It will be observed that for the purposes of this discussion we are on 'dogmatic' ground,--ground, I mean, which leaves systematic philosophical scepticism altogether out of account. The postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to make, though the sceptic will not make it. We part company with him, therefore, absolutely, at this point. But the faith that truth exists, and that our minds can find it, may be held in two ways. We may talk of the _empiricist_ way and of the _absolutist_ way of believing in truth. The absolutists in this matter say that we not only can attain to knowing truth, but we can _know when_ we have attained to knowing it; while the empiricists think that although we may attain it, we cannot infallibly know when. To _know_ is one thing, and to know for certain _that_ we know is another. One may hold to the first being possible without the second; hence the empiricists and the absolutists, although neither of them is a sceptic in the usual philosophic sense of the term, show very different degrees of dogmatism in their lives. If we look at the history of opinions, we see that the empiricist tendency has largely prevailed in science, while in philosophy the absolutist tendency has had everything its own way. The characteristic sort of happiness, indeed, which philosophies yield has mainly consisted in the conviction felt by each successive school or system that by it bottom-certitude had been attained. "Other philosophies are collections of opinions, mostly false; _my_ philosophy {13} gives standing-ground forever,"--who does not recognize in this the key-note of every system worthy of the name? A system, to be a system at all, must come as a _closed_ system, reversible in this or that detail, perchance, but in its essential features never!