CHAP. I.] THE STARTING-POINT. 5 



rational choice, as lie has no duty, but to reason out his 

 doubts to the end : to seek to escape them by diverting 

 his attention, or to obscure them by calling up a cloud 

 of emotion, is not only useless but blameworthy. As it is 

 for an individual so is it for a people. And if, as in England 

 in the present day, we see a generation restlessly seeking on 

 all sides, in a night of doubt, for the first glimmerings of a 

 corning dawn, surely hearty sympathy and ready aid are 

 called for in favour of men who show by such restlessness and 

 questioning how they are seeking to gain a knowledge of 

 truth which was at least never lost through any act or deed 

 of theirs. 



Now at the present time Englishmen are again and again 

 called upon to treat as open questions the very first Bewiwennj? 



. . , - -n j J x 1 1.1 &quot; effect of the 



principles of all reasoning, fundamental truths upon present con- 

 which the whole fabric of science reposes. And as opinion. 

 but a small minority of the lecture-hearing, magazine-reading 

 public can be supposed to have seriously taken up the study 

 of philosophy, it follows that a certain number will fail to 

 distinguish accurately between a healthy and an unhealthy 

 scepticism. Not being accustomed to sound the depths of 

 their own minds, and puzzled by the paradoxes of the sophists 

 who now and again address them, some lose their hold upon 

 all certainty and fall into a state of general doubt which is 

 so undefined that it does not formulate itself in distinct pro 

 positions. Hence we too often encounter a vague and hazy 

 scepticism, producing a languid and otiose state of mind which 

 is, indeed, a symptom of incipient intellectual paralysis. 



But since our object is to seek for certain positive truth, 

 and to build up logically on such certain basis, it is Expediency 



, , . ofstimulat- 



needful to rouse attention, as tar as may be, to tins ingutho- 

 enfeebling disease a mental falling-sickness. In quiry. &quot; 

 the presence of this evil it is surely well to try and drive 

 such loiterers along the philosophic road, and to force on 

 them an earnest and resolute questioning of themselves, 

 so that they may know clearly that they do know what 

 they know, and that they may not be persuaded unawares 



