Page:Essays in Philosophy (1856).djvu/95

 is in itself an absurdity, and at variance with the limitation of the human understanding, there must be some point into which the answers shall finally converge. That ultimate point must be admitted to be the original structure of the mind of man.

What we have illustrated of physical induction holds good also of the results of deduction. Every explanation must rest on the inexplicable, and every demonstration must rest on the indemonstrable, while the last alleged inexplicable and indemonstrable belief is an instinct of human nature.

If all the sciences must thus converge in first principles, of which the only possible explanation is a statement of our own original mental structure, that structure itself may, it is evident, be made an object of the question-putting tendency. Though we cannot transcend our original notions and beliefs, we may at least collect or cricitise them. Those ultimate faiths, which cannot themselves be theorized, may be made the objects of metaphysical contemplation, as the mysterious foundation of human knowledge, and thus, as Mr. Hume profoundly remarks, “the most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer, as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it.”

Questions regarding the nature and number of the ultimate answers that can be given to the principle in man which suggests questions, are not likely to be put in the infancy of the human understanding, although