away when I was little more then a boy."[1]
Carra de Vaux[2] thus graphically describes the process in Al Ghazzali's mind, as he himself suggests it to us: "Religious beliefs, he reflected, are transmitted by the authority of parents; but authority is not proof. To arrive at certitude it was necessary for him to reconstruct all his knowledge from the very foundation. With a vivid feeling of this necessity, he aspired to certitude, defining it in a purely psychological fashion as a state in which the mind is so bound up with and so satisfied with a piece of knowledge that nothing might henceforth deprive him of it. This, curious definition, which is applied to religious faith as well as to scientific knowledge, does not escape from being purely subjective. As one might foresee, the great desire for certitude only led him at first into a series of doubts. As he sought this
