1819 March 10

Jug. Util.

Verity

3

Price & Campbell

II. Campbell

(3)

The sense, if there were any such thing, what is it that on each occasion it would serve for ascertaining? the /reality of the supposed fact or the unreality? the affirmative/ affirmation of the proposition, be it what it may, or the negative? If the answer be the affirmative, give a little [...?] to the proposition, what was affirmative becomes negative.

This sense /if there be any one that has it/ if there be any such thing any who is it that has it? who is it that has it not? By the supposition the believer /unbeliever/ has it not: or what comes to the same thing for his belief is opposite. But the Doctor has his answer ready: I, and those who believe with me, we have the sense in question: those whose belief is or is pretended to be opposite have it not: they are either liars or a species of monsters: their suffrages ought not to be counted. Here then in every thing but the name, we have infallibility. At Rome the infallible is one: it is the Pope. In Scotland the infallible is Legion: it is a knot composed of believers and unbelievers there conjoined: it serves believers for belief: it serves unbelievers for their unbelief the supposed fact or proposition being the same.

Note (c)

Of this instrument the proper name is ipsidixitism. The thing is true: why? because it is I that say it.

The arrogance of the wearer of the triple crown is modesty, compared with the arrogance of those Scotchmen. The question for the solution /[...?]/ of which the infallibility of the Roman serves him are but questions of theology: questions which amount to nothing and are of no use. Were it not for the temporal /the real/ power attached to it, no matter what be applied it to—no matter what he did with it.

But these Scotch men—these philosophers as they call one another, in their hands it serves there for all sorts of questions: for expelling from every corner of the field of logic, as well as of that morals, reason and experience, and substituting nonsense and arrogance in the room of it /their place/.

In this school, Beattie and perhaps another being excepted, are it must be acknowledged seldom to be found: in general all is urbanity and gentleness. The former not: but of the substance arrogance in the very of essence.