is used to convey the idea that we know the thing
altogether, that is, have perfect or full knowledge. It is the mind's
testimony concerning itself. Now, if I can become acquainted with
external and material objects through my senses, certainly my
consciousness of my own mental operations is, and must be, more certain
and self-evident. In judging, reasoning, reflecting, choosing, desiring,
remembering, loving, hating and hoping, along with all other operations
of mind, I must know the operation intimately, perfectly and altogether.
If I am reflecting, I know it, and this consciousness is science, is
certain knowledge, is the very thing from which no man can escape so
long as he is a rational being. Here is my individuality, my
personality, in that which is the indivisible unit of my nature, from
which I can not emigrate, and one attribute of which I can not
amputate--the _I_! The thief may escape from justice, but he can not
escape from the dishonest wretch--_himself_.

The murderer in America may flee to England or France, but through
conscious memory he is, and will forever be, compelled to keep company
with the murderous villain. He has this consciousness and will keep it
through eternity, even though he should be pardoned. Here, then, is
certain knowledge, more than seeing, hearing, or any other sense
belonging to the physical, for it is the conscious knowledge of that
which sees and hears, and which reaches out through the senses and
connects itself with the objective. It is therefore certain that, in
case there is no such thing as mental science, there is no such thing as
science at all, in all the realm of the universe; because the mind, in
the act of knowing, knows itself or is conscious of its own operations,
otherwise it could know nothing whatever, could not be mind.

Have we not the most certain evidence of the existence of mind? Is light
a certain evidence that there is light, or a source of light? Is not
reasoning a proof that there is something which reasons? Can there be
light without a cause? Can there be invention without an inventive
being? The mind is like a telescope in this respect, that it shows
itself in showing that about which it is occupied. The man who is
content to believe what he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels, is
only a sensuous believer--an animal, and not a man. Reason's glory is
that it perceives the invisible.

OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO REVELATION--No. IV.

BY P.T. RUSSELL.