CAUSES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 277

Thus one and the same answer can be given to all the

different representations which have been made concerning

the value to be attributed to human perceptions and the

development of intelligence from the germ, as to which

different persons have advanced special claims for exceptional

security of one and another mode, as lately stated. All such

inquiries are interesting and valuable for some purposes (such

as the study of the human mind), but they are all utterly

beside the question which supremely concerns us.

We have seen* that the ultimate ground of certainty,

whatever proposition we may be considering, is, and must

be, its own intrinsic self-evidence its manifest certainty in

and by itself.

All inquiries into the origin and causes of our convictions

whether they are gained by experience, or innate, or dawning

in the mind of the infant, or only acquired at mental maturity,

or brought forth from intelligence latent at birth, or brought

forth by " Natural Selection " from intelligence truly latent

in our animal ancestors are futile for Epistemology.

That a fruit we at the same time see, feel, smell, and taste

exists ; that it cannot, at the same time, have a seed within

it and be seedless ; that we are the same person we were

before we saw this fruit ; that if we give half of it away,

what of it remains to us will be thereby diminished ; that

if all peaches are juicy, and we know a peach has been given

to a child, we may be sure it has been given something

juicy ; that if a fruit was in a cupboard, but is now there

no longer, its absence is to be attributed to some cause, and

that a really ungrateful action must be bad are plain truths,

no whit less certain whatever may have been the mode

in which we have come to know them. In other words,

the certainty of our knowledge of the objective reality of

bodies, and of the objective validity of the first principles of

* See ante, p 224.

Thus one and the same answer can be given to all the

different representations which have been made concerning

the value to be attributed to human perceptions and the

development of intelligence from the germ, as to which

different persons have advanced special claims for exceptional

security of one and another mode, as lately stated. All such

inquiries are interesting and valuable for some purposes (such

as the study of the human mind), but they are all utterly

beside the question which supremely concerns us.

We have seen* that the ultimate ground of certainty,

whatever proposition we may be considering, is, and must

be, its own intrinsic self-evidence its manifest certainty in

and by itself.

All inquiries into the origin and causes of our convictions

whether they are gained by experience, or innate, or dawning

in the mind of the infant, or only acquired at mental maturity,

or brought forth from intelligence latent at birth, or brought

forth by " Natural Selection " from intelligence truly latent

in our animal ancestors are futile for Epistemology.

That a fruit we at the same time see, feel, smell, and taste

exists ; that it cannot, at the same time, have a seed within

it and be seedless ; that we are the same person we were

before we saw this fruit ; that if we give half of it away,

what of it remains to us will be thereby diminished ; that

if all peaches are juicy, and we know a peach has been given

to a child, we may be sure it has been given something

juicy ; that if a fruit was in a cupboard, but is now there

no longer, its absence is to be attributed to some cause, and

that a really ungrateful action must be bad are plain truths,

no whit less certain whatever may have been the mode

in which we have come to know them. In other words,

the certainty of our knowledge of the objective reality of

bodies, and of the objective validity of the first principles of

* See ante, p 224.