that we rise to the belief of a supreme, omniscient Mind. Some writers seem to confound Certitude with _Infallibility,_ or at least to hold that there can be no Certitude without it. The _impersonal reason_ of Cousin, the _common sense_ or _generic reason_ of Lamennais, and the _authoritative tradition_ of the Church, have all been severally resorted to, for the purpose of obtaining a ground of Certitude in the matters both of Philosophy and Faith, such as is supposed to be unattainable by the exercise of our own proper faculties, or by the most careful study of evidence. According to these theories, Certitude belongs to our knowledge, only because that knowledge is derived from a reason superior to our own,--a reason not personal, but universal; not individual, but generic. When they are applied, as they have been, to undermine the authority of private judgment, and to supersede the exercise of free inquiry; when they are urged as a reason why we should defer to the authority of the Race in matters of Philosophy and to the authority of the Church in matters of Faith; when we are told that the certainty of our own existence depends on our knowledge of God, and that our knowledge of God depends on the _common consent_ or _invariable traditions_ of mankind,--we do feel that the grounds of Certitude, so far from being strengthened, are sapped and weakened by such speculations, and that we have here a new and most unexpected application of the Scottish doctrine of Common Sense, such as may be highly serviceable to the Church of Rome. Protestant writers, indeed, have sometimes appealed to _common consent_ as a collateral proof, auxiliary to that which is more direct and conclusive; but they have done so merely because they regarded it as a _part of the evidence_, well fitted to prove what Dr. Cudworth calls "the naturality of the idea of God," and not because they confounded it with the _faculty_ by which alone that evidence can be discerned and appreciated. They never regarded it as the sole ground of certainty either in matters of Philosophy or Faith. Nor can it be so considered by any thoughtful mind. For how can I be more assured of an _impersonal reason_ than of my own? How can I be more certain of the existence and the traditions of other men, than of the facts of my own consciousness, and the spontaneous convictions of my own understanding? or how can I be assured that, in passing from the impersonal reason to the individual mind, from the generic reason to the personal, the truth may not contract some taint of weakness or impurity from the vessel in which it is ultimately contained,--from the finite faculties by which alone it is apprehended and believed?