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What the mind firmly holds, under shifting circumstances, is well held. And this again is further tested by universality. Universality is in some sense the proper test of a normal power of mind, but it is one that must be applied with great discrimination. Scarcely any truth in science or philosophy could endure its heedless use. There is no average mind which is a law to mind in all its manifestations. It is only the decision of minds of like power, scope, and advantage that confirm each other. The widest experience is called for in the wise application of this test; while the mind bears with it, all through the formation of this experience, an unwavering confidence in its own clear convictions. This test, moreover, will vary with the power under discussion. The senses more readily contradict or correct the senses, than the thoughts the thoughts, or the intuitions the intuitions in their higher range.

A last postulate is, that what is conceded avowedly, tacitly, or impliedly at one point, must be freely conceded at all points. Processes which themselves assume the goodness of our faculties must not conclude with a denial or impeachment of their integrity. A doubt must have a premise, and if this premise involves confidence in the very reasoning by which the foundations of reasoning are disturbed, that doubt is self-destructive. An idea, whose valid possession is denied, must not be allowed to enter furtively into those very processes of thought by which it is professedly eliminated. If it cannot be removed in the mind's ordinary action, it must not be removed in an exhaustive scientific statement of that action.

If these postulates are truly adhered to, we shall cut ourselves off from a great deal of impossible and absurd effort to assimilate one form of knowing to another; from a feeling of dissatisfaction because our analytic inquiries are brought at length to a halt; from denying any knowledge