Certainly we knew
once much that we have forgotten now. My own earliest definable memory
is of a great funeral of one of the Dukes of Gordon, when I was between
two and three years of age. Surely my first knowledge was not of death.
I must have known much and many things before, although that seems my
earliest memory. As in what we foolishly call maturity, so in the dawn
of consciousness, both before and after it has begun to be buttressed
with _self_-consciousness, each succeeding consciousness dims--often
obliterates--that which went before, and with regard to our past as well
as our future, imagination and faith must step into the place vacated of
knowledge. We are aware, and we know that we are aware, but when or how
we began to be aware, is wrapt in a mist that deepens on the one side
into deepest night, and on the other brightens into the full assurance
of existence. Looking back we can but dream, looking forward we lose
ourselves in speculation; but we may both speculate and dream, for all
speculation is not false, and all dreaming is not of the unreal. What
may we fairly imagine as to the inward condition of the child before the
first moment of which his memory affords him testimony?
It is one, I venture to say, of absolute, though, no doubt, largely
negative faith.
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