CHARACTER AND LIMITS OF BELIEF AND CERTAINTY. 519 
tions which constitute a portion of our own faith or of the general faith of our race, we 
are able to enlarge our sphere of knowledge, to replace probability by certainty, and de- 
termine the truth or falsehood of much that is involved in doubt. 
229, Entire assurance, then, is attainable upon many points, but it can only be attained 
as the result of patient labor properly directed. We accordingly find a great difference 
in the precision of ideas, the amount of knowledge, and the degree of confidence in points 
of belief in different persons. ‘This difference is discernible even in the axioms of 
different periods, different nations, different individuals, and even of the same individual 
at different stages of his life. 
230. We know that even the axioms of mathematics were not all recognized at once, 
but they embody the results of long ages of patient investigation. We find that some 
tribes of men are so wholly unaccustomed to mental discipline, that they will not admit 
some of the simplest and most evident truths, because they do not understand them ; and, 
finally, in our own experience, we find that as our mind enlarges, not only does our sphere 
ot knowledge enlarge, but we are constantly discovering new simple elementary truths ; 
and even the simpler propositions that once required proof in order to entitle them to our 
confidence become gradually axiomatic. 
231. But-with all our progress, whatever may be the character of the age in which we 
live, or of the circumstances by which we are surrounded, the test of certainty remains 
the same. We still feel that it rests with us to decide what we know, and what is still 
unknown, and without inquiring whence we derive the authority to make that decision, 
we know that we can appeal to none higher or more infallible. 
232. “That we cannot show forth how the mind is capable of knowing something dif- 
ferent from self, is no reason to doubt that it is so capable. Every how (éz) rests ulti- 
mately on a that (c=); every demonstration is deduced from something given and inde- 
monstrable ; all that is comprehensible hangs from some revealed fact which we must 
believe as actual, but cannot construe to the reflective itellect in its possibility.* 
233. “The truths known by intuition are the original premises from which all others 
are inferred. Our assent to the conclusion being grounded upon the truth of the pre- 
mises, we never could arrive at any knowledge by reasoning, unless something could be 
known antecedently to all reasoning.” T 
234. “‘ When men are asked, if any one questions them skilfully, they say all things of 
themselves, although if they had not an internal knowledge and true reason, they could 
not do so.” 
* Hamilton, Discussions, p. 68. See also Aristotle, ’Avadutizay dotépwy, B.-1, chap. 2, 3. 
+ J. 8. Mill, p. 3. + Plato, Phedo, 73 a.- 
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