SCIENCE AND DEMONSTRATION 211 



analysed and described. By &quot; knowledge simply &quot; true know 

 ledge, or the possession of logical truth, is, of course, always meant. 

 The absence of such knowledge in a being capable of possessing it, 

 is called ignorance. Either the mind does not possess any ideas 

 at all about the matter in question, in which case it is absolutely 

 or totally ignorant, in a state of nescience regarding the thing ; or, 

 possessing some ideas about the thing, it does not know what is 

 the proper relation to establish between these, and is thus partially 

 ignorant, and in doubt. 



The opposite of truth, or true knowledge, is error, or erroneous 

 belief. Error necessarily implies the possession of some 

 ideas about the object thought of, and is the disagreement of the 

 judgment which the mind has formed about the thing, and to 

 which it adheres, with the thing or reality in question. 



When the mind adheres firmly to a judgment which it knows 

 to be true, it is said to have certitude. Certitude is, therefore, the 

 fixed or firm assent or adherence of the mind to a truth, without any 

 prudent fear of error. It can be had about immediately evident 

 judgments, or about those that are mediately evident, i.e. known 

 by reasoning. The name Science is applied specially to know 

 ledge of which we have mediate certitude ; we are said rather to 

 have Intelligence (&quot; Intelligentia &quot;) or Intellectual Intuition of im 

 mediate, abstract first principles, and Sense Intuition of the im 

 mediate, concrete facts of sense: we &quot;see&quot; these rather than 

 &quot;learn&quot; them. Mediate certitude presupposes, and rests ulti 

 mately on, certitude that is immediate. 



Properly, therefore, certitude is a state of the mind, the quality 

 of our mental assent to a judgment which we have formed, which 

 is true, and which we know to be true. The object to which the 

 mind assents in forming such a judgment is, as already explained 

 (78, 80), the reality itself, seen and grasped by the mind through 

 the relation established between the two aspects of that reality, 

 represented by subject and predicate. The reality itself, thus 

 looked at as the object of a true and certain mental judgment, 

 is usually called a certainty, or an objective certainty (in addition 

 to its still more common name, a truth) ; while the mental state 

 is described as the state of certitude}- 



When or how can we be certain that our judgment, our knowledge, is 

 true ? that we possess the truth ? When, on reflection, we find that the 

 evidence which is the cause or motive of our firm or certain assent is fully 



1 C/. CLARKE, Logic, p. 426; NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent, pp. 195-6. 



