believe, and that, too, with a feeling of confidence which needs no argument to confirm it, and to which all the philosophy in the world could impart no additional strength. Certitude is not the creation of Philosophy, but the object of its study; it exists independently of Science, and is only recognized by it; and it would still exist as a constituent and indestructible element of human consciousness were Metaphysics scattered to the wind. It appears, again, to have been assumed in some recent treatises, that Certitude belongs only to that portion of truth the denial of which would imply a contradiction, or amount to the annihilation of reason. Is it, then, to be restricted to _necessary_ and _absolute_, as contrasted with _contingent_ and _relative_ truths? Am I not as _certain_ that I see four objects before me, as that two and two make four? Yet the former is a _contingent_, the latter a _necessary_ truth. Is not my personal consciousness infallibly certain? And yet can it be said to belong to the head of necessary truth? Surely Certitude is unduly restricted when we exclude from it many of our surest and strongest convictions, which relate to truths attested by experience, but the denial of which would involve no contradiction. The question has been still further complicated by extreme opinions of another kind. It seems to have been assumed that there can be no Certitude, unless we can explain the _rationale_ of our knowledge, and even account for the objects of our knowledge by tracing them up to their First Cause, as the ground and reason of their existence.[236] Now, if the question were, Can you account for your own existence, or for the existence of the world around you, without having recourse to a supreme First Cause? we would answer, No: but if the question be, Can there be any Certitude prior to the idea of God, not deduced from it, and capable of existing without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere de bien juger, qui est, de juger comme Dieu meme;"[237] and yet it may not be true that all our knowledge is derived by deduction from our idea of God, or that its entire certainty is dependent on our religious belief. Surely we may be certainly assured of the facts of consciousness, of the phenomena of Nature, and of many truths, both necessary and contingent, before we have made any attempt to explain the _rationale_ of our knowledge, or to connect it with the idea of the great First Cause; nay, it may be, and we believe it is, by _means_ of these inferior and subordinate truths