Of these _first truths_, as they have been termed, the subject, which we are at present considering, affords one of the most striking examples. The belief of our identity is not the result of any series of propositions, but arises immediately, in certain circumstances, from a principle of thought, as essential to the very nature of the mind, as its powers of perception or memory, or as the power of reasoning itself, on the essential validity of which, and consequently on the intuitive belief of some first truth on which it is founded, every objection to the force of these very truths themselves must ultimately rest. To object is to argue; and to argue is to assert the validity of argument, and, therefore, of the primary evidence, from which the evidence of each succeeding proposition of the argument flows. To object to the authority of such primary intuitive belief, would thus be to reason against reason,--to affirm and deny at the same moment,--and to own that the very arguments which we urge are unworthy of being received and credited. As the nature of the process of reasoning has not yet come under our review, it may not at first appear to you, how essential the truths of intuition are to those very truths which are usually opposed to them. But that they are thus essential, a very little attention will be sufficient to show you. All belief, it is evident, must be either _direct_ or _indirect_. It is direct, when a proposition, without regard to any former proposition expressed or understood, is admitted as soon as it is expressed in words, or as soon as it rises silently in the mind. Such are all the order of truths, which have been denominated, on this account, first truths. The belief is indirect, when the force of the proposition, to which assent is given, is admitted only in consequence of the previous admission of some former proposition, with which it is felt to be intimately connected; and the statement in words, or the internal developement of these relative propositions in the order in which their relation to the primary proposition is felt, is all that constitutes _reasoning_. The indirect belief which attends the result of reasoning, even in the proudest demonstration, is thus only another form of some first truth, which was believed directly and independently of reasoning; and, without this primary intuitive assent, the demonstration itself, in all its beautiful precision and regularity, would be as powerless and futile as the most incoherent verbal wrangling.