e original data of reason do not rest upon reason, but are necessarily
accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. These data
are, therefore, in rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is that,
in the last resort, we must, per force, philosophically admit that
belief is the primary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate
ground of belief."

[Footnote 344: P. 760; also Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, p. 61.]

Here we have, first, an attempted distinction between faith and
knowledge. "We _know_ what rests upon reason;" that is, whatever we
obtain by deduction or induction, whatever is capable of explication and
proof, is _knowledge_. "We _believe_ what rests upon authority;" that
is, whatever we obtain by intellectual intuition or pure apperception,
and is incapable of explication and of proof, is "a _belief or trust_."
These instinctive beliefs, which are, as it were, the first principles
upon which all knowledge rests, are, however, indiscriminately called by
Hamilton "cognitions," "beliefs," "judgments." He declares most
explicitly "that the principles of our knowledge must themselves be
_knowledges_;"[345] and these first principles, which are "the primary
condition of reason," are elsewhere called "_a priori cognitions_;" also
"native, pure, or transcendental _knowledge_," in contradistinction to
"_a posteriori cognitions_," or that knowledge which is obtained in the
exercise of reason.[346] All this confusion results from an attempt to
put asunder what God has joined together. As Clemens of Alexandria has
said, "Neither is faith without knowledge, nor knowledge without faith."
All faith implies knowledge, and all knowledge implies faith. They are
mingled in the one operation of the human mind, by which we apprehend
first principles or ultimate truths. These have their light and dark
side, as Hamilton has remarked. They afford enough light to show _that_
they are and must be, and thus communicate knowledge; they furnish no
light to show _how_ they are and _why_ they are, and under that aspect
demand the exercise of faith. There must, therefore, first be something
_known_ before there can be any _faith_.[347]

[Footnote 345: Ibid., p. 69.]

[Footnote 346: "Lectures on Metaphysics," vol. ii. p. 26.]

[Footnote 347: M'Cosh, "Intuitions," pp. 197, 198; Calderwood,
"Philosophy of the Infinite," p. 24.]

And now we seem to have penetrated to the centre of Hamilton's
philosophy, and