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would do in future. All he could have done would have been 
to draw the conclusion that it might rise again. Nor would 
two or three repetitions have justified the conclusion that it would 
do so. But a large number of such repetitions — it is impossible 
to say how many — would generate the feeling of certainty. How 
comes this ? The only possible explanation is, that there is some 
principle in our mental constitution which compels us to arrive 
at this conclusion, and that it cannot be given by experience 
alone. The device of referring it to a number of experiences 
of our remote ancestors, which may have generated an 
intuitive belief in us, their descendants, as an account of its 
origin, only removes the difficulty without attempting to solve 
it. The necessity of explaining what gave validity to the original 
experience remains in full force. Similar reasoning applies to 
every axiomatic principle, and to all certainties which lie at the 
foundation of all valid reasoning. 
31. All proof must rest on something which does not require 
proof. Premisses cannot run up into infinity. To assert that 
everything must be proved is to deny the possibility of reasoning. 
Some premisses are acquiesced in owing to their self-evidence, 
or to something in our mental constitution which compels us 
to assent to them. They must therefore possess an universal 
objective validity, independent of our experience of pheno- 
mena, however closely they may be connected with it. It is un- 
necessary to determine whether these principles are few or many : 
it is sufficient that they exist. Their existence destroys the 
basis on which the philosophy of pantheism and atheism rests. 
32. We must now consider another most important principle 
on which this philosophy is founded, viz., its denial that the 
order and adaptations of nature are a sufficient ground for 
inferring the existence of an intelligent and conscious mind, 
which the philosophy of theism designates as a Personal God. 
The affirmation of certain systems of current philosophy is 
clear, and leaves no doubtful issue, viz., that we are not justified 
from the presence of order in nature in inferring the existence 
of an arranger ; or from adaptation, of an adapter, or from 
apparent contrivance, of a contriver ; or from the suitableness 
of the means by which a definite result has been brought about 
to effectuate it, of a designer. In one word, it is affirmed, 
when we see in nature results which elsewhere are unquestion- 
able evidences of the presence of intelligent mind, that all such 
inferences are invalid in the domains of nature; and that 
in making them we are only transferring the subjective 
impressions of our own minds into objective facts. On the 
contrary, this philosophy teaches that the order and adapta- 
vol. viti. x 
