SUPERIORITY OF A CHILD'S LOGIC. 421 



mind, feels that lie is on the verge of a primeval headache, 

 and seeing the vivacious child attracted by some new 

 subject, waits till his attention is fairly tackled, and 

 quietly leaves the throne of philosophy vacant. 



But the child is right after all, and how clearly and 

 confidently he knows it ! Gold is made of something. It 

 has a molecular structure of some kind, apart from which 

 and its chemical ratios it would cease to be gold, 

 chemically and monetarily. Its ultimate molecule, whether 

 we are right in all we have said of its structure in 

 Joyce's Scientific Dialogues, p. 324, or not, is divisible 

 into something else could we but reach it, and its mole- 

 cular structure once divided its whole chemical ratios and 

 combinations would be destroyed. The philosopher may 

 be satisfied with the fact that gold is gold, but the unso- 

 phisticated child will reason straight up to his Maker, and 

 be satisfied with no explanation short of that which 

 satisfies all his awed and deep-felt consciousness that He 

 who could make himself could also make gold, whatever 

 lesser ultimatum science may proclaim on the basis of 

 primary and hypothetically irresoluble elements. This 

 is not quite intuition in a child, it is the honest energy of 

 unvitiated dialectics penetrating to the legitimate ulti- 

 matum of all causation : the only possible source of those 

 things not seen which the apostle and our own experience 

 alike demonstrate to us have their evidence in the meta- 

 physical existence and consciousness of us all. The child 

 knows he has been but recently brought into existence 

 himself, and by a competent Power which he perctives by 

 analogy to be competent to bring anything else into ex- 

 istence. In mathematical language, the first of these facts 

 is an axiom, the second is its corollary ; and both, if not 

 explanatory, are at least irresistibly convincing. But the 

 proposition that gold is self-existent is a hypothesis not 

 based on any axiomatic premise. Gold, we know, has a 



