It Is... Easy To Be Certain. One

It Is Terrible To See How A Single Unclear Idea, A Single Formula Without Meaning, Lurking In A Young Man's Head, Will Sometimes Act Like An Obstruction Of Inert Matter In An Artery, Hindering The Nutrition Of The Brain And Condemning Its Victim To Pine Away In The Fullness Of His Intellectual Vigor And In The Midst Of Intellectual Plenty.

The Consciousness Of A General Idea Has A Certain "unity Of The Ego" In It, Which Is Identical When It Passes From One Mind To Another. It Is, Therefore, Quite Analogous To A Person, And Indeed, A Person Is Only A Particular Kind Of General Idea.

And What, Then, Is Belief? It Is The Demi-cadence Which Closes A Musical Phrase In The Symphony Of Our Intellectual Life.

Still, It Will Sometimes Strike A Scientific Man That The Philosophers Have Been Less Intent On Finding Out What The Facts Are, Than On Inquiring What Belief Is Most In Harmony With Their System.

The A Priori Method Is Distinguished For Its Comfortable Conclusions. It Is The Nature Of The Process To Adopt Whatever Belief Weare Inclined To, And There Are Certain Flatteries To The Vanity Of Man Which We All Believe By Nature, Until We Are Awakened From Our Pleasing Dream By Rough Facts.