Assent, and you are sane; Demur, you're straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain.

The mother's assent to this was certainly an amiable concession to her daughter's views, enhanced by the regularity with which she kept the appointment, although the dark, silent room must have been at times a trifle wearisome.

Or if they even yield their assent to its truth, their very assent is the result of the same most dreadful disease of the soul.

Although in this twilight region of opinion demonstrative proofs are replaced merely by an "occasion" for "taking" a given fact or idea "as true rather than false," yet assent is by no means an act of choice, as the Cartesians had erroneously maintained, for in knowledge it is determined by clearly discerned reasons, and in the sphere of opinion, by the balance of probability.

So that I think we may conclude, that, in propositions, where though the proofs in view are of most moment, yet there are sufficient grounds to suspect that there is either fallacy in words, or certain proofs as considerable to be produced on the contrary side; there assent, suspense, or dissent, are often voluntary actions.

Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions; otherwise the world would have been in a bad way indeed, and nature not been vindicated of her children.

Every candid mind must assent to this; and this assent is an admission of the utter absurdity of trying to limit this symbol to the civil power alone.

Assent imposing a new condition is no assent.

'[990] At another time, talking of the same person, he observed, 'Sir, your assent to a man whom you have never known to falsify, is a debt: but after you have known a man to falsify, your assent to him then is a favour.'

" It can scarcely be doubted that this ready assent must have been no slight mortification to the vanity of Madame de Moret, while it is equally certain that it was perfectly sincere on the part of the King, although from a cause altogether independent of the Countess herself.