and scepticism. man must have one; that half a loaf is better than no bread; that England is an island; and that if we throw down a quantity of printer's type it will not so fall as to form a set of verses. Some readers may be impatient at meeting with assertions seemingly as trivial as obviously true. But it is needful to recall to mind the fact that absolute and complete certainty does really exist with respect to such obvious truths, however little we may be given to advert to the fact. It is now especially needful to make these simple truths clear, on account of the before-mentioned present danger of an exaggerated scepticism. Blind disbelief is as fatal to science as blind belief, and it is possible for men to get themselves into a diseased condition of general Unhealthy distrust and uncertainty. Experience proves that they irrational may bring themselves to doubt or deny the plainest truths, the evidence of their senses, the reality of truth or virtue, or even their own existence. It is well, then, distinctly to recognize that universal doubt is scepticism run mad, as the following observations may serve to show. If a man doubts whether there is such a thing as rational speech, or whether words can be used twice over by any two people in the same sense, then plainly we cannot profitably argue with him. But if, on account of his very absurdity, we cannot refute him, it is no less plain that he cannot defend his scepticism. Were he to attempt to do so, then he would show, by that very attempt, that he really had confidence in reason and in language, however he might verbally deny it. Universal scepticism is foolish, because it refutes itself. If a sceptic says, "Nothing is certain," he thereby asserts the certainty of uncertainty. He makes an affirmation which, if true, absolutely contradicts both him and his system. But a man who affirms what the system he professes to adopt forbids him to affirm, and who declares that he believes what he also declares to be unbelievable, can hardly complain if he is called foolish. No system can be true, and no reasoning can be valid, which inevitably ends in absurdity. Such scepticism, then, cannot be the mark of an exceptionally intellectual mind, but of an exceptionally foolish one. It also follows that every position which necessarily leads to such scepticism must itself be essentially unreasonable. Reflex mental acts. Having, then, recognized the existence of certainty and the fact that some things are certain, the next step in the pursuit of truth would seem to be an endeavour to discover "what things are especially true," or "what are those propositions the certainty of which is most indisputable, and which are evidently and supremely true?" In an inquiry concerning what our mind tells us about its own judgments, there is a special difficulty, arising from our organization. For the mind applies itself easily enough to external objects, but has much greater difficulty in directing its gaze in upon itself. We are spontaneously impelled to form judgments about external things, or "direct judgments," but we are not so impelled to reflect on our judgments, compare them one with another, and judge about them. These reflections of the mind inwards on itself are called "reflex mental acts," and the judgments which the so reflecting mind makes about its own judgments are "reflex judgments." Such difficulty as may be experienced in making these reflections must, however, be got over by any one who would successfully engage in the quest for "truth;" nor will there be much difficulty in getting over it. For this faculty, like our other faculties, may be strengthened by exercise, and all that is ordinarily needed to perfect it is patient perseverance. Some views truths are putable. Now, some very estimable persons will tell us that the especially true and most indisputable propositions, are those which can be shown by reasoning to be necessarily true. Others will declare them to be propositions the truth of which has not been impressed upon us by habit or by any association of ideas, but is what they call "a genuine testimony of consciousness," spontaneously arising in the mind of an infant as its intelligence dawns. Some good persons are persuaded that we must select as the truest propositions, those which are not gained by experience and are called à priori, or which have been implanted in our nature by a benevolent and all-wise Creator. There are, on the other hand, very able writers who affirm that we cannot pick out any especially indisputable propositions at all, because the whole of our ideas are simply due to mental association, and are the result of the experiences and prejudices not only of countless generations of mankind, but of an indefinite number of non-human ancestors also. But one and the same answer must be made to all these different representations. The matters they refer to are very interesting, but the problem we have to solve is one entirely independent of them. It has nothing to do with questions about the origin of our judgments, or with reasonings about their truth. Indeed, no proposition capable of proof can possibly be one the certainty of which is fundamental. For in order to prove anything by reasoning, we must show that it necessarily follows as a consequence from other truths on the truth of which its own truth depends. Such other truths must therefore be deemed more indisputable than the thing they are called in to prove. Evidently we cannot prove everything. However long may be our arguments, we must at last come to ultimate statements which must be taken for granted, as we must take for granted the validity of the process of reasoning itself. If we had to prove either the validity of that process or such ultimate statements, then either we must argue in a circle, or our process of proof must go on for ever without coming to a conclusion. In other words, there could be no such thing as proof at all. Similarly no inquiries concerning the origin of ideas can suffice to point out those which are the least disputable. Valuable and useful as such inquiries are in other ways, they cannot suffice. To be conclusive, they must depend on some general affirmation such as, "No beliefs due to the association of animal feelings, or of ideas, can be most certain truths," or, "Whatever idea is à priori, or God-implanted, or manifested in the dawning intelligence of an infant, must be a most certain truth." But since the truth of these propositions themselves is questioned by many persons, whatever depends on them can have no pretensions to be evidently and supremely true. And, indeed, it is by no means clear why a surpassing keenness of mental vision should be attributed to babies or why our earliest beliefs should be thought less fallible than the beliefs of our maturity. Again, if the outcome of the first sensations and cognitions of infants are to be This inquiry refers to the criterion of beliefs, not to their origin. But, as before observed, all inquiries into the origin and grounds and causes of our beliefs, valuable and interesting as they are for the study of the human mind, are out of place in an inquiry as to what judgments are evidently and supremely certain. The latter inquiry refers to the grounds of belief which any judgment may exhibit in and by itself-to a criterion of its truth-and not at all to the causes which have produced it. Yet there are philosophers who have been so busy in trying to find out how different propositions have come to be believed, that they have neglected the more fundamental inquiry why they should be believed--what grounds of certainty they exhibit. By the "grounds of certainty" which any judgment can show, it is not, of course, meant anything external to it. Such a meaning would imply a proof of the judgment, and would involve us in an endless and resultless series of arguments, as already pointed out. The only ground of certainty which an ultimate and supremely certain judgment can possess, is its self-evidence-its own manifest certainty in and by itself. All proof, or reasoning, Ultimate truths cannot be proved. is the truth. must ultimately rest upon truths which carry with them their own evidence and do not, therefore, need proof. Some persons on first meeting with this assertion may be startled at the suggestion of believing anything whatever on "its own evidence," fancying that it is equivalent to a suggestion that they should believe blindly. This is due to the second of those too mental associations to which attention was called in the earlier part of this chapter, namely, that association which induces a feeling that to believe anything without proof is to believe it blindly, but that we do not believe blindly that which comes to us as the result of a process of reasoning. And yet it is manifest, on reflection, that if it is not blind credulity to believe what is evident to us by means of something else, it must be still less blind to believe that which is directly evident in and by itself! No demonstration of Euclid can be more than "evidently" true, and it is evidence, and evidence Self-evidence alone, which gives certainty to any proposition whatever. criterion of But here once more an objection may occur to the reader, for he may naturally object that multitudes of men take as evidently true the most mistaken judgments-as, for example, that a railway carriage in which they are seated is in motion, instead of another really moving beside it; or that it is the motion of the sun itself which causes it to "rise" and "set." But no judgment is to be deemed an evident one unless all readily available tests of its truth have been made use of. We must examine whether it be the opinion of our fellow-men, whether it is supported by the testimony of our senses, or whether the reasoning processes which have been employed to prove it (if the evident judgment be the result of reasoning) are valid. Moreover, no judgment is to be considered as self-evident unless it appears to be so not only at first, but also on reflection. afterwards. It must be seen, when we have maturely reflected about it, to be certain without proof. Instances of familiar home truths have been already given, and it is easy enough to give others, such, for example, as the truth that "if we have had the misfortune to lose an eye, we cannot still have the pair we had before such misfortune occurred," or the truth that "a stick three feet long and one thirty-six |