336 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



these principles? from what other source of 

 knowledge we derive the original truths which 

 we thus pursue into detail ? since it is manifest 

 that such principles cannot be derived from the 

 proper stores of mathematics or logic. These 

 methods can generate no new truth ; and all the 

 grounds and elements of the knowledge which, 

 through them, we can acquire, must necessarily 

 come from some extraneous source. It is cer- 

 tain, therefore, that the mathematician and the 

 logician must derive from some process different 

 from their own, the substance and material of all 

 our knowledge, whether physical or metaphysi- 

 cal, physiological or moral. This process, by 

 which we acquire our first principles, (without 

 pretending here to analyse it,) is obviously the 

 general course of human experience, and the 

 natural exercise of the understanding ; our inter- 

 course with matter and with men, and the con- 

 sequent growth in our minds of convictions and 

 conceptions such as our reason can deal with, 

 either by her systematic or unsystematic methods 

 of procedure. Supplies from this vast and inex- 

 haustible source of original truths are requisite, 

 to give any value whatever to the results of our 

 deductive processes, whether mathematical or 



sion, it follows at once, that no new truth can be elicited by any 

 process of reasoning." Whately's Logic, p. 223. 



Mathematics is the logic of quantity, and to this science the 

 observation here quoted is strictly applicable. 



