But please observe, now, that when as empiricists we give up the doctrine of objective certitude, we do not thereby give up the quest or hope of truth itself. We still pin our faith on its existence, and still believe that we gain an ever better position towards it by systematically continuing to roll up experiences and think. Our great difference from the scholastic lies in the way we face. The strength of his system lies in the principles, the origin, the _terminus a quo_ of his thought; for us the strength is in the outcome, the upshot, the _terminus ad quem_. Not where it comes from but what it leads to is to decide. It matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may come to him: he may have acquired it by fair means or by foul; passion may have whispered or accident suggested it; but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it, that is what he means by its being true. VII. One more point, small but important, and our preliminaries are done. There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion,--ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern. _We must know the truth_; and _we must avoid error_,--these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth _A_, we escape {18} as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood _B_, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving _B_ we necessarily believe _A_. We may in escaping _B_ fall into believing other falsehoods, _C_ or _D_, just as bad as _B_; or we may escape _B_ by not believing anything at all, not even _A_.