24
Within the discussion of human and divine testimony, the direct appli-
cation to Christian matters was highly influential. Textbooks did not merely
have to repeat the maxims of tradition; rather, Melanchthon led the way to
applying the terms of reasoning specifically to Christian issues. Many text-
books would follow his lead of orienting themselves to support revealed
Christianity. Although the general orientation was influential, the quirky
reorganizing of topics into personal and circumstantial was not.
Melanchthon’s specific innovations were less successful than his general
96 A History of Reasonableness
Quality
Will Intellect
Notions
Certain Uncertain
Aquinas also affirmed in this query that God “gives certain things to
some, which he does not give to others.”35 William of Ockham also waxed
epistemological when discussing habits. In Logic and again in On the Notion
of Knowledge or Science, Ockham defined knowledge as “a certain quality
which exists in the soul” dividable into an act of knowledge and a habit of
knowledge.36 Of the types of knowledge, Ockham discussed testimony.
Both Aquinas and Ockham linked testimony to habits in the category of
quality.
Although working in line with the thought of Aristotle, Augustine,
Aquinas, and Ockham, Melanchthon more starkly than any other textbook
writer created a place in the section on quality to include as habits the
two traditional forms of testimony. Divine testimony he treated as a matter
especially dependent upon the will of the reasoner. In the economy of
Renaissance textbooks, it was an eccentric innovation. Agricola had led the
way in emphasizing the more simple oratory of Cicero’s topics, and Ramus
would become even more popular as a simplifier antagonistic to the
logomachies of Aristotle and the medieval scholastics. Melanchthon seemed
to be taking a pedagogical step backward by expanding his section on the
Two Renaissance Traditions 99
Quality
Sensible Insensible
Infused Acquired
Moral Intellectual
No fear Fear
certainty uncertainty
Heresy Schism
Word Spirit
types of assent: fear and no fear. The two types of assent are each linked
to their own type of testimony and faith—divine or human. Morton was an
innovative pedagogue himself. He offered diagrams of each chapter and
even offered poems to aid memorization and encourage classroom discus-
sion. The following summarized the habit of assent:
To discuss such matters under the heading of quality made good sense
only if the writer desired to emphasize the usefulness of categories in
support of revealed Christianity. Morton found in Keckermann and
Melanchthon a structure of support for his Puritanism. Heresy and schism
were all around, but the right-thinking logician could be “assur’d in Truth
is Faith Divine Assent.”
But as already noted, not many textbook authors followed Melanchthon’s
two specific innovations. None that I know of seriously considered abandon-
ing the traditional bifurcation of topics and only a few expanded their sections
on categories to include habits and testimony. Economy and simplification
were more the tendency of the humanists who desired to create art of rea-
soning texts for boys (Morton was one of the few specifically interested in
having girls read his text). Melanchthon’s innovations in topics and categories
complicated the tradition rather than streamlined it.
However, Melanchthon’s long term influence was more general than
his specific innovations in topics and categories. Melanchthon’s
Erotemata Dialectices was a watershed in the history of textbooks on the
art of being reasonable. A watershed collects from various streams, releas-
ing a new stream. He developed a new stream of textbooks oriented
specifically to support Christianity by emphasizing an Augustinian tradi-
tion of psychology and epistemology that supported the authority of
human and divine testimony. The textbook tradition he founded was
designed to do what Augustine wanted: teach a Christianized version of
classical reasoning that clearly supports the authority of sacred scriptures.
Neither Boethius nor Cassiodorus, nor Peter of Spain nor Petrus Ramus
had actually oriented the text to support Christian apologetics.
Melanchthon’s was the first of many that were designed primarily for the
purpose of supporting Christian reasonableness at the foundation of the
liberal arts curriculum.
102 A History of Reasonableness
In every case Thomas Wilson noted that the reasoner had free choice “to
admit or to refute” the authority of such testimony.
Ralph Lever in his quirky The Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft (1573)
wrote that one should accept the testimony of an authority as “likely and prob-
abile” if what the authority says chances “for the most parte” to be right. If the
authority “chance but seldome, and misse as oft as they hitte: then the reasons
gathered of them are coniecturall, and prognosticallike, as of false as true.”59
In contrast to Bacon’s bombast, no logic text demanded obedience to
authority; however, a certain respect was appropriate. “We shoulde not for-
sake wise men’s wordes rashley,” Wilson wrote, “but with a modest answer
desire the adversarie not so much to sticke to his authoritie, as to prove the
same by some good reason.”60 Essentially, this is a distilled version of
Quintilian’s wise advice on the same subject. Quintilian wrote in connec-
tion to human testimony, “in all these cases we have need of a critical judg-
ment,” but that tradition “is commended to us by the possession of a certain
majesty, I might almost say sanctity.” Quinitilian closed with the humble
note: “even error brings no disgrace, if it result from treading in the foot-
steps of such distinguished guides.”61 This concept of the honest error, the
error that brings no disgrace, implies a double understanding of the role of
authority in right reason. First is the recognition of the weakness of the
information but the necessity to reason with the information one has.
Second is the assumption that such weak evidence is always dispensable if
better information comes along. Authority, therefore, was not oppressive in
the strategies of right reason taught in Baconian England.
Divine authority, of course, required more serious treatment than
human. Almost all Tudor logic textbooks discussed the special authority of
divine revelation. In Ciceronian fashion John Seton of Cambridge in his
Dialectica (1584) described divine testimony as “from an oracle, sooth-
sayer, fortune-teller” (Oracul, Vatum, praedictiones).62 In Augustinian fash-
ion, Thomas Wilson carefully delineated the authority of divine testimony
as opposed to human testimony.
Those authorities which come from God and are spoken by
the holy ghost are undoubtedly true, neither can they be
false: therefore we ought moste reverentlie to receive the
worde of God & agre to such textes as are written & spoken
Two Renaissance Traditions 105
In the sixteenth century, two textbooks established the two Renaissance tra-
ditions of handling testimony and authority. The first by Agricola revived
Two Renaissance Traditions 107
Ramist logic had a pedagogical vivacity in the 1570s that the Puritans
appreciated. Howard Hotson and Joseph Freedman have shown that
Ramist logic reached the height of its popularity in Central Europe from the
1570s to the 1630s or ’40s.70 Freedman shows that Ramus’s logic was not
generally “deemed valuable” for higher education; however, its emphasis
on definitions and dichotomies was useful in “lower level instruction.”71
Ramus’s Dialecticae Libri Duo manifested a reductionist attitude with a
goal of meeting “the needs of the arts student at the first-degree level: it
teaches him the bare minimum to enable him to carry out the academic
exercises which were required of him.”72 It was also easier to memorize
than most of its competitors. Ramist logic was present in universities but
usually in the curriculum of the youngest boys. If it was taught to older stu-
dents, especially students who were beginning to receive training in divin-
ity, modifications had to be made. Walter Ong noted that Ramist textbooks
had a pattern of inflating and deflating: “the simplicity of Ramist logic
paradoxically generated commentaries to explain what Ramus meant—
commentaries that were in turn suppressed for being too distracting or dis-
couraging and alternately revived and revised and amalgamated again.”73
The beginnings of the Puritan movement in England were tied to the
period of Ramist popularity. The Puritans appreciated the pedagogical
reductionism but shared in the reductionist/expansionist tensions Ong
noted. In the process of producing new Ramist texts, the Puritans often
Christianized the section on testimony, sometimes even fully bringing it
into accord with the Augustinian tradition.
For an example of Puritan/Ramist minimalism, there is no better text
than Increase Mather’s Catechismus Logicus. This small catechism was writ-
ten in two mornings (April 26 & 27, 1675) for the use of Mather’s eleven-
year old son, Cotton. Subsequently it was transcribed in student notebooks
at Harvard during Mather’s presidency.74 The answers in this elementary
catechism are cut directly out of Ramus’s text except the Ciceronian pagan-
isms were taken out of the section on divine testimony:
101.
Q. What is an inartificial argument?
R. An inartificial argument is that which argues not by its
own nature, but by the force which it takes from some
artificial argument.
Two Renaissance Traditions 109
102.
Q. This argument has faith from where?
R. This argument has faith, arguing from custom, that is, if
prudence, virtue, and benevolence are present within it.
103.
Q. Inartificial argument is called what?
R. Inartificial argument is called by the one name, testimony,
and is either divine or human.
104.
Q. What is divine testimony?
R. Divine testimony is that which is from God, and is the
strongest form of argument, not having its quality in
respect to the testimony but the testifier who has the pru-
dence, virtue, and benevolence of God on high.
105.
Q. What are among the human testimonies?
R. Among the human testimonies are laws and famous
maxims [such as proverbs and the sayings of wise men].
106.
Q. To what else can they be referred?
R. They can also be referred to an obligation, pledge, and
confession either freely given or extracted properly by tor-
ture, or trial, or oaths.
107.
Q. What is reciprocation?
R. Reciprocation is when the thing argued artificially is
applied to the testifier, and thereby argues for the verac-
ity of the testimony.75
Mather’s catechetical deflation of Ramist logic should be set against the
more famous inflations of Ramist logic. John Milton titled the textbook he
wrote in the 1640s A Fuller Course &c. In The Art of Logic Conformed to the
Method of Peter Ramus. His was “fuller” because he did not like Ramus’s
brevity:
What is the use of achieving brevity if this means we must go
elsewhere for clarification? It is better to produce a longish
treatment of an art which achieves clarity all in the course of
one work than to explicate a too brief work through a sepa-
rate commentary which results in less clarity.76
Although inflating the text, when teaching about testimony Milton clarified
Ramus only in vaguely Christian terms. Milton quotes Ramus quoting
Cicero on oracles and responses to seers and soothsayers as divine testi-
mony, but then adds:
Whether these are true or fictitious, or from a true divine
command or a false one, the logician does not consider, but
110 A History of Reasonableness
only what force of arguing any given one has. And so also in
civil and human affairs divine testimony has just as much pro-
bative force as its author is a true or a false god.77
If Mather’s catechism and Milton’s fuller course both show Puritan ways of
blurring the line between Ciceronian and Augustinian traditions, Alexander
Richardson’s The Logicians School-Master: or, A Comment upon Ramus
Logicke (London, 1629, enlarged 1657) shows a definite move toward the
Augustinian. His text was very popular among Puritans and stands as one
of the transitional logic textbooks paving the way for the very influential
Port Royal Logic of 1662.
The creation of this textbook from posthumus lecture notes shared
among former students was not abnormal. Richardson taught a few years
after 1587 at the Puritan stronghold of Queen’s College, Cambridge. Long
after his death, it was reported that he also tutored out of his house in
Barking, Essex, where “divers studious young men did resort from
Cambridge . . . to be directed in the study of Divinitie, and other arts.”78
The bookseller Samuel Thomson later wrote of Richardson that “divers
Graduates from several Colledges flock unto his lectures, and what he
freely discoursed unto them in several Sciences, they eagerly took down
from his mouth in writing.”79 Richardson died having never published any-
thing; however, the manuscript notes compiled by his students were still
circulating in 1657. The first published students’ version of Richardson’s
logic lectures was entered in The Register of the Company of Stationers in
1622 and was formally published by John Bellamie in 1629. In 1657, a
larger edition including notes from other courses was published by
Gartude Dawson on behalf of Samuel Thomson. Richardson’s textbooks
were widely used in educational settings controlled by Puritans from the
1630s through the 1670s.
Two Renaissance Traditions 111
Note that God has become divine testifier and divine testator that the
original testimony is true. God the father is author and God the Holy Spirit
is witness to the fact that God the father is author. Here Richardson
answered in Augustinian fashion the fundamental question of how a rea-
soner will distinguish divine from human testimony: God will guarantee the
divinity of the source by the Holy Spirit’s secondary act of confirmation.
Richardson was bringing into his lectures on being reasonable what was
commonly taught in divinity classes. Gerhard Reedy in The Bible and
Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England
devotes a chapter to testimony and external arguments for scriptural
authority. Reedy quotes one minister who accorded the Holy Spirit a “spe-
cial convincing” role in which the “Holy Spirit fills the gap” necessary to
confirm divine testimony’s divinity.84
Having thrown, in the manner of Augustine, the certainty of divine
testimony into the Christian realm of grace and trinitarian theology,
Richardson went back to explain why Ramus, himself, was so Ciceronian
and used “devillish examples” of divine testimony.85 Richardson believed
that Ramus wrote for all students, not simply those who have the Holy
Spirit’s extra confirmation about the divinity of scriptures. By this Richardson
112 A History of Reasonableness
Now then where the Church of Rome reasons with us, [is it]
not better to go to the Church, than to private man? Yes, but
they must be prudent, vertuous, and benevolent: again, they
must see the artificial arguments of that witness, for else if
one man shall bring testimony from the word of God, we are
rather to receive his: else we prefer an humane testimony
before a divine. Again, if it be an humane testimony, and a
human testimony that we compare together, let not a private
man stand up to stir with his meer testimony against a whole
assembly.
The reason of the Creed being generally received in all
Churches, is this, because it hath a divine testimony, ergo,
next to the testimony of the Church, we are to prefer the com-
mon testimony, and then the private, as it doth not jar with
the common one.88
Many teachers liked the way Ramus systemized being reasonable. If topics
was a storage and retrieval system, Ramus cleaned house. His first and fore-
most rule was to dichotomize, split a subject into two constituent parts,
each of which would subsequently be split into its two parts, and so on.
For teachers of kids that mostly ranged between ten and fifteen years old
this black and white pedagogy was easily memorized and worked well
enough. It made being reasonable seem simple. Certainly it kept the store-
house of knowledge well organized. Ramus was also good for other sim-
ple rules that he codified out of the Ciceronian tradition. The most
significant rule for our study he called in Latin reciprocatio, which was
translated into English as reciprocation. The critics of Ramus always found
his simple rules to be easy targets. Being a reasonable adult was more com-
plex than Ramus’s child-oriented, easily memorized method.
The codification of rules is important to the history of testimony. Jerry
Bently, in an article on “the principle of the harder reading”—one of the
canonized rules of handling divergent ancient texts—points out that modern
scholars have shown very little interest in the historical development of
the rules that they take for granted.89 The importance of rules in the art of
being reasonable is most evident in the courtroom. Who gets the benefit
of the doubt is probably the most important decision in any courtroom and
in decision-making in general. Such rules are not usually promulgated by
some Great Thinker; rather, they grow over time and become associated
with “common sense.” Barbara Shapiro has shown that the rise of important
rules of modern courtroom procedure must be found in the court records
and the evolution of juries—not in the canon of philosophical writings on
justice, law, and human nature.90 Anthony Grafton in The Footnote leads
readers through a meandering history of the how historians sought to increase
the credibility of their writing by simple expectations of footnoting.91
For the Ramists that thrived in the sixteenth century, the rule of recipro-
cation was a useful, simple formulation of a traditional rule. It put in codi-
fied form the central principle of the classical and Renaissance tradition for
handling hard-to-believe testimony. The Port-Royal Logic and most of the best
114 A History of Reasonableness
manuals on the art of being reasonable have agreed with the rule in princi-
ple, but few have liked the idea of stating it so baldly as universally applica-
ble. It is important for us to look at because it can be considered the clearest
statement of a traditional tactic that David Hume tried to overturn in his essay
“Of Miracles” and Kant ultimately undermined in modern critical thinking.
The rule of reciprocation, at its most succinct, has already been quoted
from Increase Mather’s catechism:
Q. What is reciprocation?
R. Reciprocation is when the thing argued artificially is
applied to the testifier, and thereby argues for the veracity
of the testimony.92
But just as it is not the testimony by its own force but the
authority of the one giving testimony that argues the thing
testified, so in turn the thing testified argues not the testimony
itself but the authority of the one giving the testimony.93
The structure of this fit with Aristotle’s optimism that people tend to tell
the truth and truth tends to prevail. The method encouraged trust and open-
ness rather than skepticism. The Greeks and the Romans understood that the
art of being reasonable was not a value-free system. Quintilian taught that
lawyers should be more manipulative with testimony and testifiers than his-
torians. Historians have a social obligation to risk believing, even to the
extent of honest error. The Greeks and the Romans understood that the tech-
nical matters of reasoning could sway the conclusion just as modern
Americans in their courtrooms know that rules about the benefit of the doubt
and the presumption of innocence sway the ultimate outcome of a trial.
Ramus, in codifying the rule of reciprocation, did not break with tradi-
tion. The principle was well known. The goal of keeping dialectic open
and trusting rather than closed and skeptical was understood to be good
for society. Of course no textbook writer desired to teach students to be
gullible; however, neither did any textbook writer want to teach students
to be so skeptical that it undermined the fabric of society. People in gen-
eral should be trusting and open. Ramus’s rule clearly anchored classroom
dialectic to trusting reputable authorities who reported amazing events
from the past or amazing facts from distant lands.
That the principle is of profound procedural importance can be shown
by the effect of David Hume’s indirect attack on the rule in Of Miracles.
Hume ignored the tradition that the force of a testimony is in the testifier
and instead wrote as if a testimony has a force for believability of its own
that can be measured against the experience of a listener. Immanuel Kant
would pick up on this and teach that testimony is to be handled in the
same way as personal experience. The most important question in handling
testimony would cease to be “Who is the testifier and what is that person’s
authority?” and become instead “Does the testimony fit my experience?”
This process will be more fully described in the last chapter.
Hume in the wild subtleness of his essay style did not take the time to
explain that he was rebelling against the whole of the dialectic tradition of
handling testimony. Instead he implied that his way of handling testimony
was the way of the Greeks and Romans:
I should not believe such a story were it told to me by Cato, was
a proverbial saying in Rome, even during the lifetime of that
philosophical patriot. The incredibility of the fact, it was
allowed, might invalidate so great an authority.96
Hume was referring to a statement Plutarch reported in his life of Cato the
Younger, that there was
a sort of proverb with many people, if any very unlikely and
incredible thing were asserted, to say they would not believe
it, though Cato himself should affirm it.97
116 A History of Reasonableness
From the perspective of history and law, Julian H. Franklin points out that
Jean Bodin was the first to develop a “full-scale methodology” for handling
testimony.101 I would not call it “full-scale,” although Bodin did go beyond
his contemporaries in analyzing the practical problems of creating credibil-
ity out of historical testimony. Bodin emphasized the role of the historian’s
will and biases and the wise reader’s responsibility to take such matters
into account. He did this in a little handbook, Method for the Easy
Comprehension of History—not a textbook on the whole art of being rea-
sonable but a useful manual that fits between the Roman simplicity of
Lucian’s “How to Write History” and the seventeenth-century sophistication
of Jean LeClerc’s Parrhasiana.102 Important in the history of testimony are
the practical examples Bodin offered dealing with private judgment when
confronted by contradictory testimony.
Jean Bodin (1520–1596) studied and taught law at the University of
Toulouse but spent most of his life in various bureaucratic roles in gov-
ernment. What fame he has in history is tied to his political defense of
absolute state supremacy. He was a diligent information-gatherer and
amazingly well read. His books—on government, history, and witchcraft
cases—are full of evidence and examples. Like the dialecticians of his era,
he was highly interested in “method,” as the title of his 1566 work on his-
torical testimony shows: Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem.103
For a man so widely read in histories, the obvious problem was that so
many famous authors disagreed with each other and were often obviously
passing on rumors. Bodin heaped disdain on anyone who purposely dis-
torted history and understood that, for a moral purpose, some historians
might employ an honorable lie; however, he believed most historians, most
of the time, were trying to the best of their abilities to tell the truth. The trou-
ble lay in the historians’ natural abilities, training, experiences, and “enthusi-
asm and labor in collecting the materials of history.”104 Such optimism is
solidly in the tradition of Aristotle. But gullibility is never a virtue. There is a
reasonable middle ground. “Aristotle,” Bodin writes, “sagely said, that in
118 A History of Reasonableness
To sum up: There were two traditions for logic textbooks in the Renaissance,
Ciceronian and Augustinian. Both were revivals of classical dialectic while
the Augustinian was especially directed toward supporting Christianity.
Both traditions evolved, and in the seventeenth century came the Ramists
who could inflate and deflate their system while tweaking it toward Cicero
or Augustine.
Two Renaissance Traditions 121
NOTES
1. Cicero, Discussion at Tusculum in Cicero on the Good Life, trans. & ed.
Michael Grant (New York: Penguin, 1971), 90.
2. Ramus is quoted and translated by Lisa Jardine in “Distinctive Discipline:
Rudolph Agricola’s Influence on Methodical Thinking in the Humanities,”
Rudolphus Agricola Phrisius 1444 –1485: Proceedings of the International
Conference at the University of Groningen, 23–30 October 1985, eds. F. Akkerman
and A. J. Vanderjagt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 39.
3. Lisa Jardine, “Inventing Rudolph Agricola: Recovery and Transmission of
the De inventione dialectica,” Erasmus: Man of Letters (Princeton: Princeton University,
1993), 83. See also Gerda C. Huisman, Rudolph Agricola: A Bibliography of Printed
Works and Translations (Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1985).
4. Rudolphus Agricola, De Inventione Dialectia Libri Tres (Argentinae: 1521),
I.xiv. Note that not all editions of the text have the same organization. This 1521
122 A History of Reasonableness
edition that is easily available on microfilm is not the same as the 1539 edition pub-
lished in facsimile by B. DeGraaf in 1967.
5. Agricola, De Inventione Dialectica, I.xiv, I.xxiv. Use of the term pronun-
ciata in later logic textbooks is a good indication of direct influence form Agricola.
Almost a century later at Cambridge University, John Seton’s Dialectica (London:
1584) recommended pronunciata.
6. For a complete bibliography of Ramist editions, see Walter J. Ong, Ramus
and Talon Inventory (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1958). Ong’s Ramus,
Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1958) is an early and very influential study of Ramist
logic; however, it tends to overemphsize the distinctiveness of Ramus’s thought.
7. Lisa Jardine, “Humanistic Logic,” The Cambridge History of Renaissance
Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988), 173–98.
See also Roger Sharratt, “Recent Work on Peter Ramus (1970–1986),” Rhetorica 5:7–58
for a discussion of the literature on the whole of Ramus’s influence.
8. Petrus Ramus, Scholarum Dialecticarum seu Animadversionum in
Organum Aristotelis, libri xx (Francofurti: 1544), I.3–31, in Scholae in Tres Primas
Liberales Artes (Francofurti, 1581, reprint Frankfurt: Ninerva G.M.B.H., 1965).
9. Petrus Ramus, Dialecticae Libri Duo (1555 in French, 1556 in Latin, and
final revision in 1572), I.xxxii.
10. Boethius, In Ciceronis Topica, trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1988), 18.68 (p. 171).
11. Ramus, Dialecticae Libri Duo, I.xxxiii.
12. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New York:
Penguin, 1991), 1375a.25–1375b.25.
13. Ibid., 1355a.15–20, 35–40.
14. Philipp Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko
Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999), 105.
See also Charles B. Schmitt, “The Rise of the Philosophical Textbook,” in The
Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1988), 792–804.
15. Melanchthon, Orations, 228.
16. Ibid., 231.
17. Translated in John R. Schneider, Philipp Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal
of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 16.
18. Thomas Wilson, The Rule of Reason (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970),
140th page.
19. Melancthon’s willingness to see his own era as a reformation, specially
designed into Church history, is evident in his oration on “Luther and the Ages of
the Church.” See Donald R. Kelley, Faces of History: Historical Inquiry from
Herodotus to Herder (New Haven: Yale University, 1998), 170.
20. This tradition is more fully discussed in the introduction to Aristotelian and
Cartesian Logic at Harvard: Morton’s “Logick System” and Bratle’s “Compendium of
Logick,” ed. Rick Kennedy (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1995).
21. Philipp Melanchthon, Erotemata Dialectices, in Corpus Reformatiorum, ed.
Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1963, original 1846),
vol. 13, cols. 659–63.
Two Renaissance Traditions 123
49. Lisa Jardine, “Humanism and the Teaching of Logic,” The Cambridge
History of Later Medieval Philosophy, eds. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and
Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982), 801.
50. Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England
(Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University, 1983), 41.
51. Thomas Wilson, Rule of Reason, 129th page.
52. Ibid., the section on argument, bk. I, np.
53. John Case, Dialecticam Aristotelis (Frankfort: 1593), 274.
54. Ibid., 273.
55. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1143b.5–15.
56. Wilson, The Rule of Reason, I, np.
57. Aristotle, Topica, trans. W.A. Pickard-Cambridge in The Works of Aristotle,
ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 100a.30–100b.25.
58. Wilson, The Rule of Reason, bk. I, np.
59. Ralph Lever, The Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft (London: 1573),
189–92.
60. Wilson, The Rule of Reason, bk. I, np.
61. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1921), I.vi.1–3
62. Seton, Dialectica, bk. 4.
63. Wilson, Rule of Reason, 167th page.
64. Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 25.
65. Wilson, Rule of Reason, bk. 1, np.
66. Quoted in Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science,
Faith, and Love (New York: Walker and Co., 1999), 92–93.
67. Anthony Grafton, “Teacher, Text, and Pupil in the Renaissance Class-
Room: A Case Study from a Parisian College, History of Universities 1 (1981): 45.
68. See Harold Love, Scribal publication in Seventeenth-Century England
(New York : Oxford University Press, 1993). See also Thomas Knoles, Rick Kennedy,
and Lucia Zaucha Knoles, Student Notebooks at Colonial Harvard: Manuscripts and
Educational Practice, 1650 –1740 (Worchester: American Antiquarian Society,
2003).
69. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England, 39. Schmitt
warns readers not to “overestimate” differences in logic textbooks and to recognize
“threads of continuity” (38). Testimony is one of the threads of continuity.
70. Howard Hotson, “Philosophical Pedagogy in Reformed Central Europe
Between Ramus and Comenius: A Survey of the Continental Background of the
‘Three Foreigners’,” Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in
Intellectual Communication, eds. Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, Timothy Raylor
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29–50; and Joseph Freedman,
“The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c.1570–c.1630,”
Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 98–152.
71. Freedman, “Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus,” 140.
72. Lisa Jardine, “The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century
Cambridge,” Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974): 59.
73. Walter Ong, “Introduction,” in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, eds.
Walter J. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger (New Haven: Yale University, 1982), 8: 168.
Two Renaissance Traditions 125
74. See Rick Kennedy and Thomas Knoles, “Increase Mather’s Catechismus
Logicus: An Analysis of the Role of A Ramist Catechism,” and “Increase Mather’s
‘Catechismus Logicus,’ ” trans. and ed. Rick Kennedy and Thomas Knoles, Proceedings
of the American Antiquarian Society 109 (1999): 145–223.
75. Kennedy and Knoles, “Increase Mather’s ‘Catechismus Logicus,’ ” 199–201.
76. John Milton, A Fuller Course &c. In The Art of Logic Conformed to the
Method of Peter Ramus, 1672, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 8: 210.
77. Milton, A Fuller Course, 319.
78. George Walker, A True Relation (London: 1642), 6.
79. Samuel Thomson, “The Book-Seller to the Reader,” in Alexander Richardson,
Logicians School-Master: or, A Comment Upon Ramus Logick (London: 1657), np.
80. Richardson, Logicians School-Master, 232.
81. Ibid., 235.
82. Ibid., 237.
83. Ibid., 237–38.
84. Gerhard Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late
Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1985),
57–58.
85. Alexander Richardson, Logicians School-Master, 238.
86. Ibid., 240.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. Jerry Bently, “Erasmus, Jean Le Clerc, and the Principle of the Harder
Reading,” Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978): 309–21.
90. Barbara Shapiro “Beyond Reasonable Doubt” and “Probable Cause”:
Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-American Law of Evidence (Berkeley: University
of California, 1991).
91. Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1997).
92. Kennedy and Knoles, “Increase Mather’s ‘Catechismus Logicus,’ ” 201.
93. Milton, A Fuller Course of Logic, 322.
94. Richardson, Logicians School-Master, 234.
95. Ibid., 235.
96. David Hume, Enquires Concering Human Understanding and Concerning
the Principles of Morals, ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), sect. X,
part I (p. 113).
97. Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” in The Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans, trans. John Dryden (rev. trans. Arthur Hugh Clough), vol. 14 in Great
Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1952), 627.
98. Shapin, A Social History of Truth.
99. Richardson, Logicians School-Master, 244.
100. Ibid., 236–37.
101. Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the
Methodology of Law and History (New York: Columbia University, 1963), 137.
Franklin offers two chapters on the less sophisticated work of Melchior Cano and
François Baudouin, who both precede Bodin.
126 A History of Reasonableness
The Port-Royal Logic was first published in French in 1662 and was initially
titled La Logique ou l’art de penser. For its first half century of European use,
its popular Latin translation was called Ars Cogitandi. Over two centuries
of common use, it was sometimes referred to as the Jansenist Logic but
most often simply called The Port-Royal Logic. Like Quintilian’s Institutio,
The Port-Royal Logic is pleasantly readable, wisdom-filled, and organized
for easy use by young students and old teachers. Although rooted in the
mathematics-inspired reasoning methods of René Descartes, the textbook
also offered a longer, stronger, and deeper recommendation for testimony
in the art of being reasonable than any previous textbook. Most importantly
it dismissed the Aristotelian tradition of topics, modeled a new four-part
structure in which the first three parts described reasoning in geometrical
fashion and the fourth advised on the broader matters of reasonableness.
Testimony, probability, and degrees of assent were important aspects of
this larger reasonableness. As the Ars Cogitandi—the Art of Thinking—it
became the most influential general education textbook of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Key to The Port-Royal Logic’s discussion of testimony was, first, a tra-
ditional Aristotelian optimism about the persuasiveness of truth even
among humans prone to error and deception. Second, it overflows with an
Augustinian emphasis on the rightly oriented will and simple good sense.
Laziness and lack of concern for the truth were presented as the enemies
of reasonableness. Vigor, conscientiousness, and trust along with a measure
of good sense were the start-up qualifications for thinking well and decid-
ing wisely. “Right reason,” The Port-Royal Logic states, “accords all things
their appropriate status. It makes us doubt those that are doubtful, reject
those that are false, and recognize in good faith those that are evident.”1
Third, in Renaissance humanist fashion, The Port-Royal Logic advocates the
128 A History of Reasonableness
AUGUSTINIAN-CARTESIAN LOGIC
The names Port Royal, Jansenism, and Arnauld are complexly entwined
with the history of the textbook. Port Royal is the name of two convents,
one in the Valley of the Chevreuse near Versailles and the other in Paris.
The two convents were the beginning of a new Augustinian religious
order—The Order of the Holy Sacrament—founded in 1632 by Mère
Angélique ( Jacqueline Arnauld 1591–1661). Mère Angélique was the focal
point of an extended family of Arnaulds who tended to be or to marry
lawyers and high civil servants. A multitude of Arnaulds became nuns in the
new order, or male solitaires who lived piously associated with the order,
or patrons of the order, looking after its financial and political interests at
court.2 Antoine Arnauld was the youngest brother of Mère Angélique. He
became the intellectual spokesman for the order’s Augustinian theology
and values. His position on the faculty of the Sorbonne and his correspon-
dence with the proponents of Cartesianism put him at the forefront of a
growing philosophical school, and his family connections and his close
association with Blaise Pascal’s writings made him one of the most public
figures of the Jansenist movement, which was threateningly unafraid of
both the Jesuit order and the crown. Antoine Arnauld believed himself to
be the best kind of churchman and patriot, upholding traditional
Augustinian ways of thinking, but found himself hated by many in both the
church and court as a Jansenist.
Jansenism is the term first used to describe the Augustinian sacramen-
tal theology of the Mère Angélique’s new order. A book, Augustinus
(1640), by the bishop Cornelius Jansenius, had much influence over Mère
Angélique’s spiritual advisor. Beginning as a spiritual discipline that
accorded great honor to the sacraments, the term, “Jansenism” eventually
came to be indiscriminately attached to a volatile political/religious move-
ment. Mère Angélique, her order, and her convents were considered
by the crown to be the fount of the trouble, and were increasingly
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 129
to arrive at the truth we cannot begin with anything more certain than this
proposition: I think, therefore, I am.”5
The vitality of the new Cartesian version of Augustinian reasoning
methods called for a wholly new way of structuring a logic textbook.
Textbooks are usually conservative. They are not supposed to be radical.
But the unstructured “little schools” of Port Royal—along with the
instance of a post-dinner challenge lubricated by fine wine—encouraged
boldness. Arnauld’s textbook turned the textbook tradition on its head.
Instead of starting with the most general and moving to the most specific
as topics demanded or Cassiodorus did with Porphyry’s Tree or Ramus
did with his insistent bifurcations, Arnauld started with the simple, and
dynamically moved toward more and more complexity. His logic had four
parts and four-part logic textbooks began to flourish throughout Europe.
The first three parts were strictly Cartesian and modeled on geometry:
conceiving, judging, and reasoning. The fourth stage recapped the whole
and was called method or ordering. Method had been a section popular-
ized by various humanists, but Arnauld gave it greater responsibility for
teaching the higher and broader art of being reasonable. It was here that
he took on the importance of reasoning with testimony after previously
following the Cartesian principle of warning against authority. Method,
Arnauld claimed, was “doubtless one of the most useful and important
parts” of logic.6 It became a post-Port-Royal tradition to extensively
discuss testimony, degrees of assent, and probability in this last, most
practical, section.
AGAINST TOPICS
a single person who can truly say that when he was required to deal with
some subject, he reflected on these topics and looked to them for the argu-
ments needed?” (182). Arnauld challenged his readers to “consult as many
lawyers and preachers as there are in the world, as many people who
speak and write” to see if any of them actually run through the list of top-
ics in their mind every time they are making a persuasive argument (182).
Presumably there were none. Topics had not served the purpose for which
they had been designed. Ramist topics were especially useless because they
“were too complicated by subdivisions” (184). For a useful dialectic,
Arnauld suggested, look first to the general experience of thinking. The
Port-Royal Logic was dedicated to bringing rigor to the way people natu-
rally think. Not that Arnauld believed natural reasoning did not need to be
structured by rules, but rather, that the rules of reasoning should be
designed to support the practice of reasoning. Arnauld actually reintro-
duced several medieval developments in organizing syllogisms because
such developments helped thinkers understand what was happening in
their minds. Topics never really happened in the mind; therefore, they were
useless in understanding the art of thinking.
Dismissed along with topics was the technical language that distin-
guished between technical/non-technical, intrinsic/extrinsic, artificial/inarti-
ficial. The subject of the distinction would receive greater attention than
ever before—“the mind and common sense” demanded it. (181). But
encrusted technical terms were of no interest to Arnauld. “The mind is too
large, life too short, and time too precious to occupy oneself with trivial
matters” (5). St. Augustine had not used such terms in On the Trinity or his
other famous discussions of testimony. Augustine had simply shown how
the reasonable person distinguishes between what is worked up by reason
and what comes ready-made from divine or human authorities. To Arnauld
it made good sense to use simple terms for the distinction. However, as a
follower of Descartes, he wanted to be avoid the term “authority.” With
Arnauld we have entered the early modern age of Baconian and Cartesian
rhetoric that sets the individual against authority. Arnauld condemned
thoughtless regard to intellectual authorities while affirming thoughtful
assent to testimony.
Like the classical orators, Arnauld was sure that good thinking was
done best by good people. But not just a good person alone; rather, good
thinking was both individual and social. It was as much a result of good
temperament as it was a result of being capable of good friendship, citi-
zenship, and social commitment. Of course it was the result of rigorous
study and intellectual abilities, but good thinking also required a willing-
ness to trust outside sources of information.
Assured of this, it is understandable why Arnauld would give more space
than any previous logic textbook to handling testimony. Good handling of
testimony depended upon being open and trusting while being wise and dis-
cerning. “Right reason accords all things their appropriate status,” Arnauld
had written in the introduction; “it makes us doubt those that are doubtful,
reject those that are false, and recognize in good faith those that are evident”
(7). Wisdom and discernment were especially important when handling
authority since it could so easily be abused by the powerful while at the same
time so many people are willing submit to authority for the wrong reasons.
A section on logical errors required discussing the “sophism of authority” in
which outward matters take precedence over internal truth (220–25).
“No fallacies are more frequent,” Arnauld wrote, “than those people com-
mit, either by judging the truth of things hastily based on some authority
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 133
against black and white simplicities. It was a pardonable error for good
people to humbly defer to authorities more than they should; however, the
politically exiled Arnauld noted that too much humility can dangerously
work against reasonableness (221).
Arnauld divided his text into four parts with the last being “Method,” some-
times called “Ordering.” This section dealt with complexities of higher rea-
sonableness whereas the earlier sections had been focused on simple
reasoning. The section opens by distinguishing three types of knowledge:
certainty, opinion, and faith. The early chapters deal with the relationship
of certainty and opinion as thinkers use the model of geometry. Chapter 12
moves to the third: “What we know by faith, whether human or divine.”
The term “faith” is equated with “belief”; Augustine’s On the Profit of
Believing is cited: “What we know we owe to reason; what we believe, to
authority.” Belief, according to Arnauld, was “another kind of knowledge
that often is no less certain or evident in its own way” (260). Knowledge
and belief, authority and certainty, reason and faith: all these terms were
important to a higher reasonableness that was more complex than geo-
metrical reasoning.
For Arnauld, this complex mixture of reasoning and faith beyond reason
was actually the most common lived experience of thinkers. It was “common
use of good sense” and “takes place every day in human affairs” (262).
Reason itself persuades us that there is a broader and more commonly used
art of thinking bigger than reasoning. The first three sections of the book
deals with reasoning, but the conclusion of the book turns to the art of rea-
sonableness.
Testimony first shows up in the method section in a list of eleven
“important axioms that may be used as principles of great truths,” the last
three of which “are the foundation of faith” (251–52). Axiom 9: “It is the
nature of a finite mind not to be able to understand the infinite” (251).
Arnauld and Blaise Pascal were intimate colleagues and shared many ideas
between them about bringing the mathematical concepts of infinity and
probability into logic and Christian apologetics.9 The role of mathematical
136 A History of Reasonableness
When the facts that the senses can easily judge are witnessed
by a great number of persons from different times, different
nations, and diverse interests, who speak about them as if
from personal experience, and who cannot be suspected of
having conspired to maintain a lie, they should be considered
as constant and indubitable as if we had seen them with our
own eyes. (251)
Although he had abandoned topics and avoided the old humanist tendency
to quote Cicero and Quintialian and instead relied heavily on Augustine,
Arnauld maintained the classical tradition of distinguishing two types of
testimony, divine and human, that, in certain circumstances of fact, yield
a faith that is equal (or greater) in certainty to demonstrations from self-
evident principles.
Moving from this list of important axioms to the section of the book
devoted to the subject of testimony, Arnauld noted that even though
humans are deceivers and easily deceived, some human testimony is
absolutely certain.
The first thing to note in this important passage is that Arnauld affirms
the traditional distinction between reason and authority. The former is
wholly within the mind of the reasoner. The latter begins with learning pre-
packaged information from other people. The former yields science. The
latter yields faith. The second notable point is that even though humans are
liars and error is easily possible, good sense requires understanding the
limits of reasoning and reasonableness, thereby avoiding the dangers of
either gullibility or radical skepticism. The third important point is the tri-
partite categories of certainty. At the top is the faith that we would be fools
not to believe. At the bottom is the utter absence of human certainty. In the
large middle between the two extremes believability slides closer to either
certainty or uncertainty.
Arnauld goes on to devote a chapter to reported miracles where he fur-
ther warns against the twin evils of gullibility and being overly skeptical.
Both extremes he considers unthinking banality. The Port-Royal Logic can
be considered the most influential first-generation book in the great debate
over miracles that spilled over into textbooks on reasonableness through-
out the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Arnauld followed the tradition
that the Ramists called the rule of reciprocation—that when dealing with
the hard-to-believe the reasonable person should rely most heavily on the
character and circumstances of the testifier. If the testifier was trustworthy
and the circumstances of the testifier’s knowledge reassuring then the tes-
timony should be trusted. Arnauld used the example of Augustine as a
trustworthy testifier: “persons of good sense, even if they are devoid of
piety, ought to recognize as authentic the miracles St. Augustine relates in
his Confessions or in the City of God as having taken place before his eyes,
or about which he testifies to having been particularly informed by the
persons themselves to whom these things happened” (267). Augustine,
Arnauld declared, was “a very enlightened and sincere man” (269).
138 A History of Reasonableness
Implied within this and other examples given by Arnauld is the third tech-
nical issue that always underlies judging testimony: Who gets the benefit of
the doubt? and Who has the burden of proof ? In the above example and a
following example dealing with dating irregularities in the Bible, the benefit
of the doubt goes to the testimony and testifiers. The event is not impossible
nor is the harmonization of dates impossible; therefore, we should tend to
accept the original testimony. The burden of proof is on those who want to
reject a testimony. Even if the testimony and testifier are obviously biased,
“there must be some significant reasons to make us believe the contrary,
notwithstanding this bias” (271). Arnauld believed this tendency to give the
benefit of the doubt to what is received and shift the burden of proof onto
those who want to reject was crucial; otherwise, almost all of history and
almost all of what we know would crumble. For Arnauld, reason must be
applied so as not to be irresponsibly destructive. Reason must be productive.
For Descartes and his followers reason’s productivity could be
enhanced by principles and methods derived from mathematics and geom-
etry. Arnauld’s last chapter on testimony and a final chapter on future acci-
dents mark the inauguration of mixing the new mathematics of probability
with social knowledge. More will be said of this at the end of this chapter
since it is one of The Port-Royal Logic’s most evident and lingering contri-
butions in the history of handling testimony. Here we can see in Arnauld’s
conclusion to chapter 15 his vital desire to encourage rigorous good sense,
serious questioning, and respect for long-held and socially dominant beliefs
in the art of thinking:
This six-part checklist nicely fits within the textbook tradition and expresses
implicitly what the Ramist called the rule of reciprocation. Testimony was
to be considered in its context—especially the context of its testifiers.
Arnauld would have had no trouble with the content of the checklist.
Arnauld also would have appreciated the way Locke discussed testi-
mony that is of such high probability that it compels assent. What Arnauld
had described as one category, Locke described as three different types of
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 143
When the facts that the senses can easily judge are witnessed
by a great number of persons from different times, different
nations, and diverse interests, who speak about them as if
from personal experience, and who cannot be suspected of
having conspired to maintain a lie, they should be considered
as constant and indubitable as if we had seen them with our
own eyes.18
Once again, it is the tone and direction of the argument, not the actual
words, that separate Arnauld from Locke. In the long run of Anglo-Scottish
logic, Arnauld’s The Port-Royal Logic and Locke’s An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding would work together while supporting two traditions.
The first tradition was overtly supportive of biblical history and especially
146 A History of Reasonableness
adamant about the veracity of miracle accounts. The second tradition was
more circumspect and concerned that nobody get excited too fast.
As for testimony and authority in general, Locke paralleled the
Augustinian-Jansenist recognition that much of human understanding was
dependent on sources of information outside of the reasoner. Such infor-
mation brought the reasoner into a realm of probability and degrees of
assent. Some of this information could compel assent and was due the
highest assurance and confidence. On the other hand, testimony and
authority were weak. Neither Arnauld nor Locke advocated gullible sub-
mission to authority, but Locke more than Arnauld wanted to keep the indi-
vidual reasoner in control. Arnauld was willing to advocate submission to
the universal Church and be compelled to assent to the miracle accounts
of such a good testifier as Augustine. He believed that much of common
life involved judgment on matters beyond reason. And he was intensely
pious. Locke believed in the same structures, but his sense of reasonable-
ness was rooted not in intense piety but in commitment to decency and
good order.
Watts began the book in the late 1690s while tutoring the son of Sir
John Hartopp in Newington Green, a rich section of London where dis-
senting education had long been strong and where Charles Morton had
written his logic textbook after Melanchthon. Morton in the middle 1680s
was persecuted and forced into exile for his educational influence, but by
Watts’s time such antagonisms had calmed to the point that Watts could
live, teach, and pastor the comfortable and pious dissenters of Newington
Green with complete security. Such a time suited Watts’s gentle tempera-
ment. He was humble, never married, seldom traveled, and enough of
148 A History of Reasonableness
a chronic invalid that for most of his life he was unable to mount the pul-
pit and instead lived in semi-isolation with a wealthy family. Antoine
Arnauld and John Locke were important men of affairs, known by kings,
and forced into political exile for parts of their lives. Both had moments of
brilliant clarity. Both had axes to grind. Watts, himself, had no axe and no
edginess. The clarity of his thinking came not from moments of brilliance,
but rather the quiet reasonableness of a chaplain trying to talk to a group
of wealthy schoolboys.
Watts much appreciated Locke’s Essay, but he also enjoyed the common
sense Augustinian Cartesianism of Arnauld’s Port-Royal Logic. Although
adopting many terms and statements from the Essay, overall he writes with
the calmer version of the Christian apologetic focus that characterizes The
Port-Royal Logic. For Arnauld and Watts education was foundationally
Christian and almost every part of logic had a Christian application.
Throughout Watts’s textbook there are features more similar to The Port-
Royal Logic than to An Essay on Human Understanding. Locke has no
chapter titles using “testimony” and his fourth section was not titled
“method.” Watts’s does. On the subject of topics, Watts does not condemn
them as useless, but otherwise follows The Port-Royal Logic in noting that
only his sense of duty leads him “to make a little delay here to treat briefly
of the doctrine of topics.”37 Watts granted that topics were sometimes use-
ful “for persons of lower genius” but “a man of moderate sagacity” and “just
diligence and enquiry” does not need them.38
What raises Watts’s textbook above Arnauld’s, Locke’s and so many
others was that Watts was one of England’s great stylists. He wrote with ele-
gant simplicity. He made even a long passage on rules so compelling that
many subsequent English textbooks on logic and jurisprudence, polemics
on miracles, and apologies for Christianity could not help but echo his
phrases and concepts. The following excerpt is long but the only way to
understand the cumulative power of Watts’s rhetoric and the comprehen-
sive way a majority of eighteenth and nineteenth century Anglo-American
students were taught to be reasonable with information gained from out-
side sources.
Watts concluded this section with two observations. The first was that the
above rules fully supported the Christian religion, especially the event of
Jesus’ resurrection. The second observation was the weakness of ancient
human history. Like Locke, Watts did not think that ancient history in general
carried much authority. The authority of Jesus’ resurrection was exceptional
given the amount of first-hand testimony and surrounding circumstances.
Watts’s next chapter is on divine testimony. Here he also offered rules
that advanced and clarified the subject. Important for the many Christian
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 151
apologists who used Watts’s Logick, the initial authority behind Jesus’ alleged
resurrection was human testimony. Divine testimony overlay the initial
human testimony to give further support and supply different information.
As Locke had pointed out, human testimony was best for matters of fact but
little more. Divine testimony was the category upon which many larger mat-
ters depended. The key traditional issues with divine testimony were con-
firming its divine source and its relation to human reason. Watts, with English
gentility, offered a generally Lockean position with less negativity and less
overt antagonism to enthusiasm. Here again I transcribe all of Watts’s rules.
Principles and Rules of Judgment in Matters of Divine
Testimony
As human testimony acquaints us with matters of fact,
both past and present, which lie beyond the reach of our own
personal notice; so divine testimony is suited to inform us
both of the nature of things, as well as matters of fact, and of
things future, as well as present or past.
Whatsoever is dictated to us by God himself, or by men
who are divinely inspired, must be believed with full assur-
ance. Reason demands us to believe whatsoever divine reve-
lation dictates: For God is perfectly wise, and cannot be
deceived; he is faithful and good, and will not deceive his
creatures: And when reason has found out the certain marks
or credentials of divine testimony to belong to any proposi-
tion, there remains then no farther enquiry to be made, but
only to find out the true sense and meaning of that which
God has revealed, for reason itself demands the belief of it.
Now divine testimony or revelation requires these fol-
lowing credentials:
1. That the propositions or doctrines revealed be not
inconsistent with reason; for intelligent creatures can never be
bound to believe real inconsistencies. Therefore we are sure
the popish doctrine of transubstantiation is not a matter of
divine revelation, because it is contrary to all our senses and
our reason, even in their proper exercises. God can dictate
nothing but what is worthy of himself, and agreeable to his
own nature and divine perfections. Now many of these per-
fections are discoverable by the light of reason, and whatso-
ever is inconsistent with these perfections, cannot be a divine
revelation.
But let it be noted, that in matters of practice towards our
fellow-creatures, God may command us to act in a manner
contrary to what reason would direct antecedent to that
command. So Abraham was commanded to offer up his son
a sacrifice: The Israelites were ordered to borrow of the
Egyptians without paying them, and to plunder and slay the
inhabitants of Canaan: Because God has a sovereign right to
all things, and can with equity dispossess his creatures of life,
152 A History of Reasonableness
and every thing which he has given them, and especially such
sinful creatures as mankind; and he can appoint whom he
pleases to be the instruments of this just dispossession or
deprivation. So that these divine commands are not really
inconsistent with right reason; for whatsoever is so cannot be
believed where that inconsistency appears.
2. Upon the same account the whole doctrine of revela-
tion must be consistent with itself; every part of it must be
consistent with each other: And though in points of practice
latter revelation may repeal or cancel former divine laws, yet
in matters of belief, no latter revelation can be inconsistent
with what has been heretofore revealed.
3. Divine revelation must be confirmed by some divine
and supernatural appearances, some extraordinary signs or
tokens, visions, voices, or miracles wrought, or prophecies
fulfilled. There must be some demonstrations of the presence
and power of God, superior to all the powers of nature, or
the settled connection which God as Creator has established
among his creatures in this visible world.
4. If there are any such extraordinary and wonderful
appearances and operations brought to contest with, or to
oppose divine revelation, there must and always will be such
a superiority on the side of revelation which is truly divine,
as to manifest that God is there. This was the case when the
Egyptian sorcerers contended with Moses. But the wonders
which Moses wrought did so far transcend the power of the
magicians, as made them confess, It was the finger of God.
5. These divine appearances or attestations to revelation
must be either known to ourselves by our own personal
observation of them, or they must be sufficiently attested by
others, according to the principles and rules by which matters
of human faith are to be judged in the foregoing section.
Some of those who lived in nations and ages where mir-
acles were wrought, were eye and ear witnesses of the truth
and divinity of the revelation; but we, who live in these
distant ages, must have them derived down to us by just and
incontestable history and tradition. We also, even in these
distant times, may see the accomplishment of some ancient
predictions, and thereby obtain that advantage toward the
confirmation of our faith in divine revelation, beyond what
those persons enjoyed who lived when the predictions were
pronounced.
6. There is another very considerable confirmation of
divine testimony; and that is when the doctrines themselves,
either on the publication or the belief of them produce super-
natural effects. Such were the miraculous powers which com-
municated to believers in the first ages of Christianity, the
conversion of Jews or Gentiles, the amazing success of the
gospel of Christ, without human aid, and in opposition to
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 153
Jakob Bernoulli (1654–1705) was born in Basel and in 1687 became pro-
fessor of mathematics at the university there. His Ars Conjectandi was pub-
lished after his death by his nephew and collaborator Nikolas Bernoulli I
(1687–1759). Nikolaus was raised to the chair of logic at the University of
Basel in 1722, trading it for the professorship in law in 1731. Back in 1709,
when as a student pursuing a degree of doctor of jurisprudence and proba-
bly working with material that he and his uncle had earlier discussed,
Nikolaus wrote a dissertation that was published as De Usu Artis Conjectandi
in Iure (1709). This book was possibly the first attempt at quantifying
testimonial credibility with mathematical precision. He advocated judging the
credibility of a specific testimony by first measuring the veracity of the
witness. First the witness’s past lies and truth-tellings should be counted and
juxtaposed to create a ratio of general credibility. Second, that ratio should
then be used as part of the assessment of the individual testimony. As
Lorraine Daston puts it, Bernoulli thought that circumstances in history could
be assumed “to duplicate themselves closely enough for [his] proportions to
make sense.”51
No reputable mathematician or logician proposed that their numbers
and formulas measured the real character of a witness or the actual credi-
bility of a testimony with complete precision. Rather, the numbers were a
more-or-less rigorous analogies to reality. Take for example one of the most
famous students of probability, Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace
(1749–1827). In Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités (1814) the first para-
graph of his chapter on testimonies begins:
The majority of our opinions being founded on the probabil-
ity of proofs it is indeed important to submit it to calculus.
Things it is true often become impossible by the difficulty of
appreciating the veracity of witnesses and by the great num-
ber of circumstances which accompany the deeds they attest;
but one is able in several cases to resolve the problems which
have much analogy with the questions which are proposed
and whose solutions may be regarded as suitable approxima-
tions to guide and to defend us against the errors and the
dangers of false reasoning to which we are exposed. An
approximation of this kind, when it is well made, is always
preferable to the most specious reasonings.52
testimony can create two ratios. Supposing one numerator to describe the
amount of conformity with experience, subtract that numerator from the
denominator to get another numerator describing the amount of unconfor-
mity with experience. Subtract the smaller fraction from the greater, and
thereby produce the “exact force of the superior evidence.” So suppose a
testimony conforms to experience as 7/10. It then does not conform as
3/10. Subtract 3 from 7 and the “exact force” is only 4/10 in favor of the
testimony. Such is the “diminution of assurance” brought about by creating
in the receiver’s mind an “opposite circumstance.” The second general
application is not with an opposite contrived solely in one’s mind but in
relation to “the opposition of contrary testimony; from the character or
number of the witnesses; from the manner of their delivering their testi-
mony; or from the union of all these circumstances.”57
Hume, unlike Laplace, did not warn his readers that he was only offer-
ing an analogy or approximation; rather, he jumped with both feet into the
mire of applying quantities to qualities. Many supporters and critics have
tried to make sense of how either of these applications can be made to
serve a useful purpose. In the twentieth century, with the decline of sophis-
ticated interest in testimony, many consider Hume’s essay not only to be
the classic statement on handling testimony, but pretty much all one needs
to know. I was once on a panel in which a well-respected historian
declared that he had recently read Hume’s essay and found only simple
good sense. It is hard to read the above quoted paragraphs and find any-
thing simple even if you want to find the good sense.
Beginning with The Port-Royal Logic and much expanded in the eigh-
teenth century, it became common for students to be taught probabilistic
logic made over into a form that relied on the mathematical probability. As
can be seen in Hume’s essay, the language of quantities, measurement, and
formulas was relied upon to create an aura of rigor and precision. Stephen
Toulmin warns against “an excessive respect for mathematics” when think-
ing about probability.58 Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) advised readers
to be wary of mathematical notions in probability in three essays: “A
Preliminary Chapter, Toward an Examination of Hume’s Argument Against
Miracles, in its Logic and in its History,” “Hume’s Arguments Against
Miracles, and the Idea of Natural Law,” and “On the Logic of Drawing
History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies.”59 “In a sci-
entific sense,” Peirce writes, “there are no ‘probabilities’ to be judged.”60
Since probability “is the ratio of the frequency of occurrence of a specific
event to a generic event,” it cannot be applied to handling testimony. A tes-
timony “is neither a specific event, nor a generic event, but an individual
event.” 61 There are no regularities, uniformities, or constants in human
nature, experience, or observation that can be used to create a numerators
and denominators. Human life is too complex for such reductions.
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 161
Since 80/100 beats 77/100, it is easy to see how one witness, slightly more
credible than two others, can still hold sway. But because the numbers are
estimates created out of the head of an individual, the benefit of a jury trial
comes by further correlating the calculations of all twelve jurors. Twelve
“intelligent” jurors make their own personal calculations, then average the
sums together to arrive at a “joint opinion” of the force of the two witnesses
against the one.72
Kirwan applied his calculus to a wide variety of models, including
plural reports, successive reports, newspaper reports, ancient facts with
corroborating evidence, ancient facts without corroborating evidence,
incredible reports, miraculous reports, and absurd reports. All along the
way he refers readers to the wide range of eighteenth-century litera-
ture—scientific journals, manuals on laws of evidence, treatises by math-
ematicians, and other logicians—contributing to the calculus of
testimony. Toward the end he even tentatively offers a scale to help esti-
mate values for the credibility of witnesses, those swearing by the Bible
and those unsworn.
164 A History of Reasonableness
testimony lasting until the year 3150. Craige used this algorithm to predict
the second coming because he believed Jesus’ return would be correlated
to end of testimonial authority for his life and teachings.83 Laplace thought
Craige’s math “bizarre” but affirmed that inevitably “the action of time
enfeebles” testimony—even written and published testimony.84 In “The
Sixth Dialogue” of George Berkeley’s Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher,
Crito defends the moral certainty of histories but admits that the light of
truth “is variously weakened and obscured, by passing through a long dis-
tance or gross medium, where it is intercepted, distorted, or tinctured, by
the prejudices and passions of men.”85 It cannot be denied, he says, that
eyewitnesses to Jesus have stronger evidence than we can have.
Kirwan taught that this is not necessarily true. He asserted that
testimonies committed to paper could retain their original level of certainty.
Written testimony, in general, he believed to be “vastly stronger” than oral
testimony because not only is it preserved but a writer “has more leisure to
weigh his account, and render it more accurate.”86 In the case of passing
through centuries of the gross medium of human distortions, textual criti-
cism would be able to find the copying errors and preserve the truth.
Directly answering Locke, Kirwan wrote that the “true reason” a copy of a
copy of a well-attested deed in not acceptable to the courts is not neces-
sarily that the document is not trusted, but rather that those presenting it
are not trusted. The copy of a copy is allowed in court if it can be proved
to be the only copy.87
In sum, The Port-Royal Logic introduced the use of mathematics of
probability to textbook discussions of testimony. A century and a half later,
Kirwan’s Logick offered close to two hundred pages on testimony and
authority, much of it modeled on the mathematics of probability. Later in
the nineteenth century, as will be shown in the next chapter, the most
dynamic textbooks on the art of thinking reasonably were written by new
groups of Aristotelian sympathizers who thought it wise not to try to quantify
qualities. However, the use of math in the handling of testimony continued
to be assumed and taught. Hume’s essay against miracles continued to be
popular and to function as a talisman for the vague idea that there was some
mathematical sophistication to balancing likelihoods. I have quoted C. S.
Peirce’s attacks on the math in Hume’s essay. Careful reasoners always rec-
ognized that the math could act only as a superficial analogy to the deeper
human complexities of handling testimony. In the middle of the twentieth
century Stephen Toulmin still thought it important in The Uses of Argument
(1958) to disabuse people from assuming that the language of “weighing”
and “balancing” meant that dialectical arguments had any claim to mathe-
matical rigor.88 James McCosh, Scot logician and president of the College of
New Jersey (later Princeton University), is an example of an influential edu-
cator who at the end of the nineteenth century carried on the tradition of
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 167
land of Erasmus and Hugo Grotius. LeClerc was a Swiss Protestant who cen-
tered his activity in Amsterdam. Bayle was a Protestant from the provinces
of southern France who worked out of Rotterdam. Both men wrote widely,
but found their initial influence in publishing magazines that reviewed and
digested the work of many of the greatest intellects of their era, such as
Arnauld, Locke, Leibniz, and Malebranche. LeClerc published and edited
the Bibiothèque Universelle et Historique (1686–93), then the Bibliothèque
Choisie (1703–13), and then Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne (1704–27).
Bayle published and edited Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684–87)
and wrote a widely read Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697).
As can be seen from the above titles, LeClerc and Bayle were both
interested in history and historical methods. Anthony Grafton has found the
roots of the modern historical footnote in both these men. Footnotes, for
Grafton, are the key to the “messy mixture of art and science” that brings
authority to modern academic history.92 They are part of a double narrative
in which the author of the text at the top of the page carries on a second
discussion with the reader about authority at the bottom of the page.
Indeed, the footnotes themselves carry a double message. One is a request
by the writer that the reader not trust him or her for accurately reporting
on the testimony of a source. “Go to the source yourself!” the writer tells
the reader. But that message is a sham because both writer and reader
know that it will be very rare that the reader checks the original sources.
The second message is “Trust me!” The writer, by encouraging the reader
to look up the sources, shows that he or she is willing to be tested and asks
for the reader’s trust. The writer gains greater authority because of his or
her willingness. So the double message is “Don’t trust me!” and “Trust me!”
In the mix of these two contradictories comes greater authority.
Bayle and LeClerc helped develop this double narrative with its double
message. Its use became an important aspect of historical writing in the
republic of letters. Bayle took the double narrative to such lengths that in
his Historical and Critical Dictionary the footnotes are often as long as,
and sometimes longer than, the text at the top of the page. But the prac-
tice of footnoting was only a small part of their concern for the problems
of testimony and authority. Bayle despairingly found himself drawn to high
degrees of skepticism about human testimony, which pushed him to an
extreme position of fideism about divine testimony. He taught historians
the duty to be critical and the responsibility to be true; however, he him-
self seems not to have found a consistent way to do both with both human
and divine testimony.93 Instead of a consistent art of being reasonable, he
sometimes fell into a despairing black and white view of reason and faith:
LeClerc, like Bacon, could wax eloquent and sound very modern in
declarations such “The Republic of Letters is at last become a Country of
170 A History of Reasonableness
Reason and Light, and not of Authority and implicit Faith, as it has been
but too long.”96 However, LeClerc, in his logic textbook and other writings,
understood that faith and authority played a huge role in disputes between
rational people. When stating the importance of history, LeClerc relied on
the traditional distinction that authoritative history “supplies us with what
we want in Experience, which is always shut up in narrow bounds.”97
Testimony would always be needed to supplement knowledge by
experience; therefore, rules for handling testimony needed to be devel-
oped, just as rules for experiments needed to be developed. LeClerc has
come to be considered one of the founders of modern textual criticism—
especially Biblical criticism. Like Arnauld, who proposed rules for which
testifier gets the benefit of the doubt, who has the burden of proof, what
certainty outranks another, and mathematical models for probabilistic rea-
soning, LeClerc sought to establish rules and models for reasoning. A foun-
dational rule of modern scholarship he helped develop is sometimes called
the Principle of the Harder Reading. It states that between variations in
transcriptions of an ancient text, the transcript with more grammatical com-
plexity or awkward phrasing, or even internal contradictions, is the one
that is older and closer to the source. The acceptable assumption in this
rule is that later scribes would most likely fix problems rather than create
them.98
Rules governing issues of competing texts are the foundation of pro-
ductive scholarship. In an era that recognized that individual experience
was not sufficient, that outside information was a necessary supplement for
an individual’s rationality, the rules for deciding which text is authoritative,
what sources get the benefit of the doubt, and whether a type of testimo-
nial certainty supercedes even scientific certainty—in an era that was also
accelerating in the need for textbooks, encyclopedias, and intellectual
magazines—thinkers like Arnauld, LeClerc, and Bayle were invaluable. Of
the three, Bayle’s rather frantic swings between skepticism and fideism
show all the more why the practical rules promoted by Arnauld and LeClerc
were so influential.
NOTES
1. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, trans. and
ed. Jill Vance Buroker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7.
2. For the intricacies of the Arnauld family, see Alexander Sedgwick, The
Travails of Conscience: The Arnauld Family and the Ancien Régime (Cambridge:
Harvard University, 1998).
3. Arnauld and Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, 3.
Long Influence of The Port-Royal Logic 171
historical study, see R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph
Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981).
56. David Hume, “Of Miracles,” in Enquiries Concerning Human
Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge,
revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), X. 1. 87–88 (pp. 110–112).
57. Ibid., X. 1. 89 (p. 112).
58. Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1958), 69–70.
59. Page numbers I give will come from the only complete modern printing
of these works: Charles S. Peirce, Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science,
ed. Carolyn Eisele (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1985), II, 703–801, 890–913. The best
study of Peirce on this subject is Kenneth R. Merrill’s “Hume’s ‘Of Miracles,’ Peirce,
and the Balancing of Likelihoods,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1991): 85–113.
See also Robert H. Ayers, “C. S. Peirce On Miracles,” Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society 16 (1980): 242–54.
60. Peirce, Historical Perspectives, 911.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 910.
63. E. F. Dixon, “Richard Kirwan, The Dublin Philosopher,” Dublin Historical
Record 24 (1971): 54.
64. Richard Kirwan, Logick; or, An Essay on The Elements, Principles, and
Different Modes of Reasoning, 2 vols. (London: 1807), I, viii.
65. Ibid., I, iii.
66. Ibid., I, v.
67. Ibid., I, 186–87.
68. Ibid., I, 247.
69. Ibid., I, 177.
70. Ibid., I, vi and II, 330.
71. Ibid., II, 310–312.
72. Ibid., II, 314.
73. “Sworn” indicates when received as sworn testimony.
74. Kirwan, Logick, II, 347–48.
75. Hume, “Of Miracles,” X. 1. 88 (p. 112).
76. Kirwan, Logick, II, 332.
77. Ibid., Logick, II, 332.
78. Hume, “Of Miracles,” X. 1. 88 (p. 112).
79. Ibid., I, 268–271.
80. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV. xvi. 10.
81. Ibid.
82. See the discussion and analysis by Coady in “The Disappearance of
History,” Testimony: A Philosophical Study, 199–223.
83. See Richard Nash’s translation and historical introduction in John Craige’s
Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1991).
84. Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 124–25.
85. George Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, vol. 2 of The Works
of George Berkeley (London: George Bell & Sons, 1898), Sixth Dialogue, 31.
174 A History of Reasonableness
APPRECIATING ARISTOTLE:
THOMISTS, SCOTS, AND OXFORD NOETICS
John of St. Thomas’s Ars Logica encouraged the spirit of Thomist edu-
cation. The discipline of logic for the Thomists should be focused on the
firm certainty of valid inferences from premises to conclusions. Thomas
Aquinas was not a logician proper, but he reveled in the strength of formal
logical relationships. Thomists shared their founder’s optimism and encour-
aged separating logic classes from epistemological matters that should be
discussed in other classes. Ars Logica resisted the Renaissance tendency to
merge rhetoric, dialectic, and logic to the detriment of syllogistic logic.
A generation before John, the Jesuit Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599) had
produced a series of textbooks, including the Institutionum Dialecticarum
that remained in use into the nineteenth century. Fonseca has been called
the “Aristotle of Portugal” and was also an early force in the spread of
Thomism. But his Institutionum Dialecticarum followed Renaissance ten-
dencies—especially in the prominent place given to topics with the normal
brief treatment of inartificial argument.10 Fonseca’s manual, however, was
not as interesting to later Thomists as John of St. Thomas’s. The Ars Logica
did not try to mix topics with syllogisms. John of St. Thomas followed
Aristotle and Aquinas more closely by being focused on the certainties of
formal logic rather than the Ciceronian vagueries of probabilistic dialectic.
Having said this, our interest in John of St. Thomas is how he still kept
testimony and authority in his logic textbook even though he abandoned
topics and the normal humanist conflations. John’s strategy for testimony
and authority was to sink it into a discussion of inevident habits. Somewhat
similar to Phillip Melanchthon’s way of placing testimony in the discussion
of habits within the larger context of the Aristotelian category of quality,
John of St. Thomas was mostly concerned with describing the boundary
between “science” gained from self-evident principles and the “inferior sci-
ence” that is not.11 He desired to teach a boundary line he described in his
section title: “On Science Considered Both in Itself and In Relation to
Opinion and Belief.”12
Science, for John of St. Thomas, is an evident habit while opinion and
belief are inevident habits. Habits in the Aristotelian tradition were some-
times presented with precision and sometimes more generally. In the gen-
eral sense, habits were a quality in something of deep and steady inclination.
Science and belief both have habits that deeply and permanently incline or
connect them to types of knowledge. Not only do types of conclusions and
types of information have habits but the people working with them have
habits. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas had drawn extensively from
Aristotle’s works on categories, metaphysics, ethics, and the soul to show
that a person’s habits steadily influence the intellect and especially the will.
“From the very nature of habit,” Aquinas wrote, “it is clear that it is princi-
pally related to the will, inasmuch as habit is that which one uses when one
wills.”13 Habits were a deep and guiding part of a person’s character and
180 A History of Reasonableness
Intellectual habits
Evident Inevident
*See John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, VI, ques. 26 (pp. 504–549)
role for trust in the midst of fear. A habit of trust in God-given information
should be used to construct absolutely certain knowledge even when
humans are necessarily mired in the obscurity of looking through a glass
darkly when thinking about God. Trust is a habit of steady assent. It is the
root of the tree that can lead to truth by means of right reasoning using
opinions, beliefs, and suspicions. Trust is the flip-side of optimism that
humans can attain true knowledge and construct more. Doubt is not a
habit. It is not steady. John of St. Thomas gives it no role the productive
reasoning.
As with Melanchthon, John of St. Thomas found the Aristotelian and
Thomist term habit useful for understanding reasoning using testimony.
Inevident habits were useful for merging epistemology and psychology,
helping to explain the human process of bringing together into one art
what was epistemologically divided as art and non-art. The Stoic notion
182 A History of Reasonableness
of assent was joined with Aristotelian logic and ethics within a discussion
of habit in order to teach young students the borderlands between the
certainties of formal logic and the larger context of reasoning from infor-
mation that was not self-evident.
We should not make too much of John of St. Thomas’s textbook. Roman
Catholic education has never been fully channeled into a set of curricular
standards; however, Ars Logica indicates the way the increasingly dominant
values of Thomism could support logic curricula narrowly focused on
formal logic while at the same time giving due space to the foundational
epistemological distinction between reason and authority, intrinsic and
extrinsic information, that Augustine and Aquinas taught as part of a more
comprehensive reasonableness. Although logic classes in Catholic universities
followed along with other universities the path of greater specialization and
narrower interest in only valid inferences with no reference to epistemolog-
ical or psychological matters, elementary Thomistic education in many
disciplines could rely on a distinction between intellectual habits to teach
the role of testimony and authority in the art of being reasonable.
PRESBYTERIAN ARISTOTELIANISM
Like Arnauld, Reid appreciated but rejected Aristotle’s topics along with
categories and the old format of rhetorical strategies that had been long
taught as dialectic:
Reid taught his students that both experience and testimony were
equally matters of belief—people believe their senses and their memory and
they also had to believe testimony. Even though experience and testimony
were both beliefs, they should not be linked so that either could diminish
the power of the other as evidence—even in the instance of communication
from a spiritual being or even God. Reid further taught that at times testi-
mony could yield a certainty as high as any other form of knowledge.
Like Arnauld, Reid believed that logic classes should teach a strong role
for testimony in reasonableness and that that role was the foundation of
communication between people and even between people and God.
Students should not be encouraged to seek Plotinus’s high lonesome road
of intellectual autonomy. Philosophy had for too long romanticized the indi-
vidual rather than social realm of knowledge. Hume and his ilk were like
Isidore’s monopeds that lie on their backs in the shade of their large foot.
Scottish Presbyterianism was rooted in a corporate rather than individ-
ualistic way of thinking about church structure. Scottish universities were
highly organized in comparison to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
English and French universities. Authority and social structures were gener-
ally considered good. Maybe one of the deep reasons why David Hume
could not get a job at a Scottish university was that he was too much of the
man of letters to be a true a university committeeman. Presbyterian to the
core, Reid believed in the value of committee meetings. He reported his
college regimen to a friend in 1764: aside from teaching, examinations, and
literary societies, he noted that much time was consumed in business
meetings, “of which we have commonly four or five a week.”22 Reid lived
and taught Presbyterian reasonableness. At the same time he was teaching
in Aberdeen and then Glasgow that we “receive the greatest and most
important part of our knowledge by the information of others,” the logic
classes at St. Andrews were being taught the same principle.23 Student notes
from Robert Watson’s logic class of 1764–65 state that testimony is an inde-
pendent source of evidence and not subject to our experience. Watson also
taught what can be characterized a Presbyterian-Aristotelian foundation for
teaching testimony:
Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen, the three medieval centers of Scottish
higher education, were intellectually tied to the University of Paris.
Scholastic Aristotelian scholarship derived from French academics was
strong in Scotland. Alexander Brodie contends that a community of Scottish
logicians in the “circle of John Mair,” all of whom earned higher degrees in
France and returned to teach and publish in Scotland, created a dynamic
environment for the study of scholastic logic in the decades preceding the
Reformation.25 James McCosh began his history of The Scottish Philosophy
(1875) with the intellectual intercourse between Scotland and France,
describing it as “narrow but intense.”26 McCosh presented this narrow
Aristotelian and scholastic focus as the precursor to an Enlightenment reac-
tion begun in the late seventeenth century. However, the notion of a reac-
tion should not be overstated. The Aristotelian tradition of formal logic
remained much appreciated in Scotland.
Throughout the seventeenth century, instead of completely succumb-
ing to the influence of either Ramus or Arnauld, each of Scotland’s univer-
sities produced a long line of logic lectures and textbooks in keeping with
the Aristotelian-Humanist tradition of laying out Porphyry’s Tree, listing the
ten categories with an expanded discussion of quality, offering the
mnemonic devices of high medieval syllogistic, and in sections on topics
delineating the inartificial from artificial. Even at the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century, students were still transcribing such logics: At Marischal
College in Aberdeen, George Peacock’s Cursus Logicus, at St. Salvador’s
College, St. Andrews, Alexander Scrimgeour’s Tractatus Logicus, and at
Edinburgh, Alexander Cuninghame’s class lectures.
A long-influential example of this Scottish tradition is the Institutionis
Logicae (1612) by Mark Duncan. Like Melanchthon and John of St. Thomas,
Duncan used an expanded discussion of habits as a place to teach the psy-
chology and epistemology of faith. Typical of the Scot-French connection,
Duncan was principal at the Protestant academy at Saumur in western
France when he published his textbook. He did not specifically discuss tes-
timony in the context of habits—only faith as an infused habit—but later
Appreciating Aristotle 187
laid out the standard case for artificial and inartificial sources of knowledge,
with the inartificial divided into human and divine testimony.27
Of course The Port-Royal Logic, coming from French Augustinians, was
not without influence. James McCosh in his history of Scottish philosophy
noted that some ideas and the structure of The Port-Royal Logic were rec-
ommended to logic classes in the Scottish universities by a Parliamentary
Commission appointed in 1690.28 References to The Port-Royal Logic are
sprinkled throughout the writings and lectures of many Scot logic professors.
Thomas Reid was well acquainted with the works of Arnauld, although
Steven Nadler argues that Reid misinterpreted him on important issues.29
Dugald Stewart specifically refers to The Port-Royal Logic when discussing
analysis and synthesis.30 In the middle of the nineteenth century, William
Hamilton recommended to his students “the celebrated Port Royal Art of
Thinking” in his Lectures on Logic.31 Thomas Baynes, logic professor at Saint
Andrews, Hamilton’s student, and future editor of the Encylopaedia
Britannica produced a new English translation of The Port-Royal Logic and
dedicated it to Hamilton. After noting in the preface to the second and third
Edinburgh editions how fast the editions were selling, Baynes praised the old
Jansenist text as
they confounded logic with metaphysics and further made logic an art of
discovery.
Logic had lost “credit and esteem,” Hamilton taught his students,
because “too much was promised.”36 He insisted that logic is strictly about
the necessary forms of valid inference. According to McCosh, the aim of all
Hamilton’s philosophy was “to point out the limits to human thought and
thereby to teach man the lessons of intellectual humility”37 Hamilton taught
this lesson of humility by hedging formal logic into responsible confines
within the context of broader arts of thinking. He did this by distinguish-
ing pure logic and modified logic. For our purposes this is very important
because although Hamilton is most often praised in the history for purify-
ing logic, he did not neglect the Scottish tradition of teaching the impor-
tance of testimony to his logic classes. The distinction he drew between
pure and modified logic allowed him to wax eloquently on the social
responsibility of trusting external sources in the manner of Thomas Reid
(see figure 5.2).
Testimony along with the other “social operations of the mind” were
included in Hamilton’s lectures under the heading of “The Acquisition of
Knowledge” and “The Communication of Knowledge.” Three lectures were
given over to oral and recorded testimony. Hamilton began with a general
rule:
With clarity and force Hamilton taught the Aristotelian tradition of tes-
timony. Important to note here is that Hamilton sets his discussion clearly
at odds with Immanuel Kant—discussed in the next chapter—who col-
lapsed all testimony into the reasoner’s personal experience. Hamilton, in
190 A History of Reasonableness
Pure Modified
Stoicheiology Methodology
Noetic Dianoetic
The mind
The body
The acquisition The communication
External circumstances of knowledge of knowledge
general, owed much to Kant but in this instance claimed an Aristotelian and
Scottish tradition of interest in communication that opens an individual to
outside sources of information. “Experience,” Hamilton taught,
Like Reid, Hamilton thought it important for his logic classes not to
ignore the consequences of the Aristotelian maxim that humans are politi-
cal beings. “By nature a social being,” Hamilton taught his students, “man
has powers which are relative to, and, consequently, find their development
in, the company of his fellows” (II, 207). Communication, whether oral or
written, instruction, dialogue, or disputation can serve in the Socratic fash-
ion as a midwife to one’s own ideas or it can bring outside knowledge in.
The central point Hamilton wanted to teach is that both pure and modified
logic do their best work in communication with others. Loners don’t make
the best philosophers. Hamilton quoted Scaliger on Vives’s advocacy of
silent meditation over dispute, and then inisted “This is not true.” In this
conclusion to his course on pure and modified logic, Hamilton charged his
students to maintain a life of learning and teaching, reading and writing, lis-
tening and disputing. Reasonable humans are social beings. Reasonable
people acquire outside knowledge beyond the limits of their own experi-
ence. Reasonable people should not be so much sunk in the muck of their
own skepticism that they refuse the true communications available to them.
Hamilton identified pure logic as a way to encourage the academic devel-
opment of the powerful tools of formal and closed structures of knowledge.
He then taught his students the broader and social art of reasonableness as
modified logic. Hamilton is recognized as a significant figure in the revival
of Aristotelian pure logic, but it often goes unmentioned that he was also
one of the nineteenth century’s most influential promulgators of an
Aristotelian dialectic for a reasonable society.
and best use of testimony. Like Kant, he taught intellectual humility. But like
Reid, and unlike Kant, he taught that intellectual humility meant that reason-
able people had to trust more than their own personal experience, that rea-
sonable people had to trust communication from other people.
What is surprising—at least for those who have looked at his sources—
is that he did not teach his students to trust communication from God. In
fifty pages devoted to issues surrounding testimony, Hamilton’s Lectures on
Logic nowhere mentions what had long been a staple in sections on testi-
mony: the distinction between human and divine testimony. Eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century Scottish logicians, by and large, have been noted
for their Christian piety and belief in divine revelation. McCosh—devout
Presbyterian that he was—wrote of Hamilton that “It is pleasant to think
that Sir William Hamilton ever professed to bow with reverence before the
revelations of the Bible.”40 But most of the Scots abandoned divine testi-
mony in their logic textbooks. The Renaissance formula, rooted in the
Romans, of separating divine from human testimony by ranking the cer-
tainty it yielded as equal to or higher than science appears to have become
too problematic to be taught as a simple rule of elementary reasonableness.
Thomas Reid, quoted earlier, believed that God and all sorts of spiritual
beings can communicate with humans, and Hamilton defended God’s abil-
ity to cause miracles. But both logic professors, when teaching elementary
reasonableness, submerged divine testimony under the surface of human
testimony in general. Hamilton, in a footnote commenting on Reid’s use of
the terms “revelation and inspiration,” backpedaled with:
Even John Henry Newman, when listing the foundations of theism, did
not root knowledge of God in a divine testimony distinct from human tes-
timony:
that this science was pure logic. As for the art of logic—the more broad art
of being reasonable—he taught the three generally accepted types of evi-
dence: experience, analogy, and testimony. The last of these was especially
important to a whole lecture, “On the Evidences of Christianity.” In the
spirit of the times, Logic Bob clearly informed his students that testimony
and the faith that results are “not under the province of logic.” However,
just as Hamilton interjected the subject of miracles into his lectures,
Buchanan found it appropriate in his logic class to teach the reasonable-
ness of Christianity.46
But Logic Bob was not content to consider the history presented in the
Bible as merely human testimony. He taught his students that divine testi-
mony had a higher authority than human and that it was highly probable
that the Old and New Testaments were divine testimony. Furthermore,
his class was useful because logic can be useful “in ascertaining the
fact whether any particular doctrine does rest on divine authority.”47 He
recognized that divine testimony becomes human testimony as it is
passed through communities and time, but he believed it his duty to
teach logic students that the “the torch of faith” along with “laws of rea-
son and evidence” would help them distinguish divine from mere human
testimony.48
Buchanan at Glasgow exemplifies the kind of professor who felt called
to teach the reasonableness of Christianity in his logic class. Reid and
Hamilton apparently felt similarly called, but did it in a less direct and more
sophisticated manner. As part of this indirection and sophistication they
were willing to submerge the subject of divine testimony without denying
its possibility. Buchanan and probably others were more direct and more
traditional. They continued to teach the subject of divine testimony in logic
classes and followed the long tradition of expecting grace acting deep in the
soul of the reasoner to distinguish divine from human testimony. On the
other hand, our second example, Alexander Campbell Fraser (1819–1914),
shows the way a highly evangelical logic professor could believe that his
elementary logic classes should not be cluttered with divine testimony.
Fraser exemplifies the rising curricular specialization that divided psychol-
ogy from philosophy.
Like Buchanan, Fraser was plucked from a manse, first to become pro-
fessor of logic and metaphysics at New College, Edinburgh, an experimen-
tal Christian college, from 1846 to 1856, and subsequently to be the
successor to Hamilton at the University of Edinburgh from 1856 to 1891. As
a former student of Hamilton, Fraser was devoted to further encouraging the
Aristotelian logic that Hamilton had revived in Scotland and merging it more
fully into the dominant German logic of his era. His lectures followed
Hamilton in dividing logic into two types according to whether “it does or
does not include the tests of the real truth within its domain.”49 The former
Appreciating Aristotle 199
he called pure logic and the latter he called mixed logic.50 Like Hamilton,
when discussing testimony, he made no distinction between human and
divine.
Fraser accepted the fact that logic in the nineteenth century had begun
its “Kantian Period.”51 The Germans, he declared in his 1846 inaugural lec-
ture to the logic and metaphysics class at the evangelical-sponsored New
College, want to have philosophy without religion. “It is an evil omen for
philosophy if she cannot work in harmony with the infallible Book of doc-
trine.”52 However, he consoled his audience of Christian evangelicals, “Let
us not be discouraged because of this German experiment.” Rather, the
Scottish school of philosophy can accept an “infusion of continentalism”
without losing its commitment to the “revealed positive truth of inspired
Scripture.”53
Also important to Fraser was the rise of psychology that he believed
was “inaugurated in Britain” in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.54 Fraser’s most lasting work of scholarship—completed
along with his other publications after he had retired from daily classroom
teaching—was to annotate a new edition of Locke’s Essay. That edition is
still in print by Dover Publications and Fraser’s extensive footnotes to
Locke’s text show great appreciation for the breadth of Locke’s thought
along with no criticism for Locke’s handling of miracles and divine testi-
mony. But Fraser followed Hamilton in believing that Locke’s Essay was a
bad influence on logic classes. Locke, for Fraser, was interesting for many
reasons, but he had rebelled against the syllogistic logic that the Germans
had shown was too powerful to ignore. Locke had also tried to pack too
much into one logic textbook and did not make proper distinctions
between such things as pure logic and the more general art of reasonable-
ness. Most particularly, Fraser did not think divine testimony should be a
subject discussed in philosophy classes. In his autobiography, Fraser wrote
that the absolute certainty claimed for divine testimony in scriptures or in
church decrees was more a matter for theology and psychology than for
the mixed logic of testimony, which can only give probability.55 He also
explained why he limited his logic classes primarily to pure logic with only
a limited amount of mixed logic: Classes on the practice of reasoning nat-
urally “led onwards from the formulas of syllogism, and methods of induc-
tive trial, to a reflective study of the spiritual constitution of the human
reasoner—in a word, from Logic to Psychology; and through this to
Metaphysics or ultimate philosophy, and analysis of religion.”56
Fraser was committed to a step-by-step curriculum with each course
working within its proper limits. The “final problems” of philosophy and
the general seeking of truth, he wrote, were “hardly appropriate” for young
students who first need “to learn to think.” The young students in his logic
classes
200 A History of Reasonableness
still needed to have the “the mist and veil of words” removed,
their sense of logical consistency made more acute, and
themselves made more awake to the difference between
probability and fancy in estimating evidence. . . .
The duty of the teacher in these circumstances was first
of all to prepare the young philosophers to encounter fallacy
and sophism, by analyzing valid reasoning. Logic formed
accordingly our preamble to psychology and metaphysics.57
Elementary logic, Fraser noted, was a “vestibule” for bigger things. Like
Hamilton, he wanted to “awaken” entering students to issues related to tes-
timonial evidence, but divine testimony and its traditional relationship to
psychology and theology should be handled later in the curriculum.
Fraser exemplifies the submergence of divine testimony in elementary
classes so that the subject can be brought to the surface in the proper
classes at the proper time. In his long career as logic professor he seems to
have maintained an evangelical Christian zeal for education that, in his own
words, connected “the Christian ideas and spirit with the movements of the
thinking world.”58 Both New College and the University of Edinburgh were
expected to support Christianity by supporting “the thinking world.”
Thomas Chalmers, the great Christian apologist of the nineteenth century,
had helped found New College by calling for the “preparation of ministers,
whether for the work of instruction or for the work of defense” by educat-
ing them “in the forms of a science, and receive an academic treatment in
the hands of academic men.”59 Fraser was an academic man appropriate to
Chalmer’s desire. He considered his service to Christian education to be the
offering of elementary classes in pure logic that—in Kantian manner—
offered only a minimum of mixed logic. Divine testimony was to be dis-
cussed in upper-level theology and psychology classes offered by his
colleagues. If a student wanted to raise the issue of divine testimony in
class, Fraser probably quickly explained a Lockean handling of the subject,
then moved on. There was no secularization of the curriculum in this, only
an educational strategy. One result of this strategy of specialization, how-
ever, was that the curriculum no longer had one set place for teaching the
general art of reasonableness.
Reasonable society, Thomas Reid taught his students, was founded on two
deep orientations within humans: a disposition to believe testimony and a
propensity to speak truth.60 The two work hand in hand and are at the foun-
dation of the Aristotelian tradition of emphasizing belief along with assent.
Belief, for Aristotle, was not something deliberated. Belief happens. Beliefs
can be true or false, but are not good or bad in the way the method of
Appreciating Aristotle 201
the belief created in the hearer is not just the belief that the
speaker has the belief—though that belief is indeed created
in the hearer. What transpires in accepting testimony is that,
upon believing that the speaker believes what (one believes)
he asserted, one then believes what he believes.68
much concerned for the role of humility in knowledge. Reid hated the
prideful aspects of Aristotle and the way such pride had come to abide in
the traditional way philosophers perceived their work. On the other hand,
he found in some aspects of Aristotle’s work—the ethics, politics, rhetoric,
and dialectic—the groundwork of the social operations of the mind that he
himself found at the core of commonsense thinking and living. In appreci-
ating these aspects of Aristotle, Reid led the Scottish tradition of logic edu-
cation to emphasize testimony.
text was regularly reprinted and in the nineteenth century was reborn in
a newly edited version. Around the time of Aldrich, the Oxford-trained
Puritan Charles Morton took eclectic Aristotelianism to Harvard College,
and John Wesley, while teaching at Oxford, wrote an Aristotelian logic text-
book for his students. For three hundred years Oxford had been regularly
criticized by reformers like Bacon and Locke for having too conservative a
grip on Aristotle. Whately’s Elements of Logic and Elements of Rhetoric
(1828) introduced an even tighter grip on Aristotle. For the next fifty years
Whately and Oxford led Anglo-American education toward a greater appre-
ciation of Aristotelianism.
The humanist curriculum at Oxford prior to the nineteenth century had
tended to conflate logic and rhetoric into an eclectic logic course that cov-
ered the whole “art of thinking.” In the spirit of Greek revival, the curric-
ula of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century universities began to
revive the Aristotelian and classic liberal arts distinction between logic and
rhetoric. Whately’s importance in the history of education is that he pro-
duced the two most influential textbooks that in the 1820s so cleanly
espoused the distinction between logic and rhetoric that the new Greek-
revival curricula desired. His textbooks swept the vestiges of Watts’s popu-
lar logic out of English-speaking schools and planted two texts to serve two
courses in its place. From the late 1820s until the early 1870s, Whately’s
logic and rhetoric seemed ubiquitous in the American and British empires.
With these textbooks, not only had Whately purified logic, but he also
helped revive rhetoric. Rhetoric as a recognized and respected college dis-
cipline had long been declining. Erkki Patokorpi writes that “the introduc-
tion of Whately’s treatise as a college and university textbook in America
and Britain bought rhetoric, as a discipline, several more extra years.”82
But testimony was disadvantaged by this return to distinguishing logic
from rhetoric because Aristotle had discussed testimony mostly in his Rhetoric.
Whately had no intention of diminishing the importance of teaching testi-
mony as crucial to the art of being reasonable, but his purification of logic
and reinvigorated rhetoric put testimony at risk. The trouble was that the
noetics, even thought they revered Aristotelian thinking, also remained com-
mitted to the tradition of a classical liberal arts curriculum that had developed
after Aristotle during the Roman Empire. Aristotle had taught formal logic,
dialectic (informal logic), and rhetoric. So Aristotle taught three subjects that
liberal arts advocates had to distribute among two subjects, logic and rheto-
ric. If logic was to be purified and emphasize formal syllogisms, then dialec-
tic had to be put mostly into rhetoric. But as noted above, Whately had
bought traditional rhetoric only a few more years in the fast modernizing cur-
ricula of universities. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, rhetoric’s
hold in the curriculum has not been strong. In its own pursuit of clarifying
its academic role, rhetoric has largely jettisoned the idea of teaching dialectic
Appreciating Aristotle 209
views of assent and trust. In the Rhetoric he described more fully the types
of testimony within a scheme of arguments focused on the relationship
between premises and conclusions.
“It is of the utmost importance,” Whately wrote in the Logic concerning
information and instruction, “to distinguish . . . two kinds of discovery of
truth.”86 In the context of traditional topics, the distinction was similar to
Aristotle’s technical (intrinsic) and non-technical (extrinsic). A historian gives
us information, Whately noted, while a mathematician gives instruction.
Information he defined as that which cannot be worked up from within one’s
own reasoning and requires trusting the deliverer. Instruction, however, may
come from a teacher, but a student, in theory, could have worked up the
knowledge without the input. “To all practical purposes,” Whately wrote, the
testimony in either case may be as completely unknown to the math student
as the reader of history; however, as soon as the math students hears his les-
son, “the argument by which it is connected with his previous notions is
made clear to him, he recognizes it as something conformable to, and con-
tained in, his former belief.”87 On the other hand,
The form in which Their subject The intention of The relation of the subject
they are stated matter the person who matter of the premise to
adduces them that of the conclusion into
Sign Induction
*Derived from Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, 29 and Erkki Patokorpi, Rhetoric, Argumentative
and Divine: Richard Whately and His Discursive project of the1820s, 151
Character of Witnesses
Number of Witnesses
Undesigned Testimony—(unintentional)
Testimony of Adversaries
Negative Testimony
Concurrent Testimony
Character of Things Attested
Things Not Understood, or Not Believed, by Those Who
Attest Them
Superior Force of Negative Probabilities
Testimony on Oath
Testimonies Mutually Confirmatory.
But he did not want to offer a long checklist of rules similar to Isaac
Watts’s list for human and divine testimony. Such lists diminished the discre-
tion of the reasoner. “It might seem superfluous to remark,” he wrote,
that none but very general rules, such as the above, can be
profitably laid down and that to attempt to supercede the
Appreciating Aristotle 213
Satirically, Whately first argues against trusting reports and second against
believing things not conformable to one’s own experience. He then argues
that the story of Napoleon seems to violate the laws of nature. Certainly the
events of his life were not miraculous; however, the probability that he would
be made king of Elba and then rise again is so low that such a story breaks
the moral laws of the universe! Certainly the free-thinking philosopher should
reject the story of Napoleon as fabrication. Whately then concludes: “But if
they are still wedded to the popular belief in this point, let them be consis-
tent enough to admit the same evidence in other cases.”98
Reasonable consistency is the fulcrum on which the essay pivots. If the
reader trusts the story of Napoleon, then the basic structure of this trust
should be extended to the Gospel narratives. If applied without bias, the
traditional rules for handling witnesses—first looking at issues surrounding
the witness, then at the testimony—are reasonable in all situations. To
make the rules work reasonable people must not be absurdly seeking out
barriers to assent; rather, reasonable people should exercise consistent
commonsensical trusting.
Mark Pattison (1813–1884), undergraduate at Oriel College and caustic
fellow at Lincoln, lost no love on Whately or Newman. He wrote in his
Memoirs of an Oxford Don (1885) that
that they need only “select, combine, and apply” the precepts of Aristotle,
Cicero, and Quintilian. He also advised his students to, of course, “substi-
tute the sacred scriptures” for Cicero’s and Quintilian’s pagan list of
authorities: “eminent writers, common proverbs, and oracles.”102 Adams
also believed topics still to be useful. Hedge, on the other hand, followed
Locke in distain for the old classical structures. Although Hedge’s logic
text remained long in print and his primary reputation was as a logician,
in 1827, “owing to the necessity of retrenchment,” Harvard discontinued
the chair in logic. Hedge was renamed the Alford Professor of Natural
Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. Instruction in logic was offi-
cially reassigned to the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric who from 1819 to
1851 was Edward Tyrell Channing. Channing had little interest in logic.
He was primarily interested in teaching students to write and speak well
“with method, elegance, harmony, dignity, and energy.”103 He did, how-
ever, introduce Whately’s logic into the sophomore curriculum in 1833.
Historians of the Boylston Professors note that, during the nineteenth
century, rhetoric at Harvard moved toward belles letters, and English com-
position away from classical dialectic.104
Even though he was no longer assigned to teach logic, Levi Hedge
reported to the administration that along with teaching the standard trea-
tises on the moral philosophy and political economy of the era, he closed
his course in the senior year with his own Elements of Logic. Apparently
Hedge had a high opinion of his textbook and was going to teach it no
matter what his official responsibilities. A student reported that Hedge
demanded that his book be studied assiduously, saying “It took me four-
teen years, with the assistance of the adult members of my family, to write
this book; and I am sure that one cannot do better than to employ the pre-
cise words of the author.”105
Hedge retired in 1832 after thirty-seven years teaching logic at Harvard.
At that time, testimony in general and its role in Christian/Unitarian apolo-
getics was being taught to undergraduates by the professors of rhetoric and
moral philosophy. Four years later, in 1836, Harvard hired young Francis
Bowen (1811–1890) as tutor and instructor in Natural and Intellectual
Philosophy. Long into the 1850s Whately’s logic appears in rhetoric classes,
but Bowen would be praised by James McCosh for introducing the more
sophisticated logic of William Hamilton to America. Bowen wanted a pro-
fessorship in history, but in 1853 he was appointed to the Alford Chair of
Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. A deeply committed
Unitarian, Bowen’s many articles and books were united by a vigorous the-
istic rationality that he believed should be the foundation of civilization. Like
Hedge, Bowen thought his job as Alford professor was to teach the fullness
of being a civilized human. In the course catalogues at Harvard, Bowen can
be seen taking logic back from rhetoric. In 1860, the senior-year logic and
Appreciating Aristotle 219
NOTES
1. John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (New York:
Image Books, 1955), 10.2.5 (p. 334).
2. Ibid., 10.2 (p. 322).
3. Ibid., 4.3 (p. 90).
4. Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, trans. G. R. G. Mure, vol. 1 of The Works of
Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 99b.19.
5. G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas “The Dumb Ox” (New York: Image
Books, 1956), 105.
6. Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C.
Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), vol. 1, 13 (Q. 1. art. 8).
7. “Encyclical Letter of Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII on the Restoration of
Christian Philosophy,” in The “Summa Theologica” of Thomas Aquinas, trans. The
Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne,
1920), I, xx.
8. Ibid., xxiv.
9. Jacques Maritain. “Preface” in The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas,
trans. Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, and G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1955), v, vii–viii.
10. See Pedro da Fonseca, Instituições Dialécticas, ed. Joaquim Ferreira Gomes
(Spain: Universidade de Coimbra, 1964), VII.35 (v. II, p. 574).
11. John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, VI, ques. 26,
art. 3 (p. 519).
12. Ibid., ques. 26. (p. 504).
13. Aquinas, Basic Works vol. 2, p. 383 (Q. 50. art. 5).
14. Ibid., p. 413 (Q. 55. art. 1).
15. John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, VI, ques. 26,
art. 3 (p. 522).
16. Thomas Reid, A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic, with Remarks in The
Works of Thomas Reid, ed. William Hamilton, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and
Stewart, 1863, reprint London: Thommes Press, 1994), II, 682–83.
17. This statement by William Hamilton is in the footnote to Reid’s statement
just quoted. Hamilton is frustrated with Reid’s antagonism to Aristotle.
Appreciating Aristotle 223
44. David Murray, Memories of the Old College of Glasgow (Glasgow: Jackson,
Wyle and Co., 1927), 154.
45. Ibid., 154, 153.
46. Various manuscript notes of Robert Buchanan’s lectures are available in
the Special Collections of the University of Glasgow Library. Citations of volume
and page relate to the anonymous eleven-volume set of notes titled Lectures on
Logic that are easy to read and begun in November 1828.
47. Buchanan, Lectures on Logic, VIII, 6.
48. Ibid., 6–8.
49. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Lectures in Logic and Metaphysics, III, 29.
These lectures are in three volumes of manuscript notes taken by Andrew D.
Sloan in 1881–82 and are available in the special collections of the University of
Edinburgh.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., I, 85.
52. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Inaugural Lecture Delivered . . . at the
Opening of the Class of Logic and Metaphysics at the New College, Edinburgh, 10th
Dec. 1846 (Edinburgh: John D. Lowe, 1867), 13.
53. Ibid., 10, 16.
54. Fraser, Lectures in Logic and Metaphyscis, I, 95.
55. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Biographica Philosophica (Edinburgh: William
Blackwood and Sons, 1904), 92–93.
56. Ibid., 200–1.
57. Ibid., 198–99.
58. Fraser, Inaugural Lecture, 16.
59. Hugh Watt, New College Edinburgh: A Centenary History (Edinburgh: Oliver
and Boyd, 1946), 2.
60. Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, VI. Xxiv, in Works of Thomas
Reid, I, 195–96.
61. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1985), 1111b30–1112a15.
62. Watson, A System of Logic Taught at St. Andrews 1764–5, 185.
63. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man in The Works of Thomas
Reid, II, 549.
64. James Beattie’s manuscript Lectures in Philosophy, 460 in Department of
Special Collections and Archives, King’s College, University of Aberdeen.
65. Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind in The
Works of Dugald Stewart (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829), II, 168.
66. Ibid., 168–70.
67. Hamilton, Lectures on Logic, II, 72. See Aristotle, De Sophisticis Elenchis,
trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, vol. 1 of The Works of Aristotle, 165b.
68. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001), 172.
69. McCosh, The Laws of Discursive Thought, v, footnote.
70. Ibid., v.
71. James McCosh, The Tests of Various Kinds of Truth: Being a Treatise of
Applied Logic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), 7.
Appreciating Aristotle 225
They answer that their sister is the more truthful, but that in this case, her
story just can’t be true.
The philosophic watershed that led to the end of teaching testimony and
authority in traditional curricula was the work of Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804). Roger Scruton opens his biographical sketch with this sum-
mary of his life:
The greatest modern philosopher was moved by nothing more
than by duty. His life, in consequence, was unremarkable. For
Kant, the virtuous man is so much the master of his passions
as scarcely to be prompted by them, and so far indifferent to
power and reputation as to regard their significance as noth-
ing beside that of duty itself. Having confined his life so that
he could act without strain according to this ideal, Kant
devoted himself to scholarship, entirely governed by congen-
ial routines. The little professor of Königsberg has thus
become the type of the modern philosopher: bounded in a
nutshell, and counting himself king of infinite space.5
Kant never married, loved the town of his birth, enjoyed convivial din-
ners with friends, and was honored by his students. Initially more known as
230 A History of Reasonableness
demands that the art of reasoning teach distinctive rules for the non-art of
testimony. The long tradition of reasonableness had taught that no matter
how much emphasis was placed on the self there remained a need to have
a distinctive method for handling testimony. But Kant declared his opposi-
tion: Testimony differs neither in degree nor in kind from the holding-to-be-
true through one’s own experience.
Kant did not fully explain his position in his brief logic lectures, but he
laid the rule down as a law. In the section on knowledge of lecture 9, Kant
wrote that there was a distinction between the certainty that is original
“from my own experience” and derivative “as far as I become certain of
something through others’ experience.”7 He calls the latter historical cer-
tainty but the law previously decreed still applies. Other people’s experi-
ences were to be treated as a subset of one’s own experience.
Friedrich Ueberweg (1826–1871), Kant’s mid-nineteenth-century succes-
sor as professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg and author of
a widely popular logic textbook, believed that Kant had narrowed logic too
much. But he also encouraged a self-absorbed way of thinking. In a section
on “Science, Faith, Presentment, and Opinion,” Ueberweg wrote that humans
use their “inner existence” to fully recognize that which is external to them.
“He copies in himself,” wrote Ueberweg of a man searching “the content of
the external perception of what appears at the time.” Ueberweg calls this a
“reproductive process.”8 He strongly believed that classes in logic should
wrestle with “doctrine of the laws of the forms of knowledge,” but his own
opening assumption that “the human mind must consciously reproduce what
actually exists” focused his students on their own minds.9 The Aristotelian tra-
dition had long taught that knowledge had two legs: that which a person
knows by reason and that which is known by authority. But in the nineteenth
century, the most popular German textbooks teaching “the laws of the
forms of knowledge” taught that human knowledge stands only on one leg.
It is not in my power to track with accuracy a cultural shift in the edu-
cation systems of Western civilization. However, a key figure whose writ-
ings indicate the dominance in the twentieth century of Kant’s belief that
testimony should be collapsed into personal experience is John Dewey
(1859–1952). Born and educated in Vermont where Scottish common sense
was the dominant philosophy, Dewey wrote in 1883 that his study of Kant’s
writings “certainly introduced a revolution into all my thoughts, and at the
same time gave me a basis for my other reading and thinking.”10 Dewey went
on to become a professor at Michigan, then Chicago, then Columbia, dur-
ing which time his philosophy of education was hugely influential in
America. In 1939, Dewey wrote:
But in this ringing rhetoric Dewey was like Royce. They both saw the
problems of individualism and the importance of education at the founda-
tion of communities, but both thought about community in a new way.
Communities were no longer full of individuals dependent on each other
for corporate reasonableness; rather, communities were gatherings of
autonomous critical thinkers. Education in the twentieth century must be
designed to serve the latter, not the former.
insisted that history was not like an experimental science. She also dis-
missed the idea that the historian experiences history in any way—espe-
cially reenacting it in the mind. For Stebbing, the discipline of history
deserved a special method of reasoning precisely because it is concerned
with a uniqueness that is outside the self, a unique event that cannot be
experienced or reenacted. “The study of history,” she wrote “is concerned
with determinate occasion as a unique datable occurrence; it is concerned
with this occasion in its uniqueness.”26 She taught straightforwardly that
“any problem into which date enters as an integral element cannot be
solved by methods which depend upon, and are suitable to, repeatable
occurrences.”27 Collingwood believed that history was repeatable—it could
be reenacted in one’s own mind and thus become independent of its orig-
inal sources. He believed in hard study of historical source material, but the
historian’s mind was ultimately autonomous. Stebbing emphasized the
muddy problems of studying history. Collingwood’s detective found
answers in his own mind. Stebbing’s historian was forever mired in proba-
bilities because the sources are distant.
Collingwood dismissed Stebbing’s textbook as “the kind of logic which
professes to be most up to date” when, in reality, it was useless and taught
“the pre-scientific form of history which I call ‘scissors-and-paste history.’ ”28
This was “not really history at all.”29 Scissors-and-paste history was the tra-
ditional way a historian searched out the words and ideas of authorities,
compared various eyewitness and hearsay accounts, and felt obligated in
questionable situations to follow the best authorities and seemingly most
veracious accounts. Such a method—usually taught in terms of duty,
responsibility, risk, and willingness to submit one’s own judgment to best
available information and interpretations—assumed that the historian was
obligated in some deep way to his or her sources. Being obligated appalled
Collingwood. The historian, Collingwood declared,
a human cannot work-up from within her or himself and must take in
“ready-made” from an outside source. Collingwood insisted that this whole
tradition is wrongheaded—that the thinking person does, in fact, work up
from within all the information needed for rational judgment. For
Collingwood, the thinking person is fully, completely, and necessarily
autonomous. There is no broader reasonableness.
Stebbing thought otherwise and earned his scorn. Collingwood was
right to recognize in her books an Aristotelian tradition that insisted on rec-
ognizing that reasonable people needed a special method for handling tes-
timony. On the other hand, Stebbing was not really trying to recover a
dying tradition. For the most part she was interested in individual reason-
ing, not a larger reasonableness. She made no arguments for the social
necessity of trusting other people. She did not specifically teach a reason-
ableness broader than reasoning. She was not much interested in traditional
methods of teaching assent, belief, or faith. When it came to handling tes-
timony, she simply recognized that people, especially historians, had to
think practically about the sources of information. She was a transitional
thinker of the 1930s who understood the practical fact that much knowl-
edge comes to us from external sources while at the same time being
intensely interested in teaching students to be independently “critical.”31 She
herself could lean Kant-like toward almost collapsing testimony completely
into experience. She wrote that “testimony was not a logically independent
source of knowledge, since in accepting testimony we are using our senses
and relying on our memories.”32 The accelerating trend in twentieth-century
academics was to teach students to be critical thinkers. Kantian auto-
nomy—whether in the hard-line form of Collingwood or the softer forms
of Bradley and Stebbing—was the goal of education. The traditional art of
thinking had usually tried to lift up both individual autonomy and social
responsibility when teaching the foundations and methods of human
knowledge. As C. S. Lewis’s professor noted, sometime before 1950s the
social foundations and methods of handling testimony had lost their place
in most schools.
There is no way around the need for minds to think their way
to knowledge. Thought is the key to knowledge. Knowledge
is discovered by thinking, analyzed by thinking, and, most
importantly, acquired by thinking.35
Essentially, the critical thinking movement that has gained media and
political prominence in last couple of decades is rooted in the Kantian col-
lapse of testimony into experience and an American form of individualistic
pragmatism whose most significant proponents have been William James,
John Dewey, and Stephen Toulmin. Toulmin, in The Uses of Argument
(1958), established his position as a critic of modern rationalism and pro-
ponent of using legal analogies for teaching the art of being reasonable.
A former student of Collingwood, Toulmin has no interest in testimony.
“There is one special virtue in the parallel between logic and jurispru-
dence,” declares Toulmin. It “helps to keep in the center of the picture the
critical function of the reason.”36 Being critical is the work of the judge,
jury, and lawyers, while those on the witness stand are no more significant
for the method of courtroom pursuit of a verdict than the furniture. In later
books such as Cosmopolis (1990) and Return to Reason (2001) Toulmin
continues to argue for a broad dialectic of reasonableness, but his focus
remains on the autonomous individual, not a community of shared infor-
mation. In Return to Reason, Toulmin offers only two individualistic
options: “Thus, pragmatism and skepticism are the beginning of a wisdom
that is better than the dreams of the rationalists.”37
When looking at works by Susan Stebbing and Stephen Toulmin we
enter a larger tradition of twentieth-century critical thinking manuals than
the narrow late-century critical thinking movement. Although we saw in
240 A History of Reasonableness
1928 Principles and Problems of Right Thinking by Edwin Burtt (2nd ed. 1931)
Testimony is discussed negatively in relation to Christian scrip-
tures and miracles. Emotions, fascinations with the mysteri-
ous, religious texts, and deep loyalties encourage “uncritical
acceptance of the testimony” (469). Burtt supports Hume’s rule
for weighing testimony of miracle by experience. “Legitimate”
uses of testimony are exemplified by learning about “bush-
men” and “Eskimos” (471). Divine authority cannot be attached
to scriptures (474–78). Chapter 25, “Explaining Events with
the Historian” (418–36), has no mention of testimony. Burtt
notes that nonrepeatability demands that historian not use the
same method as experimental sciences. A historian “must
immerse himself in the records of his period and feel his
way sympathetically into the living situation he is seeking to
interpret” (422).
In the 4th edition of 1946, the section on miracles and
scriptures was removed.
1941 Rational Belief: An Introduction to Logic by Albert Frye and Albert Levi
“There are two sources of knowledge: formal reason and
experience” (v). Matters of facts come from experience and
must “accept the authority of experience” (v). Rational belief
is based on reason and evidence from experience. Irrational
belief includes belief rooted in “authority” and “the tendency
to believe what one is told” (216). The book offers nothing
specific about testimony except demands that a rational
person must have an independent mind.
1985 Creative and Critical Thinking by W. Edgar Moore, Hugh McCann, and
Janet McCann (2nd ed.; no date for 1st ed.)
There is no discussion of testimony but a section on “Evidence
from Authorities” (88–89). It discusses decisions about surgery,
antipollution legislation, and nuclear dumping sites as
depending on evaluating authorities and gives three questions
for proper evaluation: 1) How much does the individual know
about the specific question at issue? 2) Is the individual objec-
tive about the matter in question? 3) What do other authorities
246 A History of Reasonableness
and the Wardrobe was right to complain that the traditional methods for
handling testimony had largely disappeared from twentieth-century
schools. Lewis was particularly concerned about the rules that emphasized
the character and reliability of the witness over the initial believability of
the testimony. Only one of the textbooks listed above teaches something
close to what Lewis (along with Aristotle, Locke, Reid, and Hamilton) was
concerned with: Max Black’s Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Logic
and Scientific Method (1946). Black (1909–1988) was an important philoso-
pher and mathematician, and the fact that he would state that the author-
ity of the testifier is basic to discriminating between reliable and unreliable
testimony should encourage post-Kantian consideration of the traditional
rule that the Ramists called reciprocation. Lewis’s professor and Black
appear to fundamentally agree on the method of handling hard-to-accept
testimony.
Max Black was born to Jewish parents in Azerbaijan but was educated
in England. In the late 1920s as an undergraduate at Cambridge University
he encountered some of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of
the century. In the early 1930s he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the
University of London when L. Susan Stebbing was active there. Coming to
the United States in 1940, he eventually joined the philosophy department
at Cornell University, where in 1954 he became the Susan Lin-sage Professor
of Philosophy and Humane Letters. After his retirement in 1977 he became
the second American to ever be named president of the International
Institute of Philosophy (1981–1984). His most important books dealt with
the nature of mathematics, logical positivism, and the philosophy of lan-
guage. J. Wilson-Quayle in his sketch of Black in the American National
Biography writes that “As a philosopher, he was known for offering a com-
monsense, pragmatic approach to those theoretical issues that he knew
required clarity.” Certainly Max Black’s discussion of the externality of testi-
mony as integral to critical thinking was not as extensive as that of William
Hamilton or Richard Whately; however, it does carry into the twentieth cen-
tury the commonsense approach that was taught at Edinburgh and Oxford
in the nineteenth century.
Also seen in the above list is an overwhelming return to the high
medieval issue of accepting the authority of experts. Some writers warn
against being too gullible. Some seem to imply that reasonable people are
obligated to accept the testimony of an expert speaking in his or her field
of expertise. In general, the role of the expert testimony—especially scien-
tists in the courtroom—seems to be the only issue that keeps testimony
alive in modern critical thinking textbooks.
Also evident in the above list is the continuing tradition of the “fal-
lacy of appealing to authority.” What used to be taught as part of the bal-
ance between skepticism and gullibility when dealing with authoritative
248 A History of Reasonableness
John Locke advised his readers: “We should do well to commiserate our
mutual Ignorance, and endeavour to remove it by all the gentle and fair
ways of information.”38 He wrote in the context of describing degrees of
assent, the error of blindly submitting to authority, and the need for the
community of reasonable people to work together. The fact of our mutual
ignorance weighed heavily on his mind. Humanity needed intellectual
The Rise of Critical Thinking 249
NOTES
1. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: Macmillan
Co., 1950), 38–39.
2. Raymond S. Nickerson, David N. Perkins, and Edward E. Smith, The
Teaching of Thinking (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1985), 130–35.
3. For a recent critique of the main trend of twentieth-century philosophical
movements that have undermined the role of communication by collapsing it into
the self, and an argument for better understanding and justified use of divine com-
munication, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on
the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995).
4. Josiah Royce, The Concept of the Absolute in The Basic Writings of Josiah
Royce, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969), I. 305.
5. Roger Scruton, Kant (Oxford: Oxford University, 1982), 1.
6. Immanuel Kant, Logic, trans. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz
(New York: Dover, 1988), 76.
7. Ibid., 78.
8. Friedrich Ueberweg, System of Logic and History of Logical Doctrines, trans.
Thomas M. Lindsay (London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1871; reprinted Bristol:
Thoemmes Press, 1993), 93.
9. Ibid., 3.
10. Quoted in Seven C. Rockefeller, John Dewey: Religious Faith and
Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University, 1991), 52.
11. Ibid., 400.
12. John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy
of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 180.
13. Ibid., 172.
14. Ibid.
The Rise of Critical Thinking 253
15. Ibid., 5.
16. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, intro. Stephen Toulmin (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978), x.
17. Ibid., 73.
18. T. M. Knox, “Editor’s Preface,” in R. G. Collingwood, Idea of History
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), xxiv.
19. Collingwood, Idea of History, 96.
20. Ibid., 97.
21. Ibid., 135.
22. Ibid., 140.
23. Ibid., 141.
24. Ibid., 155.
25. L. Susan Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose: A Manual of First Aid to
Clear Thinking, Showing How to Detect Illogicalities in Other People’s Mental
Processes and How to Avoid Them in Our Own (London: Penguin Books, 1939), 218.
26. L. Susan Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic (London: Methune,
1952), 383.
27. Ibid., 384.
28. Collingwood, Idea of History, 143.
29. Ibid., 257.
30. Ibid., 256
31. Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic, 385–86.
32. Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose, 218–19.
33. Richard Paul, Critical Thinking, 3rd ed. (np: Foundation for Critical Thinking,
1993), “About the Author.”
34. Ibid.
35. Paul, Critical Thinking, vii.
36. Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
1958), 8.
37. Stephen Toulmin, Return to Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,
2001), 190.
38. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H.
Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), IV.xvi.4.
39. Ibid.
40. Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About History, 3rd ed. (New York:
Longman, 1999), 48.
41. Ibid., 67
42. Carl Becker, Detachment and the Writing of History: Essays and Letters of
Carl L. Becker, ed. Phil L. Snyder (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1958), 13–14.
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268 A History of Reasonableness
Moss, Ann, 14, 121, 126n124 Peter of Spain (Pope John XXI),
Münsterberg, Hugo, 219, 220–21, 74–75, 87, 101, 119
226nn111–12 Peters, F. E., 39n45, 66, 77, 78, 83n74,
Murray, David, 224nn44–45 85n110, 85n114
Muslim. See Islam Philosophy departments, 175, 217–22,
240
Nadler, Steven, 171n5, 187, 223n29 Pius XI, 178
Nash, Richard, 173n83 place-logic. See topics
Neusner, Jacob, 78, 85n111 Plato, 18–19, 38n3, 39n45, 53, 73
Newman, John Henry, 175, 196, 207, Plato’s Academy, 18–22; Middle
215–16, 222nn1–3, 223n43, Academy, 22
225nn80–81; belief, 64 Plotinus, 72–75, 84nn90–91, 105, 185,
Nickerson, Raymond S., 246, 229
252n2 Plutarch, 19, 35–36; 41nn94–95, 77,
Nicole, Pierre, 129, 170n1. See also 115–16, 125n97
Port Royal Logic Poinsot, John. See John of St. Thomas
non-technical topics. See topics Posidonius, 65
Noreña, Carlos G., 126nn111–12 Porphyry, 68, 90, 96, 130, 186
Northrop, F. S. C., 244 Porter, Burton F., 246
Port-Royal Logic, 6, 16, 47, 113, 117,
obstinacy v. right thinking, 133 127–70, 187
Odysseus, 36–37 Potter, David, 30, 40n74
Ong, Walter J., 108, 122n6, 124n73 predicaments. See Porphyry; quality
optimism, epistemological, 10–12, probability and certainty, 20–22, 52–57
47–48, 50–52, 87, 90, 93, 115, Puritans, 106–13
117, 177, 192, 202 Pusey, 215
oracles, 17, 26–31, 67, 90–91 Pyrrho of Elis, 11–12, 64
Oxford University, 6, 102–3, 140, 147,
175–76, 188, 206–9 quality: as Aristotelian category, 96–97,
154; Melanchthonian tradition, 94,
Paley, William, 196 96–101. See also John of
Palmer, George Herbert, 219–20 St. Thomas
Pascal, Blaise, 128, 132, 133, 135, quantification of testimony/authority,
154–55, 171n9 135–36, 153–55, 205–6; Port-Royal
Patokorpi, Erkki, 207–8, 225n79, Logic influence, 153–70
225n82 “Question Authority,” 249
Pattison, Mark, 215–16, 225nn99–100 Quintilian, 1, 10, 12, 18, 19, 22–37,
Paul (St.), 43–44, 50–51, 76, 93 38n6, 38n9, 40n75, 41nn78–84,
Paul, Richard, 239, 253nn33–35 41nn88–93, 41nn96–98, 48,
Peacock, George, 186 82nn34–35, 115, 118, 124n61;
Peirce, Charles S., 160, 173nn59–62, honest error, 34–35, 51, 54, 104,
220 115, 180; influence, 3, 22, 31, 65,
Pelikan, Jaroslav, 64–65, 83n73 80, 218
Pepys, Samuel, 2, 8n5
Perkins, David, N., 246, 252n2 Ramist textbook tradition, 87, 106–17;
Perry, Ralph Barton, 219 dichotomies, 90, 130. See also
pessimism, epistemological, 10–12 reciprocation, testimony
Index 275