It surveys the streams of belief, and may trace up these streams to their highest springs; but it does not, it cannot, create a new truth, or give birth to a higher certitude.

We have no disposition, assuredly, to underrate the value of philosophical reflection, or to disparage the science of Psychology; the former may collect the materials and the latter may attempt the construction, of a goodly and solid fabric: but we cannot admit that the certainty of all our knowledge depends upon either of them, or that it is confined exclusively to the metaphysical inquirer.

Reflection adds nothing to the contents of human consciousness: it examines our fundamental beliefs, but originates none of them; it discerns the elements and sources of certainty, but can neither produce nor alter them.

Its sole province is to examine and report.

If Certitude, in the philosophical sense of it, belongs to the _reflex_, Certainty, in the popular sense, belongs to the _direct_ and _spontaneous_, operations of the human mind.