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mother, until experience, it may be, has brought some counter evidence 
which teaches that though the parent may love the child, aud know 
more, and wisely guide it, and mean well by it, yet for some reason or 
other, owing to the parent’s ignorance or folly, or worse, for sometimes the 
parent will deceive the child ; but I do not apprehend that the first trust 
is a trust without a basis. It rests on a basis, and on a true intuitional basis 
too, and it is consequently a trust to be recognized as related distinctly 
to science, to moral science. It appears to me that all our beliefs rest upon 
induction, more or less imperfect, coupled, it may be, with the verification 
which is afforded by experience. A belief in the case that I have just referred 
to rests upon imperfect induction, unconsciously performed, even by a little 
child. If the induction is very perfect — if you have a great many instances 
with no exceptions, of the trustworthiness, wisdom, and guidance of the 
person you trust, your induction becomes more and more perfect, and it 
may eventually become so perfect as to amount to something tantamount 
to scientific assurance. I apprehend that belief and trust really rest upon 
induction, and unless we are prepared to say that induction itself, and all 
that relates to inductive evidence, is to be banished from the sphere of 
science, we must admit that belief itself comes within the province of 
science. So I do not think that men are called upon often, or even once, to 
take a leap in the dark : they may be called upon to take a leap in the 
twilight, when they must either do that or be absolutely destroyed where 
they stand ; but if it be truly dark, so that they can see nothing before 
or behind, above or beneath, I know no reason why they should leap this 
way or that, or why, indeed, they should leap at all. They may be called 
upon to take a leap in an imperfect light, according to the best illumination 
they can have in the midst of the general obscurity. These are samples of 
the sort of thoughts which have been passing through my mind. Professor 
Wace has told us that as it is our duty to speak the truth, so it is a 
coi'relative duty to believe that everybody else is speaking the truth, at 
least in the first instance. Now I do not apprehend that there is any 
equivalence whatever in the obligation between the one of these things 
and the other. I apprehend that the obligation to speak the truth rests 
upon an entirely different foundation, and is an obligation of an altogether 
different sort from the duty to give a generous or charitable credence 
to what a stranger may say to me. This is a matter of courtesy or of 
convenience, or it may be a question of evidence. But it is not constant 
or invariable, and must be subject to the teachings of experience, which 
may warrant and lead me, as I get on in life, less and less to believe 
statements that I hear. As I get older, I apprehend that I am some- 
what less inclined to believe everything that I hear at the first hearing 
of it ; but I trust that I am not the less likely, from experience or from 
the moral discipline of life, to speak the truth myself in my dealings with 
others. I think that the distinctions between opinion, faith or belief, and 
knowledge, need to be very carefully analyzed, and that they have not 
