510 INTELLECTUAL SYMBOLISM. 
192. Imperfections of language, dulness of comprehension, hastiness of judgment, argue 
no defect in our powers of perception. In explaining to others a truth that we clearly 
perceive and know, we may inadvertently convey a wrong impression, in consequence of 
a want of precision in our words, but we do not thereby detract from ‘the truth as it is 
percewed in our own minds. To take one of the examples already adduced: if I state the 
proposition that the three angles of a triangle are always equal to two right angles, my 
neighbor, from his confidence in my knowledge of the science of geometry, may believe 
my statement, and may erroneously suppose that the proposition is true of spherical tri- 
angles. The idea, however, as it exists in my own mind, being founded on self-evident 
relations between self-evident propositions, is incontrovertibly true, the error arising from 
the fact that my neighbor embraces spherical triangles in his definition of triangles, while 
I do not. 
193. His error is one of mere belief, not of knowledge. He would hardly say that he 
knows the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is equal to two right angles, and if he 
should say so, he could assign no better reason than his confidence in my assertion, an 
assertion that he misunderstood, and he would thus show that by the term knowledge, he 
merely meant confident belief. 
194. All error is merely of belief. It is always based on truth, and in a certain sense, 
may be said to represent partial or possible truth. It would be adopted by every mind 
that reasoned from the same data, for it. may be laid down as a law of our nature, that if 
a series of facts or arguments be presented in precisely the same order, under the same 
circumstances, and with the same degree of relative strength, to two different individuals, 
they will both deduce the same conclusions. But if one perceives any relations which are 
obscure to the view of the other, a difference of opinion will immediately arise. 
195. Let us briefly recapitulate the postulates we have endeavored to establish. 
196. All our faculties are implanted in us by the Creator. Every opinion that is formed 
necessarily and irresistibly, from the use of those faculties, must be true, and may be re- 
garded as a revelation from God, with as much propriety as if He verbally assured us 
that it was true. ‘Therefore every proposition that is self-evident, or that is traceable 
through a series of self-evident relations to one or more axioms is true, and constitutes a 
whomsoever truth is said, it is said through His teaching, who is the truth.’ St. Augustin, quoted by Butler, 
Vol. Il, pp. 43-4. 
“The objections made to Faith are by no means an effect of knowledge, but proceed rather from ignorance of 
what knowledge is.’’ Bishop Berkeley, quoted by Mansel. 
‘ft is not improbable that the writings of Proclus were indebted to Christianity for a term that occurs with 
peculiar frequency in them, —the term z/oztc, or faith, which Proclus regards as direct communion with the Infinite 
and Absolute, and the highest faculty of the human soul.’’? Butler, Vol. II, p. 330. 
