to assign some wider truth in which it is involved; for that wider truth we are able, if required, to assign some still wider; and so on. This being the general nature of the demonstration by which exact knowledge is established, there has arisen the illusion that knowledge so established is knowledge of higher validity than that immediate knowledge which has nothing deeper to rest on. The habit of asking for proof, and having proof given, in all these multitudinous cases, has produced the implication that proof may be asked for those ultimate dicta of consciousness into which all proof is resolvable. And then, because no proof of these can be given, there arises the vague feeling that they are akin to other things of which no proof can be given—that they are uncertain—that they have unsatisfactory bases. This feeling is strengthened by the accompanying misuse of words. “Belief” having, as above pointed out, become the name of an impression for which we can give only a confessedly-inadequate reason, or no reason at all; it happens that when pushed hard respecting the warrant for any ultimate dictum of consciousness, we say, in the absence of all assignable reason, that we _believe_ it. Thus the two opposite poles of knowledge go under the same name; and by the reverse connotations of this name, as used for the most coherent and least coherent relations of thought, profound misconceptions have been generated. Here, it seems to me, is the source of Sir William Hamilton’s error. Classing as “beliefs” those direct, undecomposable dicta of consciousness which transcend proof, he asserts that these are of higher authority than knowledge (meaning by knowledge that for which reasons can be given); and in asserting this he is fully justified. But when he claims equal authority for those affections of consciousness which {191} go under the same name of “beliefs,” but differ in being extremely-indirect affections of consciousness, or not definite affections of consciousness at all, the claim cannot be admitted. By his own showing, no positive cognition answering to the word “infinite” exists; while, contrariwise, those cognitions which he rightly holds to be above question, are not only positive, but have the peculiarity that they cannot be suppressed. How, then, can the two be grouped together as of like degrees of validity?