On Truth
by St George Jackson Mivart (9780217267595)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MEMORY. The trustworthiness of our faculty of memory is a second fact which is involved in the primary fact of our self-knowledge. That our faculty of memory is veracious, is a truth which is self-evident, incapable of proof, and cannot be denied without producing absolute scepticism. Second fundamental fact, the trustworthiness of memory?What the word "memory" denotes?Recollections and reminiscences?Certainty of memory involved in self-knoivledge? Truth of memory cannot be proved?A curious fallacy?Absolute scepticism results from the distrust of memory?'I he objective and subjective? Consequences of memory's truthfulness. The two preceding chapters have brought us thus far: " There is such a thing as certainty, and amongst those things which are supremely certain is the fact of our own existence." In our pursuit of truth, we may next consider secod/un- a second fact, the certainty of which is involved in that//'"/' of our own persistent and continuous being. This second 'nul'lT''' fact is the trustworthiness of our faculty of memory. But me"""y- many objections to the unqualified assertion of its trustworthiness will readily occur to the reader's mind. It is obvious that not only may we sometimes fail to recollect events in which we have borne a part, but that we may even fancy some circumstances to have been the very reverse of what in fact they were. We occasionally meet with people in a state of doubt as to whether they had or had not some particular past experience, and with others who feel confident they were witnesses of something which they were never near witnessing?as George the Fourth is said t'- have made himself believe that he was present at the battle of Waterloo, or as women have died for their conviction that they had actually ridden t...

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