A beautiful childhood is a very beautiful reality. Partly because of the exquisite simplicity which tones down and harmonizes all its impulses. But, very often, its beauty is only known in its loss;--and we mourn in after years over hope, love, and peace, broken down by life's attrition;--yet fair to look upon, even in their ruins.[ag] No one is likely to doubt that the belief we have been describing, is peculiar to and characteristic of Man. A more subtle question would be this;--Suppose it could be taken away, how nearly would Man and brute approach each other?[164] A question deserving the attention of every one, who lives "In self-adoring pride securely mailed." Probably, the proudest of mankind little think how deeply their culture, art, and refinement, are indebted to a faith shared by the lowliest. One point, at least, seems clear,--if Morality did not perish in the wreck, a true and independent moral sense would bring us back to a belief in our own souls, their immortality, and their God. Another question more essential to our purpose has been buried under heaps of fallacy and misconception. Theists are often told that the ideas of a Deity,--a future life,--and generally all that is conceived as supernatural, have no absolute trustworthiness;--they are not self-evident axioms, and they cannot be demonstrated. One answer to these alleged difficulties has been implicitly given in the last Chapter. If such objections are valid at all, they are valid against every practical first-truth therein considered. They are valid against _all_ primary practical truths, looked at from the theoretical side, and tested by the rules proper to what is called pure Reason;--Reason, that is to say, not applied, but speculative. But, then, it is from this very employment of tests upon truth not _in pari materia_, that the first stage of fallacy begins. The _second_ step in error follows naturally from the first. Compared with the clearness and definition of mathematics, all other axioms and proofs appear dim and dubious. The consequence is, that our minds fall into trains of false comparison on the all-important subject of certitude. Errors of that kind are always growing mischiefs; our tongues follow the lead of our thoughts, and hazy thinking becomes hazy speaking. Not only so, but words develope themselves into the leaders of thought; and hazy speaking engenders a hazier thinking still. People take mathematical certainty to be the sole type of all true and valuable certainties. Practical maxims are spoken of, as merely probable, Right and Wrong as the efflux of moral sentiments.[165] Few seem to be aware _how_ the philosophical arrangements of first-truths ought to be applied. They should be applied to discriminate the _processes_, by which various kinds of truths are discoverable;--they stamp a character upon them, when discovered; but they do _not_ determine the intrinsic worth and validity of the discoveries.