Before attempting, however, to point out the divine order in the education of the human race, by the gradual revelation of truth, two general and preliminary remarks seem called for. I observe, then, first of all, that when we speak of sense, soul, and spirit, as the successive terms in the growing capacity of the human consciousness for a higher knowledge and heavenly training, and for truth in general, but more especially for divine truth, then the general sense of truth, which such an hypothesis supposes, and which indeed is its essential foundation, must be understood as comprising all those other particular species, branches, or departments which we have already enumerated. I mean the common sense of sound reason. For that susceptibility for the impressions of nature, and the understanding, which, as I said before, constitute the sense for the revelation of spirit, or the spirit of revelation--whether written or historical--are alike comprised in that one and common sense for truth. Or perhaps we may rather say, that by their joint operations they form it; while, however, in its special application, now this now that constituent preponderates--or perhaps that this one and universal sense for truth is called into action, and made to co-operate now in this direction and now in that. Moreover, that internal concurrence and assent of the will, which I have endeavored to show is the proper sense in man for God and for divine things, belongs also, as an essential and element of its constitution, to this general sense for truth. For that the opposite fault of self-will and obstinacy is in the highest degree a hinderance of good, even in the acquisition of knowledge and the recognition of truth, is found by experience in the earliest essays of education. But not only in the elementary principles of learning, but even in the most highly-finished and elaborate systems of metaphysical ideas, constructed by the profoundest thinkers and philosophers, does this spirit of negation and contradiction show itself, and prove the greatest obstacle to truth and the most fruitful source of error.