Chapter 35

Nature; the Rectitude of our Faculties; and the Grounds of Belief.' The author means to reply to the objection that his system, in setting up a criterion independent of God, is derogatory to the Divine nature. He urges that there must be attributes of the Deity, independent of his will; as his Existence, Immensity, Power, Wisdom; that Mind supposes Truth apart from itself; that without moral distinctions there could be no Moral Attributes in the Deity. Certain things are inherent in his Nature, and not dependent on his will. There is a limit to the universe itself; two infinities of space or of duration are not possible. The necessary goodness of the divine nature is a part of necessary truth. Thus, morality, although not asserted to depend on the will of the Deity, is still resolvable into his nature. In all this, Price avowedly follows Cudworth.

He then starts another difficulty. May not our faculties be mistaken, or be so constituted as to deceive us? To which he gives the reply, made familiar to us by Hamilton, that the doubt is suicidal; the faculty that doubts being itself under the same imputation. Nay, more, a being cannot be made such as to be imposed on by falsehood; what is false is nothing. As to the cases of actual mistake, these refer to matters attended with some difficulty; and it does not follow that we must be mistaken in cases that are clear.

He concludes with a statement of the ultimate grounds of our belief. These are, (1) Consciousness or Feeling, as in regard to our own existence, our sensations, passions, &c.; (2) Intuition, comprising self-evident truths; and (3) Deduction, or Argumentation. He discusses under these the existence of a material world, and affirms that we have an Intuition that it is _possible_.