PROBATION
G09
PROBUS LECTOR
receive it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability and certainly, faith and knowledge, that in all the parts of knowledge there is intuition ; each immediate idea, each step, has its visible and certain connection; in be- lief not so. That which makes us believe is something extraneous to the thing we believe ; something not ev- idently joined on both sides to, and so not manifestly showing the agreement or disagreement of, those ideas that are under consideration" {Essay on the Human Un- derstanding, bk. iv, ch. xv; comp. Reid, Iutell. Poicers, essay vii, ch. iii). "The word probable" says Mr. Stewart, " does not imply any deficiency in the proof, but only marks the particular nature of that proof, as contradistinguished from another species of evidence. It is opposed not to what is certain, but to what admits of being demonstrated after the manner of the mathe- maticians. This differs widely from the meaning an- nexed to the same word in popular discourse; accord- ing to which, whatever event is said to be probable is understood to be expected with some degree of doubt. . . . But although, in philosophical language, the epi- thet probable be applied to events which are acknowl- edged to be certain, it is also applied to events which are called probable by the vulgar. The philosophical meaning of the word, therefore, is more comprehensive than the popular; the former denoting that particular species of evidence of which contingent truths admit; the latter being confined to such degrees of this evi- dence as fall short of the highest. These different de- grees of probability the philosopher considers as a series, beginning with bare possibility, and terminating in that apprehended infallibility with which the phrase moral certainty is synonymous. To this last term of the se- ries the word probable is, in its ordinary acceptation, plainly inapplicable" {Elements, pt. ii, ch. ii, § 4).
Archbishop Butler, in his treatment of the evidences of Christianity, has had frequent recourse to this the- ory of the probable, and in consequence has at times laid himself open to severe attacks from the deistical and infidel schools of philosophy. By dwelling exclu- sively upon the absence of direct contradiction, and sinking the absence of confirmation, the learned author of the Analogy not unfrequently converts absolute igno- rance into the likeness of some degree of positive knowl- edge. So Campbell, who borrowed from Butler, con- structed most ingenious arguments on this paradox. Both these English thinkers seem to have had a con- fused notion that the improbability is an actual thing which still exists. Thus Campbell, after Butler, says, e. g., " The chances that a comet will not appear at a given instant in a given place are infinite. The pre- sumption against the statement is therefore as strong as experience can afford ; and yet when an astronomer announces the appearance of the comet you unhesitat- ingly believe him." The object in this statement is to prove that we must depend largely upon testimony built up from experience, and that therefore knowledge is built upon the probable. The result is, of course, a delusive appearance of independent scientific grounds for what is really a purely a priori deduction. Like meth- ods are now adopted in scientific circles, and what Hume and consorts once condemned the theologians for, the latter now have to contend with in the application of scientific queryings to the positive in divine laws and institutions. See Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos. (Index in vol. ii) ; The (Loud-.) Quar. Rev. Jan. 1875, p. 31 sq. ; London Academy, Nov. 15, 1873, p. 435, col. 1; Ste- phen, Relirjivus Thom/ht in England in the 18th Cen- tury, vol. i. (J. H. W.)
Probation, Ecclesiastical, in the Methodist Episcopal Church and other Methodist bodies, is the period, usually six months, for the candidate for Church membership to determine whether the organization is such as is likely to aid him in his Christian life, and for the Church to determine whether he is a proper person to be received.
VIII.-Q q
PROBATION, Ministerial, signifies among some English dissenters the state of a student or minister while supplying a vacant church, with a view, on their approval of his character and talents, to his taking the pastoral oversight of them.
PROBATION, Monastic, is the year of a novitiate, which a religieux must pass in a convent to prove his virtue and vocation, and whether he can bear the se- verities of the ride.
PROBATION, Moral, is a term used in Christian morals to denote that state of man in which his char- acter is formed and developed in action preparatory to judgment (q.v.). It is the state antecedent to a state of retribution (q.v.). "More strictly speaking, moral probation is that experimental trial -which lays the foundation for approbation or disapprobation, praise or blame, reward or punishment. It involves ob- ligations to obedience, exposure to temptations, com- mands and prohibitions; promises, on the one hand, to encourage to duty; threatenings, on the other, to deter from sin ; with a certainty of final retributions accord- ing to the character produced under these various means, and visibly proved by the course of action pur- sued by the individual. This is the state which is de- nominated moral probation ; and in such a state is man- kind under the law of God and the mediatorial reign of Christ; or, in the customary language of the New Test., under the kingdom of heaven (Matt, xiii, 10-52)." It is the principal or rather essential doctrine in the in- dependent system of those Christian moralists who wish to prove metaphysically the truth of Christian ethics. It is the favorite basis of Butler in his Analogy. See Butler, Works, i, 109, 128 sq., 382; Christian 'Rev. xvi, 541 ; Harlan, Ethics (see Index). The question whether there be a period of probation after death is more prop- erly a part of the articles Future Punishment and Purgatory. Comp. the Meth. Qua?: Rev. April, 187C, p. 355 sq., 357 sq.