Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/39

Letter 3] whole, the transition from belief to certainty, in any one case, is facilitated by the great majority of similar cases in which the same transition is going on with results that are confirmed by his own experience and by that of his elders. What helps the transition, in each case, is its general success; it works: it helps the child to move more and more confidently in the world without subjecting himself to the punishments which Nature has attached to ignorance.

Now therefore, reviewing the stages of the progress upwards, we see that the knowledge of which we are speaking is based upon an inherent and fundamental belief of which we can give no logical justification whatever. Why should an inkstand always be hard? The child can allege no reason for this except that, having found the inkstand to be hard in a great number of past instances, he is compelled to believe that it will be always hard, with such it force of conviction that he cannot but feel and say he "knows" it. But of course there is no logical justification for this assertion. He might argue for some months or even years, in precisely the same way about a clock, and say that "a clock always ticks," because he has seen the clock tick times innumerable and never known it not to tick. Why should not a larger experience confute his so-called knowledge in the case of the inkstand as in the case of the clock? As the clock collapses, why should not the nature of the inkstand collapse—be, come unwound, so to speak, or altogether transmuted? There is no possible answer to this question for the child, at present, except the following:—"It never has done so, and therefore I believe that it never will. 'I believe in the uniformity of Nature. The sequences of observed cause and effect are Nature's promises, and if she does not keep them, life will break down. I am compelled to believe, and to act on the belief, that life will