'reasoning' or logical deduction, may be said almost as truly to depend
on faith as on reason for their reception.* For the only ground for
believing them true is that man cannot help so believing them! The same
may be said of that great fact, without which the whole world would
be at a stand-still--a belief in the uniformity of the phenomena of
external nature; that the same sun, for example, which rose yesterday
and to-day, will rise again tomorrow. That this cannot be demonstrated,
is admitted on all hands; and that it is not absolutely proved from
experience is evident, both from the fact that the uniformity supposed
is only accepted as partially and transiently true; the great bulk
of mankind, even while they so confidently act upon that uniformity,
rejecting the idea of its being an eternal uniformity. Every theist
believes that the order of the universe once began to be; and every
Christian and most other men, believe that it will also one day cease to
be.

____

* Common language seems to indicate this: Since we call that disposition
of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or
affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of
reason, but the opposite of faith,--Scepticism, Unbelief, Incredulity.
____

But perhaps the most striking example of the helplessness to which man
is soon reduced if he relies upon his reason alone, is The spectacle
of the issue of his investigations into that which one would imagine he
must know most intimately, if he knows anything; and that is, his own
nature--his own mind. There is something, to one who reflects long
enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind