LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Shelf ...dig UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2011 witii funding from Tine Library of Congress JittpV/www.aroJiive.org/details/firstfundamentalOlmcco f-^pcljoiofip. BY JAMES M THE cCOSH, D. D., LL. D., Litt. D. COGNITIVE POWERS. I vol. i2mo, $1.50. THE MOTIVE POWERS. I vol. i2mo, $1.50. FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS BEING A TREATISE ON METAPHYSICS / JAMES McCOSH, D. D., LL. D., Litt. D. ex-president of princeton college, author of " method of divine government," " laws of discursive thought," '' psychology of the cognitive powers," psychology of the motive powers " " realistic philosophy" NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1889 Copyright, 1889, Bt CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Hougtiton & Co. \ c.^-^^ PREFACE. Every thinking mind has occasion at times to refer to first principles. In this work I have set myself ear- nestly to inquire what these are ; to determine their na- ture, and to classify and arrange them into a science. In pursuing this end I have reached a Realistic Phi- losophy'-, opposed alike to the Sceptical Philosophy, which has proceeded from Hume, in England, and the Idealistic Philosophy, which has ramified from Kant, in Germany; while I have also departed from the Scottish and higher French Schools, as I hold resolutely that the mind, in its intelligent acts, begins with, and proceeds throughout, on a cognition of things. If the mind does not assume and start with things, it can never reach realities by any process of reasoning or induction. This work contains the results of my teaching of very large classes in Queen's College, Belfast, Ireland, and in Princeton College, America, and may be regarded as the cope-stone of what I have been able to do in philosophy. I have expounded my philosophy in the text, and put the historical and critical disquisitions in smaller print ; to be read continuously as carrying on the discussion, or to be reserved for reference — as my readers may find it best suited to accomplish the end they have in view. Pkinceton, N. J., February, 1889. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Definition of the Science. The five Mental Sciences . . 1 PART FIRST. GENERAL VIEW OF PKIMITIVE PKINCIPLES. CHAPTER I. Nature of Eiest Truths. Meaning of the terms "philosophy" and "philosophical "...•..... 5 CHAPTER II. Threefold Aspects of Intuitive Truths. Innate Ideas . 12 CHAPTER in. Tests of Intuitive Truths. Views of Aristotle, Leibnitz, Kant, Locke, Scottish School, Schelling, Hegel 16 CHAPTER IV. Spontaneous and Reflex Use of Intuition. Kant's view . 19 CHAPTER V. Sources of Error in Metaphtsical Speculation . . 22 CHAPTER VI. Erroneous Views of Intuition. Locke and Kant ... 27 CHAPTER VII. Legitimate Use of First Principles. The Sophists . . 31 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTEK VIII. — (Supplementary.) Brief Critical Eeview of Opinions in regard to Intui- tive Truths 34 PART SECOND. PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. BOOK I. Primitive Cognitions. CHAPTER I. The Mind begins its Intelligent Acts with Knowledge . .58 CHAPTER II. Our Intuition op Body by the Senses. Account by Mvller. Cheselden case. Review of Berkeley, Kant, Hamilton, Fickte, Ferrier, Saisset, Locke, Spencer ....... 62 CHAPTER III. Distinctions to be attended to in our Cognition of Body. Difficulties in sense of sight. Apparent deception of the senses. Views, of Eleatics, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics. Epicureans and Aca- demics, Augustine, Anselm, Kant, Hamilton. Sensational School and Brown 75 CHAPTER IV. Apparent Deception of the Senses 83 CHAPTER V. The Essential Qualities of Matter. Descartes and Leibnitz as to Space and Force ......... 85 CHAPTER VI. Our Intuitive Knowledge of Self or Spirit. Critical re- view of views of Descartes, Locke, Buffier, The Scottish School, Kant, The German Pantheists, Hamilton, Mansel ... 88 CHAPTER Vll. Substance. Critical review of opinions of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hamilton 100 CONTENTS. Tli CHAPTER Vm. Mode, Quality, Peopeett, Essence. View of Locke , .110 CHAPTEE IX. Being 118 CHAPTER X. Extension. Views of Bain, M'dller 121 CHAPTER XL Number. Vieivs of Aristotle, Locke, and Huffier .... 124 CHAPTER XII. Motion. Views of Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Franz case . .126 CHAPTER Xin. Power. Mill's definition of Matter and Mind criticised . , .128 BOOK II. Primitive Beliefs. CHAPTER I. Their General Nature. Presentative and Representative knowl- edge. Views of Augustine, Avselm, Ahelard, High Church Divines. Puritans, Charnock, Kant, Jacobi, Hamilton , , . .130 CHAPTER II. Space and Time. Lucretius, Brown, Stewart, Trendelenburg, Ham- ilton, Herschel, Leibnitz, Clarke, Kant . . . . . .141 CHAPTER III. The Infinite. Hobbes, Locke, Hamilton, Mansel, Howe, Leibnitz . 154 CHAPTER IV. Extent, Tests, and Power of our Native Beliefs • .176 BOOK III. Primitive Judgments. CHAPTER I. Their General Nature and a Classification of them. Views of J. S. Mill, Locke, Kant, Hamilton, Bain 181 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER n. Relations Intuitively observed by the Mind. Identity, Comprehension, Resemblance, Space, Time, Quantity, Active Property, Cause and Effect. Leibnitz and Kant, as to Identity. Analytic Judgments regulating Logic . . . -191 CHAPTER III. Particular Examination of Cause and Effect. Kant. Uni- formity of Nature. Criticism of Mill. Miracles . . . 207 BOOK IV. Our Intuitive Moral Convictions. CHAPTER I. Their General Nature • 217 CHAPTER n. Virtue with its Attached Obligations. Smith, Brown, Mack- intosh. Examination of Mill's Utilitarianism . . . .219 CHAPTER III. Error and Sin 227 CHAPTER IV, The Will, Primitive Truth in. KanVs view .... 233 CHAPTER V. Relation of Moral Good and Happiness 239 PART THIRD. INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. BOOK I. Metaphysics. CHAPTER I. The Science Defined 244 CHAPTER IL Fundamental Truth and Evolution 249 CONTENTS. IX BOOK II. Gnosiology. CHAPTEE I. The Origin of our Knowledge and Ideas. Statement and criticism of Locke's views 256 CHAPTER II. Limits to our Knowledge, Ideas, and Beliefs . . . 265 CHAPTER m. Relation of Intuition and Experience 271 CHAPTER IV. The Necessity attached to our Primary Convictions . 278 CHAPTER v. — (Supplementary.) Criticism of Distinctions as to the Relation of Intuitive Reason and Experience 285 BOOK III. Ontology. CHAPTER I. Knowing and Being . . . , 293 CHAPTER n. Idealism 299 CHAPTER in. Scepticism and Agnosticism. M. Morel, Ferrier, Hamilton . 309 CHAPTER IV. — (Supplementary.) The Conditioned and Unconditioned . 321 CHAPTER v. — (Supplementary.) The Antinomies of Kant 324 CHAPTER VL — (Supplementary.) The Relativity of Knowledge 326 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. — (SUPPLEMBNTABT.) Examination of Mill's Metaphysical system 328 CHAPTER VIII. — (SUPPLEMENTAKT.) The Nescience theory of Mr. Herbert Spencer 332 BOOK IV. Metaphysical Principles involved in the Sciences. CHAPTER I. Metaphysics in the Practical Affairs op Life . . . 337 CHAPTER II. Metaphysics of Physics. Whewell 339 CHAPTER III. Metaphysics op Mathematics. Criticism of Kant, Mansel, Stew- art, and Mill 343 CHAPTER IV. Metaphysics op Formal Logic 350 CHAPTER V. Metaphysics of Ethics. Locke. . . . . . . . 352 CHAPTER VI. Metaphysics op Theology . 355 FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS. INTRODUCTION. In popular apprehension Metaphysics is the most con- fused and confusing of all branches of inquiry. I claim that under one aspect it is the most certain of all de- partments of knowledge ; it is so in its principles, which are fundamental. Under another aspect it is the most perplexed, as it is difficult to determine these principles, they are so involved in the varied and complicated opera- tions of the mind. The phrase has been made to cover all sorts of specu- lation, attainable and unattainable, possible and impos- sible. Of all things, it is important at the present stage of the history of philosophy that it should be carefully defined, that a distinct province be allotted to it, and that it should not be allowed to trespass upon the territory of its neighbors. The term points to a branch of investigation beyond (/xeVa) Physics. The profound thinkers of the world have all believed in something in the mind deeper and higher than the fleeting phenomena of the senses. I am convinced that there are powers working which underlie and support all its intelligent exercises. If this be so, it is surely of vast moment to determine what these are. This is the field to be allotted to Metaphysics. Aristotle has remarked that Metaphysics, or what he calls First Philosophy, while the first of the sciences in the order of things, will be the last to be constructed. 2 INTRODUCTION. The reason is, that these principles at the basis of all the higher operations of the mind are so mixed up with them that it is difficult to separate them and make them stand out distinctly to the view. But I believe that the associated mental exercises have now been so far extim- ined and ascertained that it is possible to discover and express the nature of the fundamental laws on which they stand. Since the days of Aristotle we know what are the laws of reasoning and of discursive thought gen- erally. Butler and Kant have thrown much light on the moral powers of man's nature. Important discoveries have been made as to sense-perception by physical and physiological research. I believe we can now furnish an approximately correct analysis of the varied elements in our emotions. With so many parts of the country separated and so far settled, we may allocate its place to the frontier province which guards the whole. I define Metaphysics as The Science op First and Fundamental Truths. I cherish the conviction that it may be made as clear and satisfactory as Logic, the science of discursive truth, has been, since the days of Aristotle (a). It shows us what we are entitled to assume and what we are not entitled to assume without mediate proof. It does so by opening to our view those primitive truths which at once claim our assent and furnish a sure foundation to all our knowledge ; which, like the primitive granite rocks, go down the deepest and mount the highest (5). (a) Five mental sciences have emerged : (1.) Psychology, which observes the operations of the mind generally, with the view of discovering their laws. (2.) Logic, the science of Discursive Thought, in which we proceed from what is given or allowed to what is drawn from it. (3.) Ethics, the science of our Moral Nature. (4.) ^Esthetics, which treats of the feelings raised by the INTRODUCTION. 3 Beautiful, the Picturesque, the Ludicrous, and the Sublime. (5.) Metaphysics, the science of First Truths. This gives a determi- nate (a phrase of Locke's) place to Metaphysics. (b) I am so old as to remember how much service was done to Formal Logic among English-speaking people when Whately, and Hamilton who searchingly examined him, insisted on keeping the science within a definite field, instead of allowing it to wander among all sorts of topics, practical and unpractical, bearing on thinking. A like benefit may be conferred on Metaphysics by confining it within rigid boundaries, instead of attempting to settle (often only to un- settle) all questions regarding God, the World, and the Soul. PART FIRST. GENERAL VIEW OF PR!mITIVE PRINCIPLES. CHAPTER I. NATIJEE OF FIEST TRUTHS. I. Theee are Objects, there are Truths, which are per- ceived Directly and Immediately ; this is not the case with the great body of our knowledge. Most of what we know is acquired by a process of induction, that is gathered observation, or of reasoning. It is not by di- rect observation, but by testimony, that those of us who have not been in China believe that there is such a country. It is not by immediate perception, but by rea- soning, that we know that the angles of a triangle are to- gether equal to two right angles. But there are truths which are seen at once on the bare inspection of the objects. We know ourselves directly as existing in pleas- ure or in pain, as thinking or feeling. We know that the self of to-day in joy is the same as the self of yes- terday in sorrow. On the bare contemplation of these two straight lines we perceive that they cannot enclose a space, and on a surface being presented to us, that the shortest distance between these two points in it is a straight line. In order to convince us of these and in- numerable such truths, we need no gathered experience* and we make no use of inference. 6 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. The power, or rather the powers," for they are many and varied, which are percipient of these objects and truths are called Intuitive. The truths thus discovered are Primitive; they are perceived at once. They are also Fundamental ; other truths are built upon them, and to us, however they m^y stand to other intelligences, they need nothing extraneous to sustain them. The body of such truths constitutes Metaphysics, or what may be called Metaphysical Philosophy, which is the deepest of all Philosophy. II. Our Intuitions look to " Things" and the Relations of Things. They are regarded by us as Real. These phrases need no definition ; we know their meaning at once. Knowledge implies things known. We assume them as existences. We proceed upon them. We may not know the full nature of the things, but we know so much of them. We know ourselves as thinking, or in a state of feeling. We know that body as spreading out an extended surface before us, or as resisting our energy. We farther on decide as to these two straight lines* that if they proceed one inch without coming nearer one another, they will not, however far prolonged, approach each other more closely. We discover relations between these and other truths. Proceeding on these as prem- ises, we draw conclusions from them. The original ob- jects being real, all that is drawn from them by logical inference is also real. Beginning with a world of reali- ties, we may continue in it all along, wandering at times, as fancy leads us, into an ideal world, but knowing it all the while to be ideal, and ever ready to return to the real world to stay and stablish ourselves. The philosophy which assumes and proceeds upon the reality of things may be called a Realistic Philoso- NATURE OF FIRST TRUTHS. 7 PHY. I am convinced that in the end this will be acknowledged as the true philosophy, and will set aside the Sceptical Philosophy, which denies the reality of things, and the Agnostic Philosophy, which affirms (as the only thing it knows) that we cannot know things, and the Idealistic Philosophy, whicli adds to things out of the stores of the mind, with the view of improving them. In a crude, uncritical shape, this was the first philosophy ; and when duly constructed, with the help of the necessary "rejections and exclusions," it will be the final philoso- phy. It will be found, as we advance, that Metaphysical Philosophy has two offices to discharge: one to consider our Intuitions, and the other the things at whicli intui- tion looks. in. Our Intuitions look to Single Objects, and not to ab- stract or general notions. A very different account is often given, if not formally, at least implicitly, of intu- ition or of intuitive reason, by those who believe in it. Man is represented as gazing immediately on the true, the beautiful, the good, meaning in the abstract or in the general. It is admitted that there must be some sort of experience, some individual object presented as the occasion ; but the mind, being thus roused into ac- tivity, is represented as contemplating, by direct vision, such things as space and time, substance and quality, cause and effect, the infinite and moral good. I hope to be able to show that this theory is altogether mis- taken. Our appeal on this subject must be to the con- sciousness and the memory, and these give a very dif- ferent account of the process which passes through the mind when it is employed about such objects. Intui- tively the mind contemplates a particular bod}'^ as occu- pying space and being in space, and it is by a subsequent 8 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. intellectual process, in which abstraction acts an impor- tant part, that the idea of space is formed. Intuitively the mind contemplates an event as happening in time, and then by a further process arrives at the notion of time. The mind has not intuitively an idea of cause or causation in the abstract, but discovering a given effect, it looks for a specific cause. It does not form some sort of a vague notion of a general infinite, but fixing its attention on some individual thing, — such as space, or time, or God, — it is constrained to believe it to be infinite. The child has not formed to itself a refined idea of moral good, but contemplating a given action, it proclaims it to be good or evil. IV. We can Generalize our Intuitions, and thus form Phil- osophic Principles, It is not necessary, in order to the action of our Intuitions, that we should study their na- ture as metaphysicians do. Like the physiological pro- cesses of the body, S2ij in breathing and digestion, they act best when we take no notice of them. An ofiicious intermeddling with them may tend rather to disturb their action. But the physiologist in constructing his science has carefully to observe the action of our frame when we are looking at objects, or when we breathe. So the metaphysician has carefully to watch the actions of our various intuitions, in order to discover their na- ture and their laws. The native principles of the mind act, as physical laws do, at all times, and whether we observe them or not. The laws of the material world are discovered by the observation and generalization of their individual opera, tions. It is in much the same way that we find out the laws of our original and native convictions. I boldly NATURE OF FIRST TRUTHS. 9 affirm tliat it is as impossible to determine these as it is to ascertain the laws of the external universe, by a jjriori cogitation or logical inference. As they cannot be elabo- rated by speculation on the one hand, so they do not, on the other, as regulative principles, fall under the im- mediate notice of consciousness; all that we are conscious of are the individual exercises. But examining carefully the nature of the acts, we generalize them, and thus find the precise law of the principle, and embody it in a ver- bal expression. The principle thus discovered is a philosophic one ; it is a truth above sense, a truth of mind, a truth of rea- son. It is different in its origin and authority from the general laws reached by experience, such as the laws of gravitation or chemical affinity. These latter are the mere generalizations of our experience, which are neces- sarily limited; they hold merely to the extent of our experience, and as experience cannot reach all possible cases we can never say that there may not be excep- tions. Laws of the former kind are of a higher and deeper nature; they are generalizations of intuitive con- victions, carrying necessity and consequent universality in their nature. They are truths of our original nature, having the sanction of Him who hath given us our con- stitution and graven them there with his own finger. These general maxims constitute metaphysics. All pro- posed metaphysical philosophy should aim at being the expression of our intuitions in the form of general laws. We shall see that the generalizations may be inaccu- rately made, and almost all the numerous errors of the common metaphysics proceed from this cause; they are to be corrected by properly drawing the law out of the individual operations. When this is done, we have meta- physical philosophy. 10 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. THe term " Philosophy " has not had a very distinct meaning for the last two or three ages. It should always be carefully distin- guished from Science, which generalizes the scattered operations of nature into laws. Perhaps it may most appropriately be defined as the inquiry into the first principles of things, and then the philoso- pher will be one who conducts the inquiry. The adjective " philo- sophical " may be applied to all branches which inquire into the first principles of the department discussed. Metaphysical Philosophy, or simply Metaphysics, has a clear and distinct province allowed when it is understood as being a search for the fundamental princi- ples of our mental operations. V. Induction, by which is meant a Gathered and Sys- tematic Observation, has a place in Metaphysics. This will seem to many an extraordinary position. It will be regarded by them as stripping philosophy of its crown and sceptre which place it above all the ordinary sciences. It seems to make our deeper thinking to have no other foundation than human observation, which must necessarily be limited. Now, I wish it to be under- stood that I do not propose to rest fundamental truths upon our taking notice of them. These exist whether we observe them or not. My eye does not create that mountain as it looks upon it. The mountain stands there on its own foundation, and all that my eye does is to discover it. So it is with primitive truth : it rests on its own basis; it has its authority within itself; all that our observation has to do is to discern it, and find out what is its nature. If we would find what intuition is, we must carefully inspect it; not, indeed, by the external senses, which cannot perceive it, but by the internal sense, that is self-consciousness. Not only so, but we must seek in a scientific manner to find out the objects which it looks at and makes known to us. In short, we have to con- NATURE OF FIRST TRUTHS, 11 struct the science of metaphysics by a process of induc- tive observation suited to the nature of the mental phenomena which are observed. Without such a care- ful inspection our metaphysics would certainly fall into error, being sometimes extravagant, at other times de- fective, and at all times confused. But as we proceed by internal observation, we shall discover truths which go down deeper and rise higher than those of physics. As we advance, we shall see that there is a fundamen- tal difference between the generalizations of our intui- tive convictions and those of the ordinary facts of expe- rience. CHAPTER II. THREEFOLD ASPECTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. They are Perceptions looking directly at Things. We perceive body within our frame, or beyond it, by the senses. We perceive self or mind in its present state, whatever that happens to be, by self-consciousness. We find each of two sticks to be equal to a third stick, and we at once decide that they are equal one to the other without measuring them. We are told of a boy telling the truth when it might have saved him from punishment to tell a lie, and we declare the act to be good. Under this aspect the intuitions are before the con- sciousness. We feel them working. We know what the operations are. In this view they are called intui- tions, primitive perceptions, native convictions, and, more loosely, innate ideas, beliefs, and judgments. II. They are Regulative Laws or Principles guiding the mind. Under this aspect they are not before the con- sciousness till they come into exercise as perceptions. But perceptions come forth so constantly and are so uniform in their nature that they imply a law or power in the mind from which they proceed. This lies deep down in the mind, is indeed of the very essence of the mind, and is abiding; it abides as long as the mind abides, and is ever ready to act on the objects to which it refers pre- senting themselves. THREEFOLD ASPECTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. 13 To illustrate this : The senses do not perceive the law of gravitation, they only see its acts ; but the power is there in all body, and is ever acting. So it is with our intuitions: we are not conscious of them as prin- ciples. We are conscious of their exercises, and argue that there must be internal laws which regulate them. Under this aspect they may be compared to seeds send- ing unseen roots downwards, and bearing branches and branchlets, leaves and fruit, upwards. They are often spoken of as latent, but ready to appear. The full truth was enunciated by Aristotle (Z)e Anim. III. 4), Plato had spoken of the soul as voiyros tottos, — the place of intelligence. Adopting this view, Aristotle calls the soul the depository of principles which are not in action, but in capacity, ovre cvreXe^eta aAA.a 8vvd[jieL to, €t'S?;. In this view they are in all men. It may be no easy work to enunciate them, but they are ruling in the mind. It has been found very difficult to state precisely the law of cause and effect, but all human beings, including children and savages, act upon it. So considered, our intuitions are properly characterized as first principles, fundamental laws of thought and be- lief, innate truths, a priori truths. m. They may take the form of Maxims or Axioms. So viewed, they are formed from our primitive perceptions, by a process of abstraction and generalization. We have the best examples of this in the axioms (/cotj/at ewoiai) of Euclid, and in the commandments of the moral law, such as the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. In this form they are not known by all men. Of the millions of people on the earth, including infants, chil- dren, savages, and the uneducated masses, there are 14 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. compai-atively few who fashion or employ such general- ized principles. We do not need them to be so formu- lated in order to act upon them. Every human being, if he sees an object before him, say a house, will refuse his assent to the assertion that it does not exist; but how few beyond the limited circle of professed meta- physicians and logicians have consciously before them the principle that " it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time ! " Under this aspect they are properly designated as KOLval evvoMt, TTpwrat euvoiaL, irpHJTa (xOTJixaTa, naturSB judlCia, maxims and axioms. IV. These are only diverse aspects of the fundamental powers of human intelligence. They constitute a phil- osophic trinity, one in three and three in one. They appear first in consciousness as primary perceptions which look immediately on things. These imply princi- ples which lead to the perceptions. The perceptions may be generalized and enunciated as laws. Till this is done they cannot be used in metaphysics considered as a science, or as philosophic principles. Under the second aspect they are in all men at all times, but they are not immediately perceived by the internal sense, and their nature cannot be made known to us except by careful observation of the acts, followed by abstraction and gen- eralization. As generalized maxims they may be used as philosophic principles, but as such they are known only to a few, and they can be employed in discussion only when their law has been gathered by induction and properly expressed. While there should be no disputes as to the immediate convictions, there may be legitimate discussion as to whether they have been correctly gener- alized into axioms. THREEFOLD ASPECTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. 15 In order to avoid confusion and the mistakes which proceed from confusion, it is essential that we go around these three sides of the shield, that we carefully distin- guish them and read the inscription on each. Any one neglecting to do this will be liable to affirm of intuition under one aspect what is true of it only under another, and to turn the wrong side towards the weapons of the assailant and keep the wrong side towards himself. It could be shown that many of the errors in metaphysics, both in its affirmations and denials, arise from looking at one or at only two of these aspects instead of looking at the whole. Most authors have not carefully noticed the difference between primitive perceptions which are singular and maxims which are universal. Locke looked upon them as ideas or perceptions in consciousness, and easily showed that they are not innate. The grand philosophic question discussed in the ages of Descartes, 1599-1G50, and Locke, 1632-1704, was, Are there innate ideas ? Descartes (and Herbert of Cherbury, 1581-1618) affirmed and Locke denied the existence of such ideas. The discussion was a confused one owing to the use of the word idea. Certain negative principles may be laid down. There are no innate ideas in the sense I. of images or phantasms, say of a good God or a good man; nor IL of an abstract or general notion, such as goodness or the good; nor ni. of forms imposed on things by the mind, as was maintained by Kant. See the subject discussed in "Intuitions of the Mind," Part First, Book L Chap. I. It is the aim of this treatise to show in what sense or senses there are intuitions in the mind. CHAPTER III. TESTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. The truths discovered at once by looking at things are called Intuitive. But how are we to know such truths, and distinguish them from other truths of obser- vation or inference, or from propositions which are false ? Are we entitled to appeal when we please, and as we please, to supposed infallible principles? Have we the privilege, when we are determined to adhere to a favorite opinion, to declare that we see it, that we feel it, to be true, and thus get rid of all objections, and even of the necessity of instituting an examination? When hard pressed in argument, may -we fall back on an original conviction which we assume without evidence, and de- clare to be beyond the power of refutation ? I believe we can furnish decisive tests of fundamental truths. JL Self-evidence is the Primary Mark of intuitive truth. It is evident on the bare inspection of the object. We perceive it to be so and so ; we see it to be so at once without requiring any foreign evidence or mediate proof. That the planet Mars is inhabited, or that it is not, is not a first truth, is not a primitive truth, for it is not evident on the bare contemplation of the planet. That the isle of Madagascar is inhabited, though a truth, is not a primary truth ; we believe it on secondary tes- timony. Nay, that the three angles of a triangle are TESTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. 17 together equal to two right angles is not seen to be true at once ; it needs other truths coming between to prove it. Bat that there is an extended object before me when I look at a wall or a table ; that I who look at the object exist ; that two marbles added to two marbles here are equal in number to two marbles added to two marbles there, — these are truths seen to be true on the bare contemplation of the things, and need no extraneous con- sideration to establish them. III. Necessity is a Secondary Mark. I must give my assent to the proposition, if I understand it. I cannot be made to believe the opposite. When a proposition is self-evident, necessity always attaches to our conviction regarding it. I am not inclined to fix on this as the original or essential characteristic. I shrink from main- taining that a proposition is true because it must be believed. A proposition is true as being true, and cer- tain truths are seen by us to be self evidently true. I would not ground the evidence on the necessity of the belief : I would ascribe the irresistibility of the convic- tion to the self-evidence. IV. Catholicity, or universality of belief, is a Tertiary Test, that is, the conviction is entertained by all men when the objects are presented to the mind and appre- hended. I am not disposed to use this, which has often been done, as the primary test. For in the first place it is not easy to determine in every case what propositions may claim the common consent of humanity. Even though this could be determined, it might be urged in the second place that this proves, not that the truth is 18 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. necessary, but simply that it is native. Catholicity con- joined with necessity may settle very readily and au- thoritatively whether a truth is fundamental. But it is necessary to explain that these tests apply directly to intuitions only under the aspect of Perceptions. As the Regulative principles are not under the view of consciousness, it is only by noticing and generalizing our perceptions that we can know what these Regulative principles are. Again, there is a process of generaliza- tion implied in all axioms, and this process is not intui- tive. The tests apply to the regulative principles, and the axioms only so far as they have been properly drawn from the perceptions, which, I may remark, is the most important and difficult task which Metaphysics has to undertake. We are beginning to get a glimpse of the way in which errors, as they so often do, enter into philosophic speculation. Aristotle fixes on each of these three tests, and puts tliem in vari- ous forms, but does not systematically arrange them as I have tried to do. He fixes on self-evidence and independence as marks of what he calls first truths and principles. He speaks of their being necessary principles, and of these being inherent in things. He appeals to Catholic consent, adding that they who reject this faith will find nothing more trustworthy. Leibnitz dwells on Necessity as the test. Kant joined to this universality. Locke allows us no in- tuition of things, but gives us an intuition of the relation of ideas, and the test of this is self-evidence. The Scottish School of Reid and Stewart appeals constantly to the principles above enunciated, but they do not enunciate them definitely, or distinguish between them. Schelling's appeal is to intuition (Anschauung). Hegel's is to reason. (See Supplementary Chapter appended to Part L of this work.) CHAPTER IV. THE SPONTANEOUS AND BEFLEX USE OE INTUITION. Feom the account which has been given of the Intui- tions, it appears that they may operate — indeed, they are ever operating — of their own accord, and without our prompting them into exercise by any voluntary act; and it appears, too, that we may generalize the indi- vidual actings, discover the rule of their operation, and then proceed to use them in deduction and in specula- tion. The former of these may be called the Spontane- ous Action, and the latter the Reflex Application of the Intuitions. In their spontaneous exercise they are reg- ulating principles, regulating thought and belief, and operating whether we observe them or no. But in this operation our convictions all relate to singulars, and so cannot be directly used in philosophic speculation. In order to their scientific application, there is need of care- ful reflex observation and generalization. The intuition in its reflex abstract or general form is derived from and is best tested by the concrete spontane- ous conviction. In order to the formation of the defini- tion or axiom, we must have objects or examples before us. In all circumstances the most decisive means of testing logical and metaphysical principle is by the appli- cation of it to actual cases, which should be as numerous and varied as possible. It is when appropriate examples are before us that we are able to appreciate the meaning of the general formulae (a). It is only when we have considered them in their application to a number of diversified instances that we are in circumstances to pro- 20 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. nounce them to be probably, approximately, or alto- gether correct. In their spontaneous action the intuitions never err, properly speaking ; but there may be manifold mistakes lurking in their reflex form and application, I have used the qualified language that, properly speaking, they do not err in their original impulses ; but even here they may carry error with them. They look to a representation given them, and this representation may be erroneous, and error will appear in the result. The mind intui- tively declares that on a real quality presenting itself, it must imply a substance ; but what is not truly a quality may be represented as a quality, and then it is declared that this quality implies a substance. Thus Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. S. Clarke represented time and space as qualities (which I regard as a mistake), and then repre- sented reason as guaranteeing that these qualities im- plied a substance in which they inhere, which is God. But the error in such cases cannot legitimately be charged on the intuition, which is exercised simply in regard to the presentation or representation made to it. But there is room for innumerable errors creeping into the abstract or general enunciation, and the scientific application of it. For we may have made a most defec- tive, or exaggerated, or totally inaccurate abstraction or generalization of the formula out of the individual exer- cises, or we may employ it in cases to which it has no legitimate reference. From such causes as these have sprung those ovei'sights, exaggerations, and not unfre- quently glaring and pernicious errors, which have ap- peared in every form of metaphysical speculation. (a) Kant has laid down a very different maxim, declaring that ex- amples only injure the understanding in respect of the correctness and precision of the apprehension. Speaking of examples : " Denn THE SPONTANEOUS AND REFLEX USE OF INTUITION. 21 was die Richtigkeit und Pracision der Verstandeseinsicht betriift, so thun sie derselbea vielmehr gemeiniglich einigen Abbruch, well sie nur selten die Bedingung der Regel adaquat erfiillen (als casus in terminis), und iiberdies diejenige Anstrengung des Verstandes oft- mals schw'achen, Regeln im AUgemeinen, und unabhangig von den besonderen Umstandea der Erfabrung, nacb ibrer Zuliinglicbkeit, einzuseben, und sie daber zuletzt mebr wie Formeln, als Grundsatze, zu gebraucben angewobnen " (Krit. d. r. V. Trans. Log. p. 119; Kosen.). Tbis sbows tbat Kant bad no correct idea of tbe way in wbicb the general rule is reacbed. Tbe sanae view is evidently taken by many of the formal logicians of our day. CHAPTER V. SOUECES OF EKEOR IN METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. All proposed metaphysical principles are attempted expressions of the intuitions in the form of a general law. Now, error may at times spring from the assumption of a principle which has no existence whatever in the human mind. I am persuaded, however, that the mis- takes thus originated are comparatively few, and are seldom followed by serious consequences. In regard to the assumption of totally imaginary principles, I am convinced that there have been fewer blunders in meta- physical than in physical science. As the intuitions of the mind are working in every man's bosom, it will seldom happen that the speculator can set out with a principle which has no existence whatever ; and should he so venture, he would certainly meet with little re- sponse. It is possible also for error to arise from a chain of erroneous deduction from principles which are gen- uine in themselves and soundly interpreted. The mis- takes springing from this quarter are likewise, I believe, few and trifling, the more so that those who draw such inferences are generally men of powerful logical mind, and not likely to commit errors in reasoning ; and if they do, those who have ability to follow them would be sure to detect them. By far the most copious source of aberration in philosophic speculation is to be found in the imperfect, or exaggerated, or mutilated expression of principles which really have a place in our constitution. In such cases the presence of the real metal gives cur- rency to the dross which is mixed with it. SOURCES OF ERROR IN METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. 23 In regard to many of our intuitions, the gathering of the common quality out of the concrete and individual manifestations is as subtle a work as the human under- standing can be engaged in. This arises from the recon- dite, the complicated, and fugitive nature of the mental states from which they must be drawn. But from the very commencement of speculation and the breaking out of discussion, attempts have been made to give a body and a form to the native convictions. It is seldom that the account is altogether illusory ; most commonly there is a basis of fact to set off the fiction. But the princi- ple is seen and represented only under one aspect, while others are left out of sight. It often happens that those whose intuitions are the strongest and the liveliest are of all men the least qualified to examine and generalize them, and should they be tempted to embody them in propositions, they will be sure to take distorted, perhaps erroneous, forms. In all departments of speculation, met- aphysical, ethical, and theological, we meet with persons whose faith is strong, whose sentiments are fervent, and whose very reason is far-seeing, but whose creed — that is, formalized doctrine — is extravagant, or even peri- lously wrong. In other cases the conviction, genuine in itself, is put forth in a mutilated shape by prejudiced men to support a favorite doctrine, or by party men to get rid of a formidable objection. The human mind is impelled by an intellectual crav- ing, and by the circumstances in which it is placed, to be ever generalizing, and this in respect both of material and mental phenomena. But the earliest classes and systems, even those of them made for scientific pur- poses, are commonly of a very crude character. Such laws as these have been laid down : " Nature abhors a vacuum ; " " Some bodies are naturally light, and others 24 GENERAL VIEW OF PEIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. heavy ; " " Combustible bodies are cliemically composed of a base with phlogiston combined ; " " The organs of the flower are transformed leaves." These are examples from physical science. Meta- physical science, from the subtle and intertwined nature of the phenomena, can furnish far more numerous in- stances. In mental philosophy the general statements have commonly a genuine fact, but mixed with this there is often an alloy. The error may not influence the spontaneous action of the primitive principle, but it may tell disastrously or ludicrously in the reflex applica- tion. It may not even exercise any prejudicial influence in certain departments of investigation, but in other walks it may work endless confusion, or land in conse- quences fitted to sap the very foundations of morality and religion. Take the distinction drawn, in some form, by most civilized languages between the head and the heart. The distinction embodies a great truth, and when used in conversation or popular discourse it can conduct to no evil. But it cannot be carried out psy- chologically. For in each a number of very distinct faculties are included. Under the phrase " lieart," in particular, are covered powers with wide diversities of function, such as the conscience, the emotions, and the will. The question agitated in this century, whether religion be an affair of the head or the heart, has come to be a hopelessly perplexed one, because the offices of the powers embraced under each are diverse, and run into each other ; and certain of the positions taken up are, to say the least of it, perilous : as when it is said that religion resides exclusively in the heart, and persons understand that it is a matter of mere emotion, omitting understanding, will, and conscience, which have equally a part to play. Of the same description is the distinc- SOURCES OF ERROR IN METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. 25 tion between the reason and the understanding. It points to a reality. There is a distinction between rea- son in its primary, and reason in its secondary, or logical, exercises, and the mind can rise, always, however, by a process in which the logical understanding is employed, to the discovery of universal and necessary truth. But each of the divisions, the reason and the understanding, comprises powers which run into the other. This dis- tinction is at the best confusing, and it is often so stated as to imply that the reason, without the use of the understanding processes of abstraction and generaliza- tion, can rise to the contemplation of the true, the beau- tiful, and the good. Almost all metaphysical errors have proceeded from the improper formalization of prin- ciples which are real laws of our constitution. When presented in a mutilated shape, even truth may lead to hideous consequences. Suppose that the law of cause and effect be put in the form that " every thing has a cause," it will issue logically in the conclusion that God himself must have a cause. This consequence can be avoided only by the proper enunciation of the law that " every thing that begins to be has a cause." There is another circumstance to be taken into ac- count by those who would unfold the theory of the metaphysician's extravagances ; he is not restrained, as the physical investigator is, by stubborn facts, nor checked, as the commercial man is, by stern realities, which he dare not despise. He has only to mount into a region of pure (or rather, I should say, cloudy) specu- lation, to find himself in circumstances to cleave his way without meeting with any felt barrier. At the same time one might have reasonably expected that when such speculators as Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel felt themselves rushing headlong against all acknowl- 26 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. edged truth, they would have suspected that there was something wrong in the assumptions with which they set out and in the method which they followed. Whenever metaphysical assumptions or speculations run counter to the established truths of physical science ; whenever they lead to the denial of the distinction between good and evil, or the personality of the soul, or of the exist- ence, of the personality, and continual providence of God, it is time to review the process by which they have been gained, for they are running counter to truths which have too deep a foundation to be moved by doubtful speculations. The remark of Bacon as to physical, may be applied to metaphysical, speculation, that doctrine is to be tried (not valued, however) by fruits : "Of all signs there is none more certain or worthy than that of the fruits produced ; for the fruits and effects are sure- ties and vouchers, as it were, for philosophy." " In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works, we may freely apply the prin- ciple to philosophy, and judge of it by its works, ac- counting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistles and thorns of dispute and contention." CHAPTER VI. EBEONEOUS VIEWS OF INTUITION. They are spoken of as Instincts. By instinct animals perform acts of the meaning of which they are ignorant. Some of them lay up food in summer for nourishment in winter, of which they can have only an imperfect idea. Our intuitive perceptions are sometimes supposed to be much of the same character. And no doubt they are so, inasmuch as both are native and original. But they differ in a most essential point. Instincts are blind, not perceiving the signification of the acts which they perform. On the other hand, intuitions are cognitive, furnishing the deepest, the most certain, and properly understood, the clearest of all our knowledge. 11. They are regarded as of the nature of Loose Beliefs which we have no decisive evidence to support, very much like the persuasion we are apt to cherish that the planets are inhabited. Under this view they would be a weakness rather than a strength in our constitution. It is true that the mind is capable, as we shall see, of entertaining primitive beliefs ; but of these we shall show that we have tests which are clear and certain, which make them entirely different from fondled fan- cies. Our intuitions, whether cognitions or beliefs, have the strongest of all evidence in their behalf. The evi- dence is in the objects, which we perceive as we gaze 28 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. upon them : it is thus that we know body as extended and mind as thinking, and believe that we cannot move from one place to another without passing through all the intermediate points. III. We are not to regard the mind as possessing a power of Reason looking directly on general Principles and Axioms. No doubt God could have so fashioned us as to enable us to do this. Had he so chosen he could have made us capable of perceiving directly the law of gravi- tation, and other powers in nature, but he has seen fit instead to give us the power of observing the individual operations, say the fall of an apple, and thence to rise to the discovery of the law. So in metaphysics we have only the power of individual intuition, and it is by induc- tion of the single operations that we rise to the discovery of the necessary truth. IV. It is important at this early stage to announce that I mean to prove as we advance that our intuitions are not of the nature of Forms imposed on things by the mind. This is the view taken by that powerful thinker Im- manuel Kant, who for the last century has so powerfully swayed philosophic thought, not only in Germany, but wherever in Europe or America there are reflecting minds. When we look on external objects we view them as in space and occupying space, which space is supposed to be superinduced upon them by the mind. In opposition I hold that we are so constituted as to behold things as they are : we behold bodies in space, both the bodies and the space being realities (a). (a) An age ago it was of all things the most important to point out the errors of Locke. Throughout this treatise I am opposing EERONEOUS VIEWS OF INTUITION. 29 his view that all truth is gained by a gathered experience. In this age it is more important to point out the errors of Kant. In both cases there should be an acknowledgment of the great truths which these two profound thinkers have established. Kant errs, I., in proceeding in the Critical instead of the Inductive method. He errs, II., in holding that we know merely Phenomena in the sense of Ap- pearances and not Things. He errs. III., in maintaining that the mind knows things, not as they are, but under Forms which we im- pose upon them. V. It is of special importance in the present day to show- that it is wrong to represent self-evident truths as being truths merely to the individual, or truths merely to man, or beings constituted like man. There are some who speak and write as if what is truth to one man might not be truth to another man, as if what is truth to man might not be truth to other intelligent beings. This account might be correct if the intuitive convictions were mere creatures of the mind, or borne in upon it by a blind natural impulse. But I have been laboring to show that our intuitions are intuitions or cognitions of things. They must be the same in all beings who know the things. In this view truth is immutable and eternal. It is a truth whether I perceive it or not, whether other intelligences perceive it or not. It is a truth to me be- cause I am so constituted as to know things. It is a truth not merely to me or to you, but to all men : not only to all men, but to all intelligences capable of know- ing the things. That two straight lines cannot inclose a space is a truth at all times and in all places, in the planet Mars as well as in the planet Earth. That in- gratitude is morally evil must hold true in all other worlds as in this world of ours, where sin so much abounds. 30 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. - It is thus that we meet those who, like Herbert Spen- cer, assuming that our intuitions are developed, argue that their authority is thereby undermined. We show that however produced, they are intuitions of things. This is shown at the close of this volume. CHAPTER VII. LEGITI]VIATE USE OF FDiST PKINCIPLES. The grand aim of Metaphysics should be to construct a science of First Principles, that is, principles prior to experience, by the method of induction with self-con- sciousness as the agent of observation. In conducting this work it should first seek out these principles from amidst the other operations of the mind, separate them from these, and then determine precisely their modes of operation, and their laws. Throughout it should show what is the right application of these principles, and thus determine the use of Metaphysics. There is only one rule as to the spontaneous employ- ment of first principles, and this is to determine to have no other end in view than to discover the truth, and then we are sure that the intuitions will act aright. But there may be anxious questions as to their reflex use in philosophic investigation. II. When we employ them we should show by a careful inspection and the appropriate tests that they are first truths. Unless we do so we may be tempted to use the limited laws of experience as if they were necessary and universal truths. One man will say, I am sure the earth does not move ; I feel it to be stable. Another will tell you that he is not so silly as to believe in antipodes in which people stand with their heads downwards. A 32 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. third emphatically affirms, I cannot believe that God will inflict everlasting punishment on any man, however wicked ; my whole nature shrinks from it. Now we have only to apply the tests of intuition to such assertions to find that we are not entitled to assume them. III. In employing first truths we should let it be known that we are doing so, and we should enunciate them accurately, at least so far as to show that we are not making an illegitimate application of them. Without this we may be employing an incongruous mixture of necessary and experiential truth, and using the first to impart a certainty to the other. IV. This science of Metaphysics should furnish what Kant says was the end he had in view in his great work, the " Kritik of Pure Reason," an inventory of what he called the a priori truths of the mind. It should seek to classify them judiciously, and put them under convenient heads, logically constructed. It would certainly be of immense use to have a carefully prepared summary of the various truths which can stand the tests of intuition, and which may therefore be employed in every department of in- quiry without the necessity of continually stopping to explain and defend them in the midst of a very different investigation or discussion. This is what is attempted in the Second Part of this treatise. It will be shown that primitive truths are involved even in the practical affairs of life, and in all the deeper sciences. Metaphysics should show how they are to be applied to the various branches of investigation. This is attempted in Part Third. LEGITIMATE USE OF FIRST PRINCIPLES. 33 The author is aware that he is only beginning this important work. What he enunciates may be truth only provisionally. He feels deeply that it may admit of correction and improvement. What he has com- menced in good faith he hopes may be completed by others, to the great advantage not only of Metaphysics, but of all branches of science. The intuitions are INTELLECTUAL AND MOEAL, each subdivided into PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS, BELIEFS, AND JUDGMENTS. It is not easy to determine the precise philosophy of the Sophists, if indeed they had a philosophy. The doctrine of Heracleitus was that all is and is not ] that while it does come into being, it forth- with ceases to be. Protagoras, proceeding on this doctrine, declared, *7;o-l yap Ttov iravroov XPVI^'^''''^^ fxerpov dvOpccirov elvai, tuv [x\v ovtwv, &s eart, rwy Se /xr] ovtoiv, ws ovk ecrriv. This Socrates expounds as mean- ing ws oTa ixev eKaara i/xol (paiverai, roiavra fxev effriv i/xol, oTa Se tJi.a.T6s T€ Koi d(rx'7/ua'''i(rT0S koX avap6vrjs rh, KaO" fKaffra rZv Trpay/jLaroiv, Kal Svvdfiei ^ evepye'K} (^Melaph. ii. 1 ; ed. Bonitz). I have already quoted (on page 35) his declaration that the soul is the place of forms, not in readiness for action, but in capacity: oire ivTe\exeia dA.A& Swdfiei ra et^-q. In another passage he seems to an- swer, that those things which are predicated of individuals are first principles rather than the genera, but adds that it would not be easy to express how one should conceive these first principles: 'E/c fxtv oiv rohroiv fiaWov (palverai to eVl twp ar6fi(cv KaT7]yopoiifi€i/a apxal elvai rSiv yevwv iraKiv Se ir&s aZ Sei rairas apx^s vitoKa^elv oh pdBiov eiireiv. For this statement he gives reasons which lead him to the conclusion that the universals which are predicated of individuals are principles in the ratio of their universality, and that the very highest generaliza- tions must be emphatically principles: TV M^'' 7«P "■pxhv Se7 Kal tV airiav ehai irapa t^ irpdyfiara S>p o.px'fl, Kol SwacrOai elvai X'^P^C^^^'^" avTwv /jLoiovTOV Se ti Trapa rh KaB' eKaffrov elvai Sta ti &v tis u7roAa/3oi, ttA.^ 8t. Ka66\ov KarriyopeiTaL Ka\ Kara irdvTwv ; aWa fjAjv, el Sia tovto, to fxaWov Ka66\ov juaWov Oereov apxds- Siare apxal to irpoor' &f eirjcrav yevr) (lb. ii. 3). There are points of connection not brought out in this state- ment. But we are not rashly to charge Aristotle with an inconsis- tency. I believe that his statement as to first truths and syllogism and his statement as to the universality of induction are both true. But he has not drawn the distinction between first principles as forms in the mind, and as individual convictions, and as laws got by induction; nor has he seen how the self-evidence and necessity, being in the singulars, goes up into the universals when (but only when) the induction is properly formed. IV. The Stoics were the first, so far as is known, to lay down the principle that there is nothing in the intellect which was not pre- viously in the senses (see Origen, contra Celsum, Book vii.). But those who quote this statement often forget that the Stoics placed in the mind a ruling principle (vyefjioviKhv), and maintained that we have innate ivvolai and irpoX^eis. According to Cicero, Topica, they held by a notion, " insitam et ante perceptam cujusque formae cognitionem enodatione indigentem." Diogenes Laertius represents them as maintaining eo-rt 8* ri 'irp6\7i\f/is ewiva ^vo-ik^ tup Ka96\ov. These two doctrines of the Stoics are not inconsistent. The supposition that they must be so led to Brucker's criticism in Historia Critica de CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 39 Zenone, of Lipsius' account in Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam. It is quite conceivable that there may be a ruling principle and an anticipative notion in the mind, and yet that all our notions may- arise from sense ; only it is not true, as Locke has shown, that all our ideas come from sense, for many of them are derived from the inward sense or reflection. The Stoics represented the notions as " obscuras et inchoatas, adumbratas, complicatas, involutas " (Cicero, De Legihus ; see Lipsius, Manud. ii. 11). In Epictetus, vii. 22, we have examples of the Stoic preconception as that good is advan- tageous, eligible, and to be pursued, and that justice is fair and be- coming. V. The Epicureans are usually represented as denying every- thing innate. But it is quite certain that they held by a irpJAijif ty, as implied in all intelligence, investigation, and discussion: " Id est, anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, sine qua nee intelligi quidquam, nee quaeri, nee disputari potest." This prolepsis gives a prenotion of the gods which is innate, and has in its behalf univer- sal consent: " Cum enim non institute aliquo, aut more, aut lege, sit opinio constituta, maneatque ad unum omnium firma consensio; intelligi necesse est, esse deos, quoniam insitas eorum, vel potius innatas, cognitiones habemus. De quo autem omnium natura con- sentit, id verum esse necesse est " (Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 17). VI. Lord Herbert of Cherbury is an original but by no means a clear thinker; he is certainly not a graceful writer. In his treatise De Veriiate, he maintains that truth is discoverable in conse- quence of there being an analogy of things to our minds. He finds in the soul four faculties : 1. Natural Instinct, — " sive sensus qui ex facultatibus communes notitias confirmantibus oritur." 2. The Internal Sense. 3. The External Sense; and 4. The Discursive Power. Whatever is not revealed through these faculties cannot be known by man, but he insists that what is known is in the things, and that man can know realities. Under Natural Instinct he treats of Common Notions, Koival ivvolal, and specifies six marks : 1. Their priority, the natural instinct being the first to act, and the discursive faculty the last. 2. Their independence, that is, of every other. 3. Their universality, giving universal consent. 4. Their certainty, which allows not of doubt. 5. Their necessity, which he explains as^ their tendency towards the preservation of men (a very unsatisfactory account of this characteristic). 6. The immediacy of their operation. His exposition of the Internal Sense is not very clear; but under it he treats of the conscience which he describes as 40 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. " sensus communis sensuum internorum," and as discovering what is good and evil, and what ought to be done. Passing over his account of the External Senses and the Discursive Power, we may mention his Common Notions about religion. They are, that there is a Su- preme Deity; that he ought to be worshipped; that virtue with piety should be main part of the worship ; that there is in the mind a horror of crime which should lead to repentance ; and that there are rewards and punishments in another life. Under this system I would remai'k: a, that Herbert does not see that Natural Instinct runs through all the faculties ; 6, he does not accurately distinguish between Natural Instinct and the Common Notions, nor see that in the formation of the latter there is an exercise of the Discursive Power ; c, while he has caught a vague view of the more important characteristics of our intuitions, he has not apprehended them closely, and he fails in the application of his own tests. VII. The English Divines of the Seventeenth Century, both High Church and Puritan, often discuss the question as be- tween Aristotle and Plato (not as between Locke and Descartes), as to the nature of ideas, and throw out views in which there is much truth, but also much confusion. They held that there is some- thing in the mind, and born with it, which is deeper than sense and experience. Thus Dr. Jackson, in A Treatise concerning the Original of Unbelief, Misbelief, or Mispersuasion concerning the Veritie, Unitie, and Attributes of the Deity (1625), inquires what truth there is in the Platonic theory of ideas and reminiscence, and cannot just agree with those who maintain that there are notions in the soul like letters written with the juice of onions, and ready to come forth on certain applications being made to them. His doctrine is, " The soul of man being created after the image of God (in whom are all things), though of an indivisible and immortal nature, hath notwith- standing such a virtual similitude of all things as the eye hath of colors, the ear of sounds, or the common sense of these and other sensibles, woven by the finger of God in its essential constitution or intimate indissoluble temper. ' ' The Cambridge Platonists all main- tained that there was something in the soul prior to sense, but requir- ing sense to call it forth, and were fond of describing this as "connate " or " connatural." H. More states the question, " Whe- ther the soul of man be a rasa tabula, or whether she have innate notions and ideas in herself? " He answers, " For so it is that she having first occasion of thinking from external objects, it has so imposed on some men's judgments, that they have conceited that the CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 41 soul has no knowledge nor notion, but what is in a passive way inn- pressed oi\ delineated upon her from the objects of sense; they not warily enough distinguishing between extrinsical occasions and the adequate or principal causes of things." " Nor will that prove any- thing to the purpose when it shall be alleged that this notion is not so connatural and essential to the soul because she framed it from some occasions from without." In modification he allows, " I do not mean that there is a certain number of ideas as glaring and shining to the animadversive faculty, like so many torches or stars in the firmament to our outward sight, or that there are any figures that take their distinct places, and are legibly writ there like the red letters or astronomical characters in an almanac " (Antidote against Atheism). Culverwel says, "You must not, nor cannot, think that nature's law is confined and contracted within the compass of two or three common notions, but reason, as with one foot it fixes a centre, so with the other it measures and spreads out a circumference; it draws several conclusions, which do all meet and crowd into these first and central principles. As in those noble mathematical sciences there are not only some first oiT^yuara which are granted as soon as they are asked, if not before, but there are also whole heaps of firm and immovable demonstrations that are built upon them." He talks of a " connate " notion of a Deity, but then he shows that there is a process of the understanding in it, "so that no other innate light but only the power of knowing and reasoning is the ' candle of the Lord' " {Light of Nature, pp. 82, 127, 128. Edition by Brown and Cairns). Cudworth stands up for an immutable morality discovered by reason, and distinguishes, like More, between occasion and cause (see infra, Part iii. Book i. Chap. ii. sect. vi.). The Puritans gen- erally appealed to first principles, intellectual and moral. Thus Baxter says (Reasons of the Christian Religion, p. 1), " And if I could not answer a sceptic who denied the certainty of my judgment by sensation and reflexive intuition [how near to Locke], yet nature would not suffer me to doubt." "By my actions I know that I am; and that I am a sentient, intelligent, thinking, willing, and operative being." " It is true that there is in the nature of man's soul a cer- tain aptitude to understand certain truths as soon as they are re- vealed, that is, as soon as the very natura rerum is observed. And it is true that this disposition is brought to actual knowledge as soon as the mind comes to the actual consideration of things. But it is not true that there is any actual knowledge of any principle born in man." It is wrong to " make it consist in certain axioms (as some 42 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. say) born in us, or written in our hearts from our birth (as others say), dispositively there." These distinctions do not exhaust the subject, but they contain important truth; and if Locke had attended to them he would have been saved from extravagant statements. Owen, in his Dissertation on Divine Justice, appeals, in proving the existence of justice, (1) to the " common opinion " and innate con- ceptions of all; (2) to the consciences of all mankind; (3) to the public consent of all nations. Howe, in his Living Temple, appeals to " the relics of common notions, the lively points of some undefaced truth, the fair ideas of things, the yet legible precepts that relate to practice." VIII. Descartes lays hold of a large body of important truth in regard to innate ideas. 1. He sees that they are of the nature of powers or faculties ready to operate, but needing to be called forth. "Lorsque je dis que quelque id^e est nee avec nous, ou qu'elle est naturellement empreinte en nos ames, je n'entends pas quelle se prdsente toujours k notre pensde, car ainsi il n'y en aurait aucune ; mais j'entends seulement que nous avons en nous-memes la faculte de la produire " (Trois Objec. Rep. Obj. 10). See other passages to the same effect, quoted by Mr. Veitch, Trans, of Med. etc., pp. 207, 208. 2. He has glimpses, but confused, of the test of self -evidence, which he unhappily represents as clearness. " Toutes les choses que nous concevons clairement et distinctement sont vraies de la fa9on dont nous les concevons " {Med. Abrege). He thus explains clearness and distinctness : " J'appelle claire celle qui est presente et manifesto k un esprit attentif ; de meme que nous disons voir clairement les objets, lorsqu'etant presents k nos yeux ils agissent assez fort sur eux, et qu'ils sont disposes k les regarder; et distincte, celle qui est tellement precise et diffdrente de toutes les autres, qu'elle ne comprend en soi que ce qui paroit manifestement k celui qui la consid^re comme il faut " (Prin. Phil. i. 45). 3. He sees that they assume the shape of common notions. 4. These are represented as eternal truths of intelligence: " Lorsque nous pensons qu'on ne sauroit faire quelque chose de rien, nous ne croyons point que cette proposition soit une chose qui existe ou la propria te de quelque chose, mais nous la prenons pour une certaine verite dternelle qui a son sidge en notre pensee, et que Ton nomme une notion commune ou une maxime ; tout de meme quand on dit qu'il est impossible qu'une meme chose soit et ne soit pas en meme temps, que ce qui a ^te fait ne pent n'etre pas fait, que celui qui pense ne peut manquer d'etre ou d'exister pendant qu'il pense, et CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 43 quantite d'autre semblables, ce sont seulement des v^rit^s, et non pas des choses qui soient hors de notre pens^e, et il y en a un si grand nombre de telles qu'il seroit malais^ de les d^nombrer " (Prin. Phil. i. 49). 5. He discovers that they come forth into consciousness; hence he calls them innate ideas, and defines idea : " Cette forme de chacune de nos pensdes par la perception immediate de laquelle nous avons connaissance de ces memes pensdes " {Rep. mix Deux Object.). But there is confusion throughout in the view which he takes, and in his mode of expression. 1. He gives no account of the relation between the faculty on the one hand, and the idea or common notion on the other. He does not see that abstraction and generali- zation are necessary in order to reach the abstract and general idea. 2. The test of self-evidence is not well expressed ; in this respect he is inferior to Locke. The clearness and distinctness of an idea is, to say the least of it, a very ambiguous phrase, for in some senses of the word we may have a very clear idea of an imaginary object, or a distinct idea of a falsehood. 3. That there is confusion in this view is evident from the circumstance that he often states that these truths are not equally admitted by all, because they are opposed to the prejudices of some. He speaks of persons " qui ont imprimd de longue main des opinions en leur cr^ance, qui '^tait contraires h. quelques-unes de ces v^rit^s " {Prin. i. 50). 4. He expects far too much from a bare contemplation of the principles or causes of things: "Mais I'ordre que j'ai tenu en ceci a ^t^ tel : premi^re- ment, j'ai tach^ de trouver en gdn^ral les principes ou premieres causes de tout ce qui est ou qui peut etre dans le monde, sans rien considerer pour cet effet que Dieu seul qui la cr^e, ni les tirer d'ailleurs que de certaines semences de v^rit^s qui sont naturelle- ment en nos ames. Apres cela, j'ai examine quels dtaient les premiers et les plus ordinaires effets qu'on pouvait d^duire de ces causes ; et il me semble que par Ik j'ai trouve des cieux, des astres, une terre, et meme sur la terre de I'eau, de I'air," etc. (MeVi. Part. VI.) IX. Locke has, in his account of the Human Understanding, both a sensational, or rather an experiential, element, and a rational element. Eagerly bent on establishing his favorite position that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection, he has not blended these elements very successfully, nor been at much pains to show their consistency. In France they took the sensational element and overlooked the other. The Arians and Socinians of Britain seized eagerly on the rational element. In his unmeasured coa- 44 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. demnation of innate ideas in the First Book of his Essay, he seems to deny truths which he openly defends or incidentally allows in other parts of the work. 1. He gives a high place to reason. Thus, in replying to Stillingfleet, he says : " Reason, as standing for true and clear principles, and also as standing for clear and fair deductions from those principles, I have not wholly omitted, as it is manifest from what I have said of self-evident propositions, intuitive knowl- edge, and demonstration, in other parts of my Essay." Speaking of self-evident propositions : " Whether they come in view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known by their native evidence, are wholly independent, receive no light, nor are capable of any proof one from another " (see Rogers' Essays, Locke, p. 47). 2. He gives an important place to intuition in Book IV. 3. He fixes on self-evidence as the mark of intuition. " Some- times the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves, without the intervention of any other, and this I think we may call intuitive knowledge. From this the mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but perceives the truth, as the eye doth light, only by being directed towards it." " This kind of knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way, and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it." " He that demands a greater certainty than this demands he knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a sceptic without being able to be so ^\Essay, Book iv. Chap. ii. sect. i. ; see, also, Book iv. Chap. xvii. sect. iv.). Among truths known intuitively " we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence" (Book iv. Chap. iii. sect, xxi.) ; and "man knows by an intuitive certainty that bare nothing can no more produce any real being than it can be equal to two right angles" (Book IV. Chap. X. sect. iii.). 4. He is obliged at times to appeal to necessity of conception. Thus, in arguing with Stillingfleet : " The idea of beginning to be is necessarily connected with the idea of some operation ; and the idea of operation with the idea of something operating, which we call a cause." " The idea of a right-angled triangle necessarily carries with it an equality of its angles to two right ones; nor can we conceive this relation, this connection of these two ideas, to be possibly mutable" (Essay, Book IV. Chap. iii. sect. xxix.). He speaks of certain and universal CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 45 knowledge as having "necessary connection," "necessary coexis- tence," " necessary dependence" (see Webb on the Intellectualism of Locke, p. iii.). 5. He sees that intuitive general maxims are all derived from particulars. This follows from his general maxim that the mind begins with particulars. "The ideas first in the mind, 'tis evident, are those of particular things, from which by slow degrees the understanding proceeds to some few general ones " (Book IV. Chap. vii. sect. ix.). " In particulars our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself by degrees to generals " (Book iv. Chap. vii. sect. xi.). Following out this view, he speaks of the general propositions be- ing" not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance and reflection on particular instances. These, when observing men have made them, unobserving men when they are proposed to them can- not refuse their assent to " (Book i. Chap. ii. sect. xxi.). 6. He sees clearly — what Kant never saw — that the mind rises to universal propositions by looking at things, and the nature of things. " Had they examined the ways whereby men come to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves when duly consid- ered, and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties which were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them when duly employed about them " (Book i. Chap. iv. sect. xxv.). But, on the other hand, Locke has admitted or controverted certain great truths. 1. He imagines that when he has disproved innate ideas in the sense of phantasms and general notions, he has therefore disproved them in every sense. 2. He does not see that the intuition which he acknowledges must have a rule, law, or principle, which may be described as innate, inasmuch as it is in the mind prior to all experience. 3. Misled by his theory of the mind looking at ideas and not at things, he represents intuition as concerned solely with the comparison of ideas. This was noticed by the Bishop of Derry [Dr. King, author of the Origin of Evil'], in a letter dated Johnstoun, October 26, 1697, to Locke's friend, Mr. Molyneux : "To me it seems that, according to Mr. Locke, I cannot be said to know anything except there be two ideas in my mind, and all the knowledge I have must be concerning the relation these two ideas have to one another, and that I can be certain of nothing else, which in my opinion excludes all certainty of sense and of single ideas, all certainty of consciousness, such as willing, con- ceiving, believing, knowing, etc., and, as he confesses, all certainty of faith, and, lastly, all certainty of remembrance of which I have 46 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. formerly demonstrated as soon as I have forgot or do not actually think of the demonstration" (Letters between Locke and Molyneux). Reid I'efers to Locke's notion that belief or knowledge consists in a perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and charac- terizes it as "one of the main pillars of modern scepticism." "I say a sensation exists, and I think I understand clearly what I mean. But you want to make the thing clearer, and for that end tell me that there is an agreement between the idea of that sensation and the idea of existence. To speak freely, this conveys to me no light but darkness. I can conceive no otherwise of it than as an odd and obscure circumlocution. I conclude, then, that the belief which ac- companies sensation and memory is a simple act of the mind which cannot be defined " (Collected Writings, Vol. I. p. 107). 4. He does not see the peculiar nature of intuitive maxims. He perceives that they are got by generalization — the great truth overlooked by the special supporters of innate ideas ; but he fails to observe that they are the generalization of primitive cognitions and truths, which carry with them self-evidence and necessity. X. Leibnitz has profound, but in some respects extravagant, views of necessary truths. 1. He sees that they have a place in the mind, as habitudes, dispositions, aptitudes, faculties. " Les connaissancfes ou les veritds, en tant qu'elles sont en nous, quand meme on n'y pense point, sont des habitudes ou des dispositions" (Nouv. Essais, Opera, p. 213 ; ed. Erdmann). At the same place he calls them "aptitudes." "Lorsqu'on dit que les notions inn^es sont implicitement dans I'esprit, cela doit signifier seulement, qu'il a la faculty de les connaitre " (p. 212). 2. "Leibnitz has the honor of first explicitly enouncing the criterion of necessity, and Kant of first fully applying it to the phenomena. In nothing has Kant been more successful than in this under consideration." So says Ham- ilton (Reid's Collected Writings, p. 323). The remark seems cor- rect ; but it should be added that Aristotle, as has been shown, expressly fixed on necessity, while others appealed to it ; even Locke speaks of knowledge as "irresistible," and of " necessarj' re- lations." Leibnitz draws more decidedly than had been done before the distinction between necessary and eternal truths and truths of experience (p. 209). 3. Because of the natural faculty and "pre- formation," the ideas tend to come into consciousness in a special form. "II y a toujours une disposition particuli^re k I'action, et a une action plutSt qu'a I'autre" (p. 223). He illustrates this by supposing that in the marble there might be veins which marked CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 47 out a particular figure, say that of Hercules, preferably to others. " Mais s'il y avoit des veines dans la pierre, qui marquassent la figure d'Hercule pref^rableraent k d'autres figures, cette pierre y seroit plus determinee, et Hercule y seroit comme innd en quelque facon" (p. 196). 4. He represents the intellect itself as a source of ideas. To the maxim " NUiil est in inielleciu quod non fuerit in sensu," he adds, ^^ nisi ipse intelleclus." The expression is not very explicit. He explains it : " Or I'ame renferme I'etre, la sub- stance, I'un, le meme, la cause, la perception, le raisonnement, et quantite d'autres notions." But he is surely wrong in identifying these with Locke's ideas of reflection (p. 223). 5. He sees that there is need of more than spontaneity, that there is need of some intellectual process, in order to discover the general truth. " Les maximes innees ne paroissent que par I'attention qu'on leur donne " (p. 213). But : 1. He separates necessary truths from things, and making them altogether mental, he led the way to that subjective tendency which was carried so far by Kant. 2. He does not dis- tinguish between the necessary principle as a disposition uncon- sciously in the mind and a general maxim discovered by a process. 3. He does not see that the general maxim is reached by generaliz- ing the individual necessary truths. XI. Lord Shaftesbury protests against Locke's rejection of everything innate and falls back on the word " connatural," derived from Culverwel. " Innate is a word he (Locke) poorly plays upon; the right word, though less used, is connatural " (Letters to a Young Gentleman'). He shows that there are many qualities natural to man, and dwells fondly on the sense of beauty and the moral sense. He supplied the Scottish School with the phrase common sense, which he represents as being the same with "natural knowledge" and " fundamental reason." " Whatever materials or principles of this kind we may possibly bring with us, whatever good faculties, senses, or anticipating sensations and imaginations may be of nature's growth, and arise properly of themselves without our art, promo- tion, or assistance, the general idea which is formed of all this management, and the clear notion we attain of what is preferable and principal in all these subjects of choice and estimation will not, as I imagine, by any person be mistaken for innate. Use, practice, and culture must precede the understanding and wit of such an advanced size and growth as this" (Miscellanies, iii. 2: in Charac- teristics). XH. Bupfier's principal treatise is on Premieres Verites. He 48 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. sees : 1. That there was in the mind an original law, which he char- acterizes as a " disposition." 2. He speaks of it as coming forth in common and uniform judgments among all men, or the greater part. 3. He sees that it does not thus come forth till mature age, and till men come to the use of reason. These three points are all brought out in the following sentence : " J'entends ici par le Sens Com- MUN, la disposition que la nature a mise dans tous les hommes, ou manifestement dans la plupart d'entre eux, pour leur faire porter, quand ils ont atteint I'usage de la raison, un jugement commun et uniforme sur des objets differents du sentiment intime de leur propre perception: jugement qui n'est point la consequence d'aucun principe anterieur " (P. i. c. v.). 4. He specifies several important practical characteristics of first truths. "1. Le premier de ces caractferes est qu'elles soient si claires, que quand on entreprend de les prouver ou de les attaquer, on ne le puisse faire que par des propositions qui manifestement ne sont ni plus claires ni plus certaines. 2. D'etre si universellement revues parmi les hommes en tout temps, en tous lieux, et par toutes sortes d'esprits, que ceux qui les attaquent se trouvent, dans le genre humain, etre manifestement moins d'un centre cent, ou menie centre mille. 3. D'etre si fortement im- prim^es dans nous, que nous y conformions notre condiiite, malgrd les raffinements de ceux qui imaginent des opinions contrah-es, et qui eux-memes agissent conformdment, non k leurs opinions imagindes, mais aux premieres v^rit^s universellement re9ues " (P. i. c. vii.). It does not appear, however, that (1) he fixed explicitly on their deeper qualities of self-evidence and necessity, or (2) showed the relation between their individual and general form. XIII. Francis Hutcheson, the founder of the Scottish School, discusses the question whether metaphysical axioms are innate. He denies that they are innate in the sense of their being known or observed from our birth, and maintains that in their general form they are not reached till after many comparisons of singular ideas. He stands up for self-evident axioms, in which the mind perceives at once the agreement and disagreement of subject and predicate, and represents them as being eternal and immutable (see his Meta- physics). XIV. Reid's great merit lies in establishing certain principles of Common Sense, such as those of substance and quality, cause and efEect, and moral good, as against the scepticism of Hume. He does not profess to give an exhaustive account of these principles, nor to enter minutely into their distinctive character and mode of opera- CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 49 tion, but in conducting his proper work he has mentioned nearly all their distinctive qualities. 1. He represents them as being in the nature of man; thus he speaks of "an original principle of our con- stitution " (p. 121), and calls them " original and natural judg- ments," as " part of that furniture which Nature hath given to the human understanding," as "the inspiration of the Almighty " and "a part of our constitution " (p. 209, Collected Writings : Hamilton's edition). 2. He represents the mind as having a sense or perception of them; and on the one hand avoids the error of Locke, who regards intuition as concerned solely with a comparison of ideas, and he does not, on the other hand, fall into that of Kant, who looks on them as mere forms in the mind. 3. He follows Locke in fixing on. self-evidence as a decisive test. " We ascribe to reason two offices, or two degrees. The first is to judge of things self-evident; the second, to draw conclusions that are not self-evident from those that are. The first of these is the province, and the sole province, of common sense, and therefore it coincides with reason in its whole extent, and is only another name for one branch or one degree of reason" (p. 425; see, also, p. 422). 4. He specifies necessity as a mark. " By the constitution of our nature we are under a necessity of assent to them " (p. 130). He speaks of a certain truth " being a necessary truth, and therefore no object of sense." "It is not that things which begin to exist commonly have a cause, or even that they always in fact have a cause, but that they must have a cause, and cannot begin to exist without a cause " (p. 455; see, also, pp. 456, 521). Yet he has not a steady apprehension of necessity as a test, for he says : " I resolve for my own part always to pay a great regard to the dictates of common sense, and not to depart from them without absolute necessity " (p. 112), as if necessitj' did not preclude our departing from them. 5. He characterizes them as catholic; thus he appeals to the "universal consent of mankind; not of philosophers only, but of the rude and unlearned vulgar" (p. 456). His positive errors on this subject are not many, but he has not seen the full truth, and he has fallen into several oversights. 1. By neglecting a rigid use of tests, he has described some truths as first principles into which there enters an experiential element. Thus, for example, " that there is life and intelligence in our fellow-men," " that certain features of the countenance, sounds of the voice, and gestures of the body indicate certain thoughts and dispositions of the mind" (p. 449); that "there is a certain regard due to hu- 60 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. man testimony in matters of fact, and even to human authority in matters of opinion" (p. 450) ; and "that in the phenomena of Nature, what is to be will probably be like to what has been in similar circumstances" (p. 451). A rigid application of the tests of self-evidence and necessity would have shown that these were not first principles. 2. He is not careful to distinguish between the Spontaneous and Reflex use of common sense. He uses legitimately the argument from common sense against Hume, but in philosophy we must use the reflex principle carefully expressed, whereas Reid often appeals in a loose way to the spontaneous conviction. And here I may take the opportunity of stating my conviction (and this notwithstanding Sir W. Hamilton's defence of it in Note A^ that the phrase " common sense " is an unfortunate, because a loose and ambiguous one. Common sense (besides its use by Ai'istotle, see Hamilton's Note A) has two meanings in ordinary discourse. It may signify, first, that unacquired, unbought, untaught sagacity, ' which certain men have by nature, and which other men never can acquire, even though subjected to the process mentioned by Solomon (Prov. xxvii. 22), and brayed in a mortar. Or it might , signify the communis sensus, or the perceptions and judgments which are common to all men. It is only in this latter sense that the argument from common sense is a philosophic one ; that is, only on the condition that the appeal be to convictions which are in all men ; and further, that there has been a systematic exposition of them. Reid did make a most legitimate use of the argument from common sense, appealing to convictions in all men ; and bringing out to view, and expressing with greater or less accuracy, the principles involved in these convictions. But then, he has also taken advantage of the first meaning of the phrase; he represents the strength of these original judgments as good sense (p. 209) ; he appeals from philosophy to common sense ; and in order to counter- act the impression left by the high intellectual abilities of Hume, he shows that those who opposed Hume were not such fools, after all, but have the good sense and shrewdness of mankind on their side (see p. 127, etc., with foot-notes of Hamilton). This has led many to suppose that the argument of Reid and Beattie is altogether an address to the vulgar. In this way, what seemed at the time a very dexterous use of a two-edged sword has turned against those who employed it, and injustice has been done to the Scottish School of philosophers, wh^ do make a proper use of the argument from common sense. 3. He does not see how to reconcile the doctrine CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 61 (of Locke) that all maxims appear in consciousness as particulars, with his own doctrine of there being principles in the constitution of the mind, and thence coming forth in general propositions. XV. Kant has, next to Locke, exercised the greatest influence on modern speculation. As a general rule, the one dwells upon and magnifies the truths which the other overlooks. Kant is a reaction against Locke. He carries out, in his own logical way, certain principles which had grown up in the schools of Descartes, Leib- nitz, and Wolf. 1. He sees more clearly, and explains more fully than ever had been done before, that the a priori principles are in the mind in the character of forms, or rules, prior to their being called forth or exercised. Thus, speaking of our intuition of space, he says it must be already a priori in the mind ; that is, before any perception of objects. "Die Form derselben muss zu ihnen ins- gesammt im Gemiithe a priori bereit liegen und daher abgesondert von aller Empfindung konnen betrachtet werden ' (Werke, Bd. ii. p. 32 ; ed. Rosenki'anz). The mind has not only Intuitions of Space and Time to impose on phenomena or presentations, it has cate- gories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, Modality, to impose on its cognitions ; and Ideas of Substance, Totality of Phenomena, and Deity, to impose on the judgments reached by the categories. 2. He maintains that the forms of the sensibility and the categories of the understanding have all a reference to objects of experience, real or possible ; this, in fact, is their use — without this they would be meaningless. The ideas of pure reason do, however, refer to the comparisons of the understanding, and not to objects, and fruitless speculation arises from supposing that they refer to objects ; and there may also be an undue use of the forms of sense and the categories of the understanding, but in themselves they refer to objects of possible experience (Kriiik d. r. V. Trans. Dial.). 3. He proposes in his great work, the Kritik of Pure Reason, to give an inventory, in systematic order, of the a priori principles in the mind : *' Denn es ist nichts als das Inventarium aller unserer Besitze durch reine Vernunft, systematisch geordnet" (Vorrede zu erst. Auf.). He seeks for an organon, which would be a compendium of the principles according to which a priori cognitions would be obtained : "Ein Organon der reinen Vernunft wurde ein Inbegriff derjenigen Principien seyn, nach denen alle reine Erkentnisse a priori konnen erworben und wirklich zu Stande gebracht werden " (Einleit.). 4. He uses systematically the test of Necessity and Universality, mean- ing by Universality the Universality of the Truth. 52 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. But, on the other hand, he has fallen into the grossest misappre- hensions regarding the nature of the a priori principles of reason. 1. He maintains that the mind can have no intuition of things. All that it can know are mere presentations or phenomena. It is all true that the Forms of Sense and the Categories relate to objects of possible experience, but then, experience does not give us a knowledge of things. " Es sind demnach die Gegensfande der Erfahrung niemals an sich selbst." Speaking even of self-conscious- ness, he says, it does not know self as it exists : " Und Selbst ist die innere und sinnliche Anschauung unseres Gemiiths (als Gegen- standes des Bewusstseyns) . . . auch nicht das eigentliche Selbst, so wie es an sich existirt " (Bd. ii. p. 389). He thus separates the intuitions of the mind altogether from things, 2. He makes our a priori Intuitions impose on phenomena the forms of Space and Time, which have no existence out of the mind. The categories are frameworks for binding conceptions into judgments. The ideas of pure reason reduce the judgments to unity, but have no reference to objects ; and if we suppose them to have, we are landed in illusion and contradictions. By this system he makes much ideal which we are naturally led to regard as real, and thus prepared the way for Fichte, who made the whole ideal. 3. His method of discovering the a priori principles of the mind is not the Inductive, but the Critical. Reason is called to undertake the task of self-examination, which may secure its righteous claims, not in an arbitrary way, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. " Eine Aiiffor- derung an die Vernunft, das beschwerlichste aller ihrer Gesch'afte, namlich das der Selbsterkenntniss aufs Neue zu iibernehmen und einen Gerichtshof einzusetzen, der sie bei ihren gerechten AnsprU- chen sichere, dagegen aber alle grundlose Anmaassungen nicht durch Machtspriiche sondern nach ihren ewigen und unwandelbaren Ge- setzen " (Vor. zu erst. Auf.). Reason was thus set on criticising itself according to laws of its own, and a succession of speculators set out each with what he alleged to be the laws of reason, but no two of them agreed as to what the laws of reason are, or what the standard by which to test them, and conclusions were reached which were evidently most irrational. XVI. DuGALD Stewart delighted to look on our intuitions under the aspect of "Fundamental Laws of Human Belief" (Elem. Vol. II. Chap. i.). 1. He sees that they are of the nature of laws in the mind. 2. He sees that they are natural, original, and fun- damental. 3. He sees that they are involved in the faculties. Hence CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 53 he calls them " elements of reason" (Elem. Vol. n. p. 49; Ham. edit.) ; he would identify them with the exercise of our reasoning powers, and speaks of them as "component elements," without which the faculty of reasoning is inconceivable and impossible (p. 39). It may be added that while he never formally appeals to necessity, he is obliged to use it incidentally. Thus " every man is impressed with an irresistible conviction that all his sensations, thoughts, and volitions belong to one and the same being " {Elem. Vol. i. p. 47) ; and " we are impressed with an irresistible conviction of our per- sonal identity " (Essays, p. 59). Speaking of causes, in the meta- physical meaning of the word, he says, the " word cause expresses something which is supposed to be necessarily connected with the change" (Elem. Vol. i. p. 97). In looking on them as "funda- mental laws," and in avoiding the ambiguity of the phrase " com- mon sense," he has gone beyond Reid, but otherwise he has not thrown much light on them. He is in great confusion from not discovering how it is that "the elements of reason " may become general maxims, axioms, or principles; and his whole view of mathe- matical axioms is erroneous (see Elem. Vol. ii.). XVII. Dr. Thomas Brown has demonstrated, with great in- genuity, that our belief in the invariableness of cause and effect cannot be had from experience (Cause and Effect, Part iii. sect, iii.). He has also shown that the belief in our personal identity is intuitive (Lect. 13). When he comes to our intuitions, he speaks of them as "principles of thought; " as "primary universal intui- tions of direct belief;" as "being felt intuitively, universally, im- mediately, irresistibly; "as "an internal, never-ceasing voice from the Creator and Preserver of our being;" as "omnipotent, like their Author ; " and " such that it is impossible for us to doubt them " (Lect. 13). These are fine expressions, but his view of them is meagre, after all, and a retrogression from the Scottish School. He makes no inquiry into their nature, laws, or tests. XVIII. Sir William Hamilton's Note A, appended to his edition of Reid's Collected Writings , is the most important contribution made in this century to the science of first truths. 1. He has there specified nearly every important character of our intuitive convic- tions, and attached to them an appropriate nomenclature. 2. He has shown that the argument from common sense is one strictly scientific and eminently philosophic. 3. He has with unsurpassed erudition brought testimonials in behalf of the principles of common sense from the writings of the eminent thinkers of all ages and countries. 54 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. Biit on the other hand: 1. He fails to draw the distinction be- tween common sense as an aggregate of laws in the mind, as con- victions in consciousness, and as generalized maxims. Thus the confusion of the spontaneous cognition and its generalized form appears in such passages as the following : " The primitive cog- nitions seem to leap ready from the womb of reason, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter ; sometimes the mind places them at the commencement of its operations, in order to have a point of support and a fixed basis, without which the operations would be impossible; sometimes they form in a certain sort the crowning, the consumma- tion, of all the intellectual operations " (^Metaphysics, Led. 38). 2. He does not properly appreciate the circumstance that intuitive convictions all look to singulars, and that there is need of induction to reach the general truth. He supposes that the general truth is revealed at once to consciousness, " Philosophy is the development and application of the constitutive and normal truths which con- sciousness immediately reveals." "Philosophy is thus wholly de- pendent on consciousness" (Reid's Collected Writings, p. 746). It is true that philosophy is dependent on consciousness, but it is dependent also on abstraction and generalization. He calls ulti- mate, primary, and universal principles facts of consciousness {Met. Lect. 15). 3. His method is not the Inductive, but that of Critical Analysis introduced by Kant (Met. Lect. 29). He fails to observe that the mind in intuition looks at objects. He makes the mind's conviction in regard to such objects as space, substance, cause, and infinity to be impotencies, and their laws to be laws of thought, and not of things (Append, to Discuss, on Phil.). The error of such views will come out as we advance. XIX. M. Cousin has given, throughout all his philosophical works, clear and beautiful expositions of the elements of reason. 1. It is a favorite doctrine that reason looks at truths, eternal, univer- sal, and absolute ; truths, not to the individual or the race, but to all intelligences. 2. He uses, most successfully, the tests of neces- sity and universality, in order to distinguish the truths of reason from other truths. 3. He has distinguished between the sponta- neous and reflective form of the truths of reason (see ante, p. 19). 4. He has shown that primitive truths are all at first individual. " C'est un fait qu'il ne faut pas oublier, et qu'on oublie beaucoup trop souvent, que nos jugements sont d'abord des jngements par- ticuliers et d^termin^s, et que c'est sous cette forme d'un jugement particulier et determine que font leur premiere apparition toutes CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 65 les v4nt6s universelles et necessaires " (Se'r. ii. t. iii. lecj. 1 ; see also Ser. i. t. i. progr. ; t. ii. progr. lecj. ii.-iv. xi.). But on the other hand, he has given an exaggerated account of the power of human reason, and has not seen that induction is required in order to the discovery of necessary truth in its general form. 1. He uses un- happy and unguarded language in speaking of reason. His favorite epithet as applied to it is " impersonal ; " language which has a correct meaning inasmuch as the truth is not to the person, but to all intelligences, but is often so employed as, without his intending it, to come very close to those pantheistic systems which identify the Divine and human reason (see Se'r. ii. Ie9. v.). 2. His reduc- tion of the ideas of reason to three is full of 'confusion. The first idea is supposed to be unity, substance, cause, perfect, infinite, eternal ; the second, multiple, quality, effect, imperfect, finite, bounded ; and the third, the relation of the other two. It is to confound the things which manifestly differ, to make unity, cause? good, infinite, to be identical. The business of the metaphysician should be to observe each of these carefully, and bring out their peculiarities and their differences. 3. He does not see how it is that the general maxim is formed out of the particulars. He says that abstraction " saisit imm^diatement ce que le premier objet soumis k son observation renferme de gdn^ral (Ser. i. t. i. 169. xi.). He does not see that in order to the formation of the general law there is need of a process, often delicate and laborious, of observation, abstraction, and generalization. XX. Dr. Whewell has done great service at once to the phys- ical sciences and to metaphysics, by showing, in his History of Inductive Sciences : 1. That the former proceed upon and imply principles not got from experience ; that geometry and arithmetic depend on first truths regarding space, time, and number; and mechanical science on intuitions regarding force, matter, etc. 2. He has exhibited these principles in instructive forms, announcing them in their deeper and wider character under the designation of " fundamental ideas," and then presenting them under the name of "conceptions" in the more specific shapes in which they become available in the particular sciences : thus, in mechanical science the fundamental idea of cause becomes the conception of force. But then he has injured his work : 1. By following the Kantian doctrine of forms, and supposing that the mental ideas " impose " and "superinduce " on the objects something not in the objects, whereas they merely enable us to discover what is in the objects. 2. He 56 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES. also fails to show that, the ideas or maxims in the general form in which alone they are available in science are got by induction. 3. The phraseology which he employs is unfortunate; it is "funda- mental ideas " and "conceptions." The word "idea" has been used in so many different senses by different writers, by Plato, Des- cartes, Locke, Kant, and Hegel, that it is perhaps expedient to abandon it altogether in strict philosophic writing; it is certainly not expedient to use it, as Whewell does, in a new application. The word "conception" stands in classical English both for the phantasm, or image, and the logical notion ; certain later meta- physicians would restrict it to the logical notion ; and there is no propriety in using it to signify an a priori law. 4. He has damaged the general acceptance of his principles, which seem to me to be as true as they are often profound, by making a number of truths a priori which are evidently got from experience : thus he makes the law of action and re-action, and the laws of motion generally, self-evident and necessary. XXI. J. S. Mill. I have shown in Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy that while denying intuitive principles he is obliged constantly to assume them. XXII. LoTZE. He opens his work on Metaphysics by telling us that " Reality including Change is the subject of Metaphysic." In his dictations as reported by Professor Ladd he says that Metaphysic is the science of that which is actual, not of that which is merely thinkable." " The problem of Metaphysic is actually this : to dis- cover the laws of the connection which unites the particular (simul- taneous or successive) elements of actuality." It is pleasant to find a German philosopher thus turning to actuality which Kant had placed at such a distance. But he has stopped half-way, and has thus been able to do little for a Realistic Philosophy. He tells us that " the belief of ordinary intuition that it has an immediate perception of the nature of things can be only short-lived." By help of certain obvious distinctions I have been showing that this is the philosophy sure to be long-lived. He says, "To be" means " to stand in rela- tion," as if things did not require to he in order to stand in relation. He makes Space and Time to have only a subjective existence, whereas realism requires us to hold that the extension of that wall and the time of sunrise have quite as objective a reality as the wall and the event. XXIII. Herbert Spencer enunciates a fundamental principle. " The inconceivableness of its negation is that which shows a cogni- CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 57 tion to possess the highest rank — is the criterion by which its un- surpassable validity is known." "If its negation is inconceivable, the discovery of this is the discovery that we are obliged to accept it. And a cognition which we are thus obliged to accept is one which we class as having the highest possible certainty " (^Psychology, Vol. II. p. 407). This is a very mutilated and partial version of the test of necessity. Mr. Spencer holds that all our cognitions and judgments are determined by our nervous structure, which has been fashioned by heredity. In this evolution man has no more freedom of will than the spoke has in the revolution of a wheel. We can conceive only what we are compelled to do by our inherited nervous frame, and we cannot conceive, certainly cannot believe, otherwise. Liberty of choice would be an evil in our world, as it might interfere with the evolution of nature. This cognition which we arc obliged to accept is not a cognition of things, as is maintained in this work, but is a necessity imposed on us by our descent. To us it is " the highest possible certainty, and unsurpassable," but it is not pretended that it is a certainty in the nature of things. In other worlds, with a different evolutionary process, it might not be certainty, but un- cei'tainty and error. We who feel as if we were free feel oppressed under this load. PART SECOND. PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. BOOK I. PKIMITIVE COGNITIONS. CHAPTER I. THE MIND BEGINS ITS INTELLIGENT ACTS WITH KNOWLEDGE. It is impossible to determine directly and certainly what are the first exercises of the soul, as the memory of the infant does not go so far back. It is supposed by many that it begins with some sort of sensations or feel- ings. This may or may not be. But it should be care- fully noted that these are not acts of intelligence, and that we cannot argue from them the existence of things without having more in the conclusion than we have in the premises. I think it can be shown that the mind must begin its intelligent acts with knowledge, which means that we know things. It is upon the things thus known that our thinking powers proceed. This is not the account usually given. From an early date the common opinion in philosophy was that the mind does not look at things, but on some idea, image, or representation of things. This view, with no pretensions to precision in the statement of it, was a prevalent one THE MIND ACTS \MTH KNOWLEDGE. 59 in ancient Greece, in the scholastic ages, and in the earlier stages of modern philosophy. It seems to me to be the view which was habitually entertained by Des- cartes and Locke. In later times, the mind was sup- posed to commence with "impressions" of some kind. This view may be regarded as introduced formally into philosophy by Hume, who opens his Treatise of Human Nature by declaring that all the perceptions of the mind are impressions and ideas ; that impressions come first, and that ideas are the faint images of them. This view has evidently a materialistic tendency. Literally, an impression can be produced only on a material substance, and it is not easy to determine precisely what is meant by the phrase when it is applied to a state of the con- scious mind. This impression theory is the one adopted by the French Sensational School and by the physiolo- gists of this country. In Germany the influence exer- cised by Kant's ICritik of Pure Reason has made the general account to be that the mind starts with presen- tations, and not with things, with phenomena in the sense of appearances, which "phenomena" are but modi- fications of Hume's " impressions " and of the " ideas " of the ancients. Now it appears to me that all these accounts, consciousness being witness, are imperfect, and by their defects erroneous. The mind is not conscious of these impressions preceding the knowledge which it has immediately of self, and the objects falling under the notice of the senses. Nor can it be legitimately shown how the mind can ever rise from ideas, impressions, phenomena, to the knowledge of things. The followers of Locke have always felt the difficulty of showing how the mind from mere ideas could reach external realities. Hume designedly represented the original exercises of the mind as being mere impressions, in order to under- 60 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. mine the very foundations of knowledge. Though Kant acknowledged a reality beneath the presentations, be- yond the phenomena, those who followed out his views found the reality disappearing more and more, till at length it vanished altogether, leaving only a concate- nated series of mental forms. There is no effectual or consistent way of avoiding these consequences but by falling back on the natural system, and maintaining that the mind in its intelligent acts starts with knowledge. But let not the statement be misunderstood. I do not mean that the mind com- mences with abstract knowledge, or general knowledge, or indeed with systematized knowledge of any descrip- tion. It acquires first a knowledge of individual things, as they are presented to it and to its knowing faculties, and it is out of this that all its arranged knowledge is formed by a subsequent exercise of the understanding. From the concrete the mind fashions the abstract, by separating in thought a part from the whole, a quality from the object. Starting with the particular, the mind reaches the general by observing the points of agree- ment. From premises involving knowledge, it can arrive at other propositions also containing knowledge. It seems clear to me that if the mind had not knowledge in the foundation, it never could have knowledge in the superstructure reared ; but finding knowledge in its first intelligent exercises, it can thence, by the processes of abstraction, generalization, and reasoning, reach further and higher knowledge. The mind is endowed with at least two simple cog- nitive powers, — sense-perception and self -consciousness. Both are cognitive in their nature, and look on and reveal to us existing things : the one, material objects presented to us in our bodily frame and beyond it ; and THE MIND ACTS WITH KNOWLEDGE. 61 the other, self in a particular state or exercise. It is altogether inadequate language to represent these fac- ulties as giving us an idea, or an impression, or an apprehension, or a notion, or a conception, or a belief, or looking to unknown appearances : they give us knowl- edge of objects under aspects presented to us. No other language is equal to express the full mental action of which we are conscious. If this view be correct, the unit of thought is not, as is commonly represented, judgment, but cognition of things, on which judgments may be formed. CHAPTER II. OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. We are following the plainest dictates of conscious- ness, we avoid a thousand difficulties, and we get a solid ground on which to rest and to build, when we maintain that the mind in its first exercises acquires knowledge; not, indeed, scientific or arranged, not of qualities of ob- jects and classes of objects, but still knowledge, — the knowledge of things presenting themselves, and as they present themselves ; which knowledge, individual and concrete, is the foundation of all other knowledge, ab- stract, general, and deductive. In particular, the mind is so constituted as to attain a knowledge of body or of material objects. It may be difficult to ascertain the exact point or surface at which the mind and body come together and influence each other, in particuhir, how far •into the body (Descartes without proof thought to be in the pineal gland), but it is certain that when they do meet mind knows body as having its essential prop, erties of extension and resisting energy. It is through the bodily organism that the intelligence of man attains its knowledge of all material objects beyond. This is true of the infant mind ; it is true also of the mature mind. We may assert something more than this re- garding the organism. It is not only the medium through which we know all bodily objects beyond itself; it is itself an object primarily known ; nay, I am in- clined to think that, along with the objects immediately OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 63 affecting it, it is \the only object originally known. Intuitively, man seems to know nothing bej^ond bis own organism, and objects directly affecting it ; in all further knowledge there is a process of inference proceeding on a gathered experience. This theory seems to me to explain all the facts, and it delivers us from many per- plexities. Let us go over the senses one by one, with a view of determining what seems to be the original information supplied by each. In the sense of smell, the objects immediately perceived are the nostrils as affected ; it is only by experience that we know that there is an object beyond, from which the smell proceeds, and it is only by science that we know that odorous particles have proceeded from that object. In hearing, our primary perceptions seem to be of the ear as affected ; that there is a sounding body we learn by further observation, and that there are vibrations between it and the ear we are told by scientific research. In taste, it is originally the palate as affected by -^hat we feel by another sense to be a tangible body, which body science tells us must be in a liquid state. In touch proper, there is a sensa- tion of a particular part of the frame as affected by we know not what, but which we maj discover by experi- ential observation. It is the same with all the impres- sions we have by the sense of temperature, the sense of titillation, the sense of shuddering, the sense of flesh- creeping, the sense of lightness or of weight, and the like organic affections, usually, but improperly, attrib- uted to touch. In regard to all these senses, it seems highly probable that our original and primitive percep- tions are simply of the organism as affected by some- thing unknown — so far as intuition is concerned. But there are other two senses which furnish, I am inclined to 64 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. think, a new and further kind of information. The sense of touch, when the phrase is used in a loose sense, is a complex one, embracing a considerable number and va- riety of senses, which have not been scientifically clas- sified, and which, perhaps, cannot be so till we have a more thorough physiology of the nerves. Certain it is that there is a locomotive energy and a muscular sense entirely different from feeling, or such affections as those of heat and cold. The soul of man instinct- ively wills to move the arm; an action is produced in a motor nerve, which sets in motion a muscle, with probably an attached set of bones, and the intimation of such a movement having taken place is conveyed to the brain by a sensor nerve. As the result of this com- plex physiological process, we come to know that there is something beyond our organism ; we know an object out of our organism hindering the movement of the organ and resisting our energy (a). It is more difiicult to determine what is the original perception by sight. It must certainly be of a colored surface affecting the felt organism. In the famous case operated on by Cheselden, a boy born blind had his eyes couched, and " when he first saw, he was so far from making any judgment about distances that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes (as he expressed it), as what he felt did his skin." In the Franz case, the object seemed, when the boy's eyes were opened, very near; and in the Trinchinetti cases, the girl tried to grasp an orange with her hand very near the eye ; then, perceiv- ing her error, stretched out her forefinger, and pushed it in a straight line slowly until she reached her object (/!»). I think it probable that the colored surface perceived as affecting the living organism is seen as in the direction of the felt and localized sentient organ, neither behind it OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 65 nor at the side, but at what distance we know not till other senses and a gathered experience come to our aid. Such seems to be our original knowledge, received through the various senses as inlets. But we are not to understand that the mind receives sensations and information only from one sense at a time. In order to have a full view of the actual state of things, we must remember that man, at every in- stant of his waking existence, is getting organic feelings and perceptions from a number of sensitive sources ; possibly at one and the same time from the sense of heat, from the sense of taste in the mouth, from the sense of hearing, from the sense of sight, — say of a portion of our own body and of the walls of the apart- ment in which we sit, — and from the muscular sense, — say of the chair on which we sit, or the floor on which we stand. Our whole conscious state at any given time is thus a very complex, or rather a concrete one. There is in it at all times a sense of the living body as ex- tended, and, I may add, as ours. This is a sense which human beings, infant and mature, carry with them every instant of their waking existence, perhaps in a low state even in their times of sleep. " This consciousness of our own corporeal existence is the standard by which we estimate in our sense of touch the extension of all resisting bodies." ^ Along with this there will always be in our waking moments a sense of something extra- organic but affecting the organism, such as the surface before the eye, or the object which supports us. But the vividness of the impression made, or some decisive act of the will in order to accomplish a desired end, will at times centre the mind's regards in a special manner on some one of the objects made known by the 1 Miiller's Physiology, p. 1081. 66 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. senses. Thus, a violent pain will absorb the whole mental energy on the organ affected ; or a vivid hue will draw out the mind towards the color; or in order to some purpose we may fix our regards on the shape of the object. By these concentrations of intelligence we obtain a more special acquaintance with the nature of the objects presenting themselves. It is thus only that the special senses fulfil their full function, and impart information abiding with us beyond the moment when the primary affection is produced. Such, approximately and provisionally, seems to be our original stock of knowledge acquired by sense. It is as yet within vei-y narrow limits, within our frames, and a sphere immediately in contact with them. " We per- ceive," says Hamilton, " and can perceive nothing but what is relative to the organ." We reach a more ex- tended knowledge by remembering what we have thus obtained, by subjecting it to processes of abstraction and generalization, and drawing inferences from it. Our information is especially enlarged and consolidated by combining the information got from several of the senses, which are all intended to assist each other. In particu- lar, the two intellectual senses par excellence^ sight and the muscular sense, are fitted to aid each other and all the other senses. By sight we know merely the object as having a colored surface ; by the muscular sense we may come to know that this object with a superficies has three dimensions and is impenetrable ; we may know the object to be the same by our seeing upon it the hand which feels the pressure (e). By sight we know not how far the colored surface is from our organism ; by inferences founded on gathered information from the muscular sense we come to know how far it is from us, whether an inch or many feet or yards. By the muscu- OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 67 lar sense we know solid objects only as pressing them- selves immediately on our organism ; by sight we see objects — which sight does not declare to be solid, but which a combined experience declares must be solid — thousands or millions of miles away. By inferences from various senses united we know that this taste is from a certain kind of food, that this smell is from a rose or lily, that this sound is from a human voice or a musical instrument. Thus our knowledge, commencing with the organism and objects affecting it, may extend to objects at a great distance, and clothe them with qualities which are not perceived as immediately belonging to them. We know that this blue surface, seen indistinctly, is a bay of the ocean fifty miles off, and that this brilliant spark up in the blue concave is a solid body, radiating light hundreds of millions of miles away. Let us analyze what is involved in this intuitive knowledge. 11. We know the Object as Existing or having Being. This is a necessary conviction, attached to, or rather composing an essential part of, our concrete cognition of every material object presented to us, be it of our own frame or of things external to our frame ; whether this hard stone, or this yielding water, or even this vapory mist or fleeting cloud. We look on each of the objects thus presented to us, in our organism or beyond it, as having an existence, a being, a reality. Every one un- derstands these phrases ; they cannot be made simpler or more intelligible by an explanation. We understand them because they express a mental fact which every one has experienced. We may talk of what we contem- plate in sense-perception being nothing but an impres- sion, an appearance, an idea, but we can never be made 68 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. to give our spontaneous assent to any such statements. However ingenious the arguments which may be adduced in favor of the objects of our sense-perceptions being mere ilkisions, we find, after listening to them, and allow- ing to them all the weight that is possible, that we still look upon bodies as realities the next time they present themselves. The reason is, we know them to be reali- ties, by a native cognition which can never be overcome. m. In our primitive cognitions, we know objects as having an Existence Independent of the Contemplative Mind. We know the object as separate from ourselves. We do not create it when we perceive it, nor does it cease to exist because we have ceased to contemplate it. Our intuition indeed does not say, as to this being, how or when it came to be there, nor whether nor in what cir- cumstances it may cease; for information on such topics we must go to other quarters. But when the question is started, we must decide that this thing had a being prior to our perceiving it, — unless indeed it so happened that it was produced by a power capable of doing so at the very time our senses alighted on it ; and that it will con- tinue to exist after we have ceased to regard it, — unless indeed something interpose to destroy it. All this is in- volved in our very cognition of the object, and he who would deny this is setting aside our very primitive know- ledge, and he who would argue against this will never be able to convince us in fact, because he is opposing a fundamental conviction which will work whenever the object is presented (c?). IV. , In our primitive cognition of body there is involved a knowledge of Outness or Externality. We know the ob- OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 69 ject perceived, be it the organism or the object affecting the organism, as not in the mind, but as out of the mind. In regard to some of the objects perceived b}-^ us, we may be in doubt as to whether they are in the organism or beyond it, but we are always sure that they are extra- mental. This is a conviction from which we can never be driven by any power of will or force of circumstances. It is at the foundation of the judgments to be afterwards specified as to the distinctions between the self and the not-self, the ego and non-ego (js). We know the object as Extended. I am inclined to think that this knowledge in the concrete is involved even in such perceptions as those of smell, taste, hearing, and feeling, and the allied affections of temperature and titillation. In all these we intuitively know the organ- ism as out of the mind, as extended, and as localized. At every waking moment we have sensations from more than one sense, and we must know the organs affected as out of each other and in different places (/). It is acknowledged that the primitive knowledge got in this way is very bare and limited, and without those per- ceived relationships and distinctions which become asso- ciated with it in our future life. But imperfect though it be, it must ever involve the occupation of space. The other two senses furnish more express information, the eye giving a colored surface of a defined form, and the muscular sense extension in three dimensions. It should be noticed that in our knowledge of extra-organic objects, whether by the eye or the muscular sense, we know them as situated in a certain place in reference to our organism, which we have already so far localized and distributed in space, and which henceforth we use as a centre for direction and distance. 70 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS. VI. We know the Objects as Affecting Us. I have already said that we know them as independent of us. This is an important truth. But it is equally true and equally important that these objects are made known to us as somehow having an influence on us. The organic object is capable of affecting our minds, and the extra-organic object affects the organism which affects the mind. Upon this cognition are founded certain judgments as to the relations of the objects known to the knowing mind. In particular, VII. In certain, if not in all, of our original cognitions through the senses we know the objects as exercising Potency or Property. This is denied in theory by many who are yet found to admit it inadvertently when they tell us that we can know matter only by its properties : for what, I ask, are properties but powers to act in a certain way ? But still it is dogmatically asserted that whatever we may know about material objects, we can never know that they have power; we cannot see power, they say, nor hear power, nor touch power. In opposi- tion to these confident assertions, I lay down the very opposite dogma, that we cannot see body, or touch, or even hear, or taste, or smell body, except as affecting us ; that is, having a power in reference to us. When an extra-organic body resists our muscular energy ( eVri, rovTO &ireip6v icTTiv. But then the complete, the entire, is that which has nothing beyond : ov 5e li.7}^ev e^t», TovT iffTl re\ewv Kal o\ov. I look on both these remarkable expressions as applicable, the one to our idea, the other to the object. Sir W. Hamilton would identify the '6\ov with the German " Abso- lute," but Aristotle gives a homelier account when he describes the "whole " as that which needs nothing beyond, " as a man or a cas- ket." It could be shown that theologians, in laboring to describe infinity, have very often caught glimpses of one or other or both these characteristics, and have fixed them with more or less clearness and decision. In musing on divine things, the thought occurred to Anselm that it might be possible to find a single argument which would of itself prove that there is a God, and that he is the Supreme Good. Man, he says, is able to form a conception of something than which noth- ing greater can be conceived; and this conception, he argues, implies the existence of a corresponding being (^Proslogion). A similar ar- gument occurred to Descartes. He found in himself the idea of a Perfect being ; and he argues that in this idea the existence of the Being is comprised, as the equality of the three angles to two right angles is comprised in the idea of a triangle (Meth. p. 4, etc.). Leib- nitz acknowledges that the argument is valid ; provided he is allowed to supply a missing link, and to show that it is possible that God should exist {Op. p. 273). It may be doubted whether these arguments for the Divine Existence, derived from the mere idea THE INFINITE. 175 of the Perfect, are valid, independent of external facts. But these eminent men are right in saying that the mind has some conception and conviction as to the perfect ; and these combine, with the obser- vation of traces of design, to enable us to construct an argument for the Divine Existence. CHAPTER IV. THE EXTENT, TESTS, AND POWER OF OUR NATIVE BELIEFS. The above are some of the principal — I will not ven- ture to say that they are the vrhole — of our native beliefs. As they grow upon our native cognitions, so they attach themselves to our primitive judgments, in most of which there is more or less of the faith element, that is, belief in the existence of an object not directly known. There is belief, for instance, involved in the judgment that this effect has a cause, which cause may be unknown. There is belief, too, exercised in certain of our moral judgments, as when we believe in the in- tegrity of a good man, or trust in the word of God, even when his providence seems in opposition. But these are topics which fall to be discussed specially in subsequent books. It is scarcely necessary to remark that faith is an af- fection of mind, not limited to our primary convictions. Faith collects round our observational knowledge, and even around the conclusions reached by inference. We believe — the course of nature being unchanged by its Author — that the seed cast into the ground in spring will yield a return in autumn, that the sun will rise to- morrow as he has done to-day, and that the planet Saturn a year hence will be found in the very place calculated for us by the astronomer. We exercise faith, every one of us, in listening to the testimony of credible witnesses, and faith is in one of its liveliest forms when it becomes EXTENT, TESTS, AND POWER OF OUR NATIVE BELIEFS. 177 trust in the ability, the excellence, and the love of a fellow-creature. Our highest faiths are those in which there is a mixture of the observational and intuitional elements, the observational supplying the object, and the intuitional imparting to them a profundity and a power as resting on an immovable foundation and going out into the vast and unbounded. In particular, when God has been revealed, faith ever clusters round him as its appropriate object. There are canons whereby to try the trustworthiness of our beliefs. First, so far as our intuitive beliefs are concerned, there are the general tests of intuition. Take our belief in the infinite. We have to ask, Is the truth believed in self-evident, or does it lean on something else ? Is it necessary ? Can we believe that space and time and the Being dwelling in them have limits ? Is it universal, that is, do men ever practically believe that they can come to the verge of time and space ? Such queries as these will settle for us at once what beliefs are original and fundamental. We should put these ques- tions to every belief that may suggest itself to our own minds. We are entitled to put them to every faith which may be pressed on us by others. Then, secondly, as to our derivative or observational beliefs, there are the ordinary rules of evidence, as enunciated in works of special or applied logic, or as stated in books on the par- ticular departments of knowledge, or, more frequently, as caught up by common experience, and incorporated into the good sense of mankind. In no such case are we to believe without proof being supplied, and we are en- titled and required to examine the evidence. Thirdly^ as to mixed cases in which our faith proceeds partly on intuition and partly on observation, our business is care- fully to separate the two, and to judge each by its appro- 178 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. priate tests. In the use of such rules as these, while led to yield to the faith sanctioned by our rational nature, we shall at the same time be saved from those extrava- gant credences which are recommended to us by unau- thorized authority, by mysticism which has confused it- self, by superstition, by bigotry, by fanaticism, by pride, or by passion. Looked at under one aspect, belief might be consid- ered as so far a weakness cleaving to man, for where he has faith, other and higher beings may have immediate knowledge. But when contemplated under other as- pects, it is an element of vast strength. In heaven, much of what here faith is, will be brightened into sight, but even in heaven faith abideth. Our faiths widen in- definitely the sphere of our convictions ; they surround our solid cognitions with an atmosphere in which it is bracing and exhilarating to walk, which no doubt has its mists and clouds, but has also a kindling and irradiating capacity, and may be warmed into the fervor and reflect the very light of heaven in a thousand varied colors. He who would tear off from the mind its proper beliefs, would in the very act be shearing it of one of its principal glories. What a power even in our earthly faiths, as when men sow in the assurance that they shall reap after a long season, and labor in the confidence of a reward at a far distance ! What an efl&cacy in the trust which the child reposes in the parent, which the scholar puts in his mas- ter, which the soldier places in his general, and which the lover commits to the person beloved ! These are among the chief potencies which have been moving mankind to good, or, alas ! to evil. As it walks steadfastly on, it dis- covers an outlet where sense thought that the path was shut in and closed. Difficulties give way as it advances. EXTENT, TESTS, AND POWER OF OUR NATIVE BELIEFS. 179 and impossibilities to prudence speedily become accom- plishments before the might and energy of faith. To it we owe the greatest achievements which mankind have effected in art, in travel, in conquest ; setting out in search of the unseen, they have made it seen and palpa- ble. It was thus that Columbus persevered till the long- hoped-for country burst on his view : it is always thus that men discover new lands and new worlds outside those previously known. But faith has ever a tendency to go out with strong pinions into infinity, which it feels to be its proper ele- ment. It has a telescopic power, whereby it looks on vast and remote objects, and beholds them as near and at hand. There is a constancy in its course and a steadi- ness in its progress, because its- eye is fixed on a pole-star far above our earth. How lofty its mien as it moves on, looking upward and onward, and not downward and backward, with an eye kindled by the brilliancy of the object at which it looks ! Hence its power, a power drawn from the attraction of the world above. No ele- ment in all nature so potent. The lightning cannot move with the same velocity ; light does not travel so quick from the sun to the earth as faith does from earth to heaven. It heaves up, as by an irresistible hydrostatic pressure, the load which would press on the bosom. It glows like the heat, it burns like the fire, and obstacles are consumed before its devouring progress. Persecution, coming like the wind to extinguish it, only fans it into a brighter flame. The proper object of faith is, after all, the Divine Being. Time and space and infinity seem empty and dead and cold, till faith fills them with the Divine Pres- ence, quickens them with the Divine Life, and warms them with the Divine Love. When thus grounded, how 180 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. stable ! firmer than sense can ever be, for the objects at which it looks are more abiding. " The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal." When thus fixed, the soul is at rest, as secure in Him to whom it adheres. When thus directed, all its acts, even the meanest, become noble, being sanc- tified by the divine end which they contemplate. All doubts are now decided on the right side by eternity being cast into the scale. When thus associated, its might is irresistible. It carries with it, and this accord- ing to the measure of it, the power of God. It is, no doubt, weak in that it leans, but it is strong in that it leans on the arm of the Omnipotent. It is a creature impotency which makes us lay hold of the Creator's power. BOOK in. PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. CHAPTER I. THEIR GENERAL NATURE, AND A CLASSIFICATION OF THEM. I. The mind of man has a set of Simple Cognitive — called by Sir William Hamilton Presentative — Powers, such as Sense-Perception and Self-Consciousness, by which it knows objects before it. From these we obtain our Primitive Cognitions. It has also a set of Reproductivo Powers, such as the Memory and the Imagination, by which it recalls the past in old forms or in new disposi- tions. Out of them arise many of our Faiths, as in the existence of objects which have fallen under our notice in time past, and in an infinity surpassing our utmost powers of imagination. But the mind has also a Power of Comparison by which it perceives Relations and forms Judgments. Our Primitive Judgments are formed from our Primi- tive Cognitions and Primitive Beliefs, On comparing two or more objects known or believed in, or, we may add, imagined, we discover that they bear a necessary relation to each other. The necessity of the relation arises from the nature of the things. We discover that objects have a certain relation because of their nature as it has become known to us, or as we have been led to 182 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. believe it to be ; and whenever we are led to discover a necessary relation, it is because we have such an ac- quaintance with things as to observe that there is a rela- tion implied in their very nature. It should be added, that because of our limited and imperfect knowledge, there may be many necessary relations which are alto- gether unknown to us, even among objects which are so far known. In accepting this account, we are saved from the ex- travagant positions taken up by many metaphysicians as to the a priori judgments of the mind, which they repre- sent as fashioned by a power of reason independent of things, whereas they are formed on the contemplation of things, and of the nature of things, so far as appre- hended. Such questions as the following are often put by ingenious minds : How is it that two straight lines cannot enclose a space? How is it that time appears like a line stretching behind and before, whereas the analogous thing, space, extends in three dimensions ? The proper reply is, that all this follows from the very nature of space and time. And if the question be put, How do we know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and that time has length without breadth? the answer is, that all this is involved in our primary knowl- edge of space and time. No other answer can be given ; no other answer should be attempted. Our primitive judgments proceed on our primitive cognitions and be- liefs, which again are founded on the nature of things, as we are constituted to discover it. II. It will be necessary at this place to examine a very common representation that the mind begins with Judg- ments, rather than the knowledge of individual things. THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 188 and that there is judgment or comparison in all knowl- edge. According to Locke, knowledge is nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagree- ment and repugnancy, of any two ideas. Sir W. Hamil- ton and Dr. Mansel maintain that in every cognitive act there is judgment or comparison. In opposition to Locke, I hold that the mind does not commence with ideas and the comparison of ideas, but with the knowledge of things, of which it can ever after form ideas, and which it is able to compare. I reckon it impossible for the mind, from mere ideas not comprising knowledge, or from the comparison of such ideas, ever to rise to knowl- edge, to the knowledge of things. The system of Locke is at this point involved in difBculties from which it can- not be delivered by those who hold, as he did, that man can reach a knowledge of objects. The only consistent issue of such a doctrine is an idealism which maintains that the mind can never get beyond its own circle or globe, and is there engaged forever in the contemplation and comparison of its own ideas, in regard to which it never can be certain whether they have any external reality corresponding to them. The doctrine of Hamil- ton and Mansel is not so objectionable, as they allow that we compare objects. Still it is an unsatisfactory state- ment to make all our knowledge to be not of things, but of the comparison or the relations of things. If I inter- pret my consciousness aright, we first know things, and then are able to compare them because of our knowledge of their qualities. Any other doctrine makes our knowl- edge indirect and remote, — we know not the object, but merely a relation of it to some other object, of which object our knowledge must also be relative, that is, in relation to something else. I acknowledge that every intuitive cognition may fur- 184 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. nish the matter and supply the ground for a judgment. Thus, out of the knowledge of a stone as before me, I can form the judgment, " This stone is now present," by an analysis of the concrete cognition. The knowledge of self as thinking enables me, as I distinguish between the ego and the particular thought, and observe the rela- tion of the two, to affirm, " I think." I believe that every primary cognition may entitle me, by an easy ab- straction and comparison, to frame a number of primary judgments. Thus the cognition of the stone enables me to say, " This stone exists ; " " This stone is here ; " and if the perception be by the eye, " This stone is extended ; " and if it be by the muscular sense, " This stone resists pressure ; " while the cognition of self, as perceiving the stone, enables me to affirm, " I perceive the stone ; " "I exist ; " "I perceive." The two indeed — our primary cognitions and beliefs on the one hand, and our primary judgments on the other — are intimately connected. Every cognition furnishes the materials of a judgment ; and a judgment possible, I do not say actual, is involved in every cognition. As the relation is implied in the nature of the individual objects, and the judgment pro- ceeds on the knowledge of the nature of the objects, so the two, in fact, may be all but simultaneous, and it may scarcely be necessary to distinguish them, except for rigidly exact philosophic purposes. Still it is the cogni- tion which comes first, and forms the basis on which the judgments are founded ; in the case of the primitive judgments, directly founded. It should be frankly ad- mitted that what is given in primary cognition is in itself of the vaguest and most valueless character, till abstrac- tion and comparison are brought to bear upon it. Still our cognitions and beliefs furnish the materials of all that the discursive understanding weaves into such rich and often complicated webs of comparison and inference. THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 185 III. It is to be carefully observed that our primitive cogni- tions and beliefs being of Realities, all the intellectual processes properly founded on them must relate to reali- ties also. If what we proceed on be unreal, that which we reach by a logical process may also be unreal. If space and time, for example, have, as some suppose, no reality independent of the contemplative mind, then all the relations of space and time, as unfolded in mathe- matical demonstrations, must also be regarded as unreal in the same sense. On the other hand, if space and time have (as I maintain) an existence irrespective of the mind thinking about them, then all the necessary relations drawn from our knowledge may also be regarded as having a reality independent of the mind reflecting on them. Not that they are to be supposed to have an ex- istence as individuals, or independent of the things re- lated ; they have precisely such a reality as we are intui- tively led to believe them to have ; that is, they exist as necessary relations of the separate things. IV. It may be as well to announce here generally, what will be shown specially at every stage as we advance, that all the primitive judgments of the mind are Indi- vidual. The mind does not in its spontaneous operations declare that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, but upon being satisfied that a certain thing exists, it at once sets aside the thought or assertion that it does not exist. It does not affirm in a general propo- sition that no two straight lines can enclose a space, but it says these two straight lines cannot enclose a space ; and it would say the same of every other two straight 186 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. lines. It does not metaphysically announce that every quality implies a substance, that every effect must have a cause ; but it declares of this property contemplated that it implies a substance, and of this given effect that it must have had a cause. It is out of these individual judgments that the general maxim is obtained by a pro- cess of generalization. But then it is to be observed that it is not a generalization of an outward experience, — which must always be limited, and never can furnish ground for a necessary and universal proposition, — but of inward and immediate judgments of the mind, which carry in them the conviction of necessity, which necessity therefore will attach itself to the general maxim, on the condition of our having properly performed the discur- sive operation. It is necessary for our purposes to Classify the primary judgments pronounced by the mind ; but this is by no means an easy task. An arrangement may, however, serve very important ends, even though it be not thor- oughly exhaustive and altogether unobjectionable. The following is to be regarded simply as the best which I have been able to draw out, and may be accepted as a provisional one till a better be furnished. The mind seems capable of noticing intuitively the relations of, — I. IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE. V. TIME. II. WHOLE AND PARTS. VI. QUANTITY. III. RESEMBLANCE. VII. ACTIVE PROPERTY. IV. SPACE, VIII. CAUSE AND EFFECT. VI. It is said to be the office of judgment or comparison to discover Relations. Let us properly understand what is meant by relations. It always implies two or more i THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 187 things. The relation depends on the nature of the things. We must know so far the nature of the things before we can discover their relation. In Identity we know the object as at one time and again at another time, and looking at each of the things, and comparing them, we discover them to be the same. In Comprehen- sion we have before the mind an object, and also a part or parts, say a house and a window, and we decide the window to be part of the house. In Resemblance we perceive a quality in each of the objects, and pronounce it the same. It should be noticed here that while the quality is the same, this does not make the objects iden- tical. In Space we discover relations of extension and position, say of the angles of a triangle to one another. In Time we have always a present perception, and we remember the past or anticipate the future, and declare their relations of priority and posteriority. In Quantity we look at the muchness of objects, as being less or more, and at their proportions. In Quality we contemplate objects as affecting each other, say as attracting one an- other. In Causation we discover a power in one object to affect another. A judgment is usually defined as a comparison of two notions. Upon which Mr. J. S. Mill remarks, that "propositions (except where the mind itself is the subject treated of) are not assertions respecting our ideas of things, but assertions respecting things them- selves," adding, "My belief has not reference to the ideas, it has reference to the things " (Logic, i. v. 1). There is force in the criticism, yet it does not give the exact truth. In propositions about extra-mental objects, we are not comparing the two notions as states of mind ; so far as logicians have proceeded on this view, they have fallen into confusion and error. But still, while it is true that our predications are made, not in regard to our notions, but of things, it is in regard to things apprehended, or of which we have a notion, as Mr. Mill admits: "In order to believe that gold is yellow, I must indeed have the idea of gold and the idea of yellow, and something having reference to those ideas must take place in my mind." 188 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. According to Locke, " Perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge into our minds " (Essay, II. X. 15). According to the view I take, perception is knowledge. According to Locke, " Knowledge is nothing but the Perception of the Connection and Agreement, or Disagreement and Repugnancy, of any of our ideas " (iv. i. 1). See King's and Reid's review of this doctrine of Locke, supra, p. 45. Hamilton says : " Consciousness is primarily a judgment or affirmation of existence. Again, consciousness is not merely the affirmation of naked exist- ence, but the affirmation of a certain qualified or determinate ex- istence " (Metaph. Lect. 24. See, also, Notes to Reid's Works, pp. 243, 275). Dr? Mansel says : " It may be laid down as a general canon of Psychology, that every act of consciousness, intuitive or discur- sive, is comprised in a conviction of the presence of its object, either internally in the mind, or externally in space. The result of every such act may thus be generally stated in the proposition, ' This is here.' " He is obliged to distinguish between such a psychological judgment and a logical one. "The former is the judgment of a relation between the conscious subject and the immediate object of consciousness. The latter is the judgment of a relation which two objects of thought bear to each other" (Proleg. Log. Chap. ii.). What he calls a psychological judgment seems to me to be a cog- nition, which may be explicated into a judgment, which judgment will be a logical one. Hamilton and Mansel carry out still further their doctrine of comparison being involved in knowledge. Dr. Mansel quotes J. G. Fichte : " AUes, was fur uns Etwas ist, ist es nur inwiefern es Etwas anderes auch nicht ist ; alle Position ist nur moglich durch Negation." This doctrine is in perfect consonance with Fichte' s idealism, but does not consort so well with Scottish realism. And yet Hamilton says: "The knowledge of opposites is one; thus we cannot know what is tall without knowing what is short ; we know what is virtue only as we know what is vice ; the science of health is but another name for the science of disease " {Metaph. Lect. 13; see, also, 34). So, also. Dr. Mansel (Lim. o/Relig. Thought, Lect. 3), " To be conscious, we must be conscious of some- thing; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not." This seems to me a doctrine wrong in itself, and of very doubtful tendency. True, there are some ideas confessedly relative, such as the ideas of tall and short. But, on the other hand, there are cognitions, and there are ideas which are positive; thus we know self as thinking, we know THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 189 virtue as good, without reference to anything else, and it is because we are thus able to know things separately that we are able to dis- cover relations between them. We do not first discern diSerences and then know the things: we first know the things and then observe points of resemblance or difference. Both Locke and Kant give the mind a power of intuition, but they bring it in at different places. Locke confines it to our judgments ; we perceive intuitively the relation of ideas (Essay, B iv. 1). Kant gives the mind an intuition of phenomena under forms which it im- poses, but withholds from the mind any intuition in judgment or understanding. I give the mind, within rigid limits, an intuition both, of things and the relations of things. Locke speaks of relations as being infinite, and mentions only a few. He specifies Cause and Effect, Time, Place, Identity and Diversity, Proportion, and Moral Relations (^Essay, ii. xxviii.). Hume mentions Resemblance, Identity, Space and Time, Quantity, Degi'ee, Contrariety, Cause and Effect. Kant's Categories are, — (I.) Quantity, containing Unity, Plurality, Totality ; (II.) Quality, containing Reality, Negation, Limitation ; (III-) Relation, compris- ing Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Com- munity of Agent and Patient ; (IV.) Modality, under which are Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and Non-Existence, Neces- sity and Contingence. Dr. Brown arranges them as those of, — (I.) Coexistence, embracing Position, Resemblance or Difference, Pro- portion, Degree, Comprehension ; (H-) Succession, containing Causal and Casual Priority. Of late there has been a tendency among British psychologists to narrow the relations which the mind can discover. Sir W. Hamilton's account (Metaph. Lect. 34) is a retrogression in science. In comparison, — (1.) We affirm the ex- istence of the ego and the non-ego ; (2.) We discriminate the two ; (3.) We notice resemblance or dissimilarity ; (4.) We collate the phenomena with the native notion of substance ; (5.) We collate them with the native notion of causation. Prof. Bain says (Senses and Intell. p. 329), "What is termed judgment may consist in dis- crimination on the one hand, or in the sense of agreement on the other : we determine two or more things either to differ or to agree. It is impossible to find any case of judging that does not, in the last resort, mean one or other of these two essential activities of the in- tellect." I wish my readers to compare these views of Hamilton and Bain with those of the older thinkers quoted above, and with those expounded in this work. Both seem to me to narrow the 190 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. mind's power of discovering relations among things, which in fact is the highest intellectual power which the mind can exercise. Hamilton's account seems to me to be an unnatural one, especially what he says about a collation with " native notions " of substance and causation. We discover the relations in looking at things. Bain's account in confining the mind's power to the discovery of agreement and difference is miserably meagre. CHAPTER II. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. I. Relation of Identity. — We have seen that every ob- ject known by us is known as having being ; I do not say an independent being, but a separate and individual being. This being, continuing in the object, constitutes its identity. This identity every object has as long as it exists, and this whether the identity does or does not become known to us or to any other created being. An object has identity not because the identity is known to us ; but an object having continued being, and therefore identit}^, intelligent beings may come to discover it. We are so constituted as to be able to know being, — that is, that the object known to us possesses being, — and we look on the object as retaining that being as long as it exists. We are prepared to decide then that if we ever fall in with this object again, it will have retained its identity. We may fall in with the same object again without discovering it to be the same, because of a defect of memory, or because the object was disguised in a crowd. But in regard to certain objects, we cannot avoid observing the sameness, and cannot be deceived in pronouncing them the same. So far as self is concerned, we discover the identity intuitively as we look on the objects presented in self- consciousness and memory. We have an immediate knowledge of self in every exercise of consciousness. We have a recollection of self in some particular state 192 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. in GTery exercise of memory. The mind has thus before it, at every waking moment, a knowledge of a present self ; and in every exercise of memory it has a past self ; and in looking at and comparing the two, it at once pro- claims the identity. It will be observed that here, as in every other case, the judgment throws us back on cog- nition, specially personality, and belief; the necessary facts on which the mind pronounces the necessary judg- ment are furnished in the exercise of consciousness and memory. In regard to objects external to the mind, we have no such intuitive means of discovering an identity. Our original perceptions do not extend even to the identity of our bodily frame. Every particle of matter in the body may be changed in seven years, as physiologists tell us, in perfect accordance with our intuitive percep- tions. We may be without a body in the state between death and the resurrection, and may receive an entirely new and spiritual body in heaven, and yet retain all the while our identity and feeling of identity. And in the case of extra-organic objects there is always a possibility of doubt as to whether what we perceive now is the same object as fell under our notice at some previous time. The infant, prompted by his instinct as to the continu- uance of being, and making a wrong application of it, will often be inclined to discover identity where there is only resemblance, will be apt, for example, to look on every man he meets with as his father. As he advances in life he will be led to pay more regard to differences. As to when tbere is a sufficient amount of resemblance to denote a sameness, this is to be determined solely by the laws of experiential evidence. In some cases, as when we recognize our friends and familiar objects, there is moral certainty ; in other cases there is probability, less RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 193 or greater, according to the proof which is perceived or can be adduced (a). The intuitive judgments are always individual, and are pronounced on the objects being presented. When generalized, they take the form of such metaphysical maxims as these : " It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time." " Everything preserves its identity as long as it exists." " We are sure that we are the same beings as we were since con- sciousness began, and must continue the same as long as consciousness exists." The above are judgments pronounced on individual objects contemplated. Under the same head there fall to be placed predications which the mind makes at once and intuitively in regard to relations which have been previously perceived and sanctioned by the mind. Sup- pose that, on the ground of experience, we become con- vinced that no reptile is warm-blooded ; on the bare contemplation of the notions, we at once and intuitively declare that no warm-blooded animal can be a reptile. In all such cases it is presupposed that there is a pre- viously discovered relation. It is possible that the mind may have been deceived, and that the relation does not really exist ; and in this case the judgment pronounced according to the law of identity would also be wrong as a matter of fact. Thus if a proposition were given that "no mammal is warm-blooded," the mind would pro- nounce that no " warm-blooded animal can be a mam- mal." The error, however, would lie, not in the law of thought, but in the original proposition furnished. This is the proper place to explain the famous distinc- tion drawn by Kant between Analytic and Synthetic Judgments. Analytic Judgments are those in which the predicate is involved in the very notion which constitutes 194 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. the subject; as when we say that "an island is sur- rounded with water," " a king has authority to rule," "the moral law should be obeyed." All such judgments are said, in the nomenclature of the Kantian school, to be a priori. We have come to entertain certain apprehen- sions in regard to island, king, and moral law, and now we pronounce a set of judgments on the bare contempla- tion of these, and involved in them by the law of iden- tity. The judgments involved in the general law of identity, the analytic judgments of Kant, have been care- fully examined of late years in Germany. They take the following forms : I. The Law of Identity Proper, which requires us to recognize the same to be the same, presented it may be at different times, or in different circumstances, or in different forms. II. The Law of Contradiction, according to which it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time ; this whatever the thing be, an independently existing object, or an attribute. III. The Law of Excluded Middle, which requires that when two propositions are in the relation of contradictories, one or other must be true, and yet both cannot be true. These Laws have a great importance in Formal Logic. Being carried out and applied in special forms, they show what may be drawn from any proposition or set of propositions given, and they keep thought consistent with itself. (5) Synthetic (as distinguished from Analytic) Judgments are those in which the predicate afl&rms or denies some- thing more than is embraced in the concept ; as when we say " gold is yellow," " body gravitates," " sin will be punished." Most of these judgments are said to be a posteriori, that is, they are the result of gathered obser- vation. Others of them are called a priori, being prior to observation. But the account given by Kant cannot RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 196 be accepted by me, as it is not consistent with realism. He makes the judgments formed by the mind by its own independent power, according to its own laws and im- posed on things. I hold that we pronounce them as we look at things. This makes them relate to things. There are cases innumerable in which we form judg- ments on the bare inspection of things, without any gathered observation. We perceive the relation at once, and the judgment is necessary and universal. Thus we perceive that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and that what begins to be must have a cause. Such relations can be observed, gen- eralized, and expressed. They may be called a priori judgments, but I think more appropriately primitive judgments. I am in this Book to unfold these Judg- ments. (a) These views determine the light in which we should look on as * ' pretty ' ' a controversy as ever raged in metaphysics or out of it, as to whether two things in every respect alike — say two drops of water — would or would not be identical. Leibnitz held that each thing differed from every other by an internal principle of distinc- tion, and that no individuals could be alike in every respect, and that if they were, they could have no principle of individuation (_0p. p. 277). Kant criticised this view, and urged that even though they were in every respect alike, they would differ as being in different parts of space (Werke, Bd. ii. p. 217). The common representation was that they would differ numerically. I am not sure that any of these accounts is correct. It is quite conceivable that there might be two things in every respect alike, except in their individual being. It is not their existence in different parts of space which constitutes their difference, but as different in their being, they exist in different parts of space. They have a distinct being, not because they are numerically different, but they are numerically distinct because they have a distinct being. (b) I have shown in my work on Logic, at the close, how these Analytic Judgments regulate discursive thought. Identity Proper rules affirmative inferences immediate and mediate. Contradiction 196 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. controls negative inferences. Excluded Middle guides in our infer- ences from contradictories. II. Relations of WJiole and Paris. — It is a fundamental principle of this treatise that the mind begins with the concrete, — a truth which should always go along with the other, which has, however, been more frequently- noticed, that it begins with the individual. Being fur- nished with the concrete in its primary knowledge and beliefs, — and we may add, imaginations, — the mind can consider a part of the concrete whole separate from the other parts. In doing so, it is much aided by the circumstance that the concrete whole seldom comes round in all its entireness. The child sees a man with a hat to-day and without his hat to-morrow, and is thus the better enabled to form a notion of the hat apart from the man that wore it. In all abstraction there is judgment or comparison ; that is, we discover a relation between two objects con- templated. We contemplate a concrete whole, and we contemplate a part, and observe a relation of the part as a part to the whole. It should be admitted that, without any exercise of comparison, we are capable of imaging a part of a whole, in cases where the part can be separated ; thus, having seen a man on horseback, I can easily picture to myself the man separately, or the horse separately, without thinking of any relation be- tween them ; but in such processes there is no exercise of abstraction. Abstraction is eminently an intellectual operation. In it we contemplate a part as part of a whole, say a quality as a quality of a substance ; for ex- ample, transparency as a quality of ice, or of some other substance. In all such exercises there is involved a Correlative Powei:. This power may be called Com- RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 197 prehension, inasmuch as it contemplates the whole in its relation to the parts; or Abstraction, inasmuch as it contemplates the part as part of a whole; and the Fac- ulty of Analysis and Synthesis, inasmuch as it resolves the whole into its parts, and shows that the parts make up the whole. There is, if I do not mistake, intuition involved in every exercise of this power. The opera- tions of the intuition are always singular, but they may be generalized, and being so, they will give us the fol- lowing as involved in Abstraction : — 1. The Abstract implies the Concrete. This arises from the very nature of abstraction. When an object is befoi'e it in the concrete, the mind can separate a qual- ity from the object, and one quality from another. It can distinguish, for example, between a man taken as a whole, and any one quality of his, such as bodily strength ; and distinguish between any one quality and another, as between his bodily strength and intellectual power, between his intellectual faculties and his feelings, and between any one feeling, such as joy, and any other feeling, such as sorrow. But we are not to suppose that, while we can thus distinguish between a whole and its parts, between an object and its qualities, between one quality and another, therefore the part can exist inde- pendent of the whole, or the quality of its object. Every abstracted quality implies some concrete object from which it has been separated in thought. 2. When the Concrete is Meal, the Abstract is also Real. In this respect there is a truth in the now ex- ploded doctrine of realism. Abstraction, if it proceeds on a reality and is properly conducted, ever conducts to realities. It is thus a most important intellectual exer- cise for the discovery of truth, enabling us to discover the permanent amidst the fleeting, the real amidst the 198 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. phenomenal. As I look on a piece of magnetized iron, I know it to be a real existence, and I think of it as having a certain form, and of its attracting certain ob- jects, and I must believe that this figure is a reality quite as much as the iron which has the form, and that the attractive power is not a mere fiction, any more than the iron of which it is a property. But it is to be carefully observed that this abstract thing, while it has an exist- ence, has not necessarily an independent existence. We have already seen that when it is a quality it must always be the quality of a substance. Beauty is cer- tainly reality, but it has no existence apart from a beau- tiful person or scene, of whom or of which it has an attribute. A philosopher, says Kant, was asked. What is the weight of smoke ? and he answered, Subtract the weight of the ashes from the weight of the fuel burned, and we have the weight of smoke. At the basis of his judgment is the intuitive maxim that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. The individual intuitive judgments which the mind pronounces on looking at whole and parts may perhaps be all generalized into two principles : (1.) The parts make up the whole. (2.) The whole is equal to the sum of its parts. From the first of these we may derive the rules, that the abstract part is involved in the con- crete whole, ?ind that the abstract, as part of a real con- crete thing, is also a real. From the first we have the rule that each part is less than the whole ; and from the second the maxim that the whole is greater than the parts. It is of importance to have such maxims as these accurately enunciated in mathematical demonstration and logical and metaphysical science. Spontaneously, however, the mind does not form any such general axi- oms, which are merely the generalized expression of its individual judgments. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 199 Still, the maxim is underlying many of our thoughts in all departments of investigation. Thus in Natural History it urges us to seek for a classification in which all the members of any subdivision will make up the whole. It impels the chemist to look out for all the ele- ments which go to constitute the compound substance. In psychology and metaphysics it prompts us to analyze a concrete mental state into parts, and insists that in the synthesis the parts be equal to the whole. In logic it demands, as a rule of division, that the members make up the class, and is involved in all those processes in which we infer (in subalternation) that what is true of all must be true of some ; or (in disjunctive division) that what is true of one of two alternatives (A and B), and is not true of one (A), must be true of the other (B). In most of such cases the more prominent ele- ments are got from experience ; in some of them, other intuitions act the more important part ; but in all of them there are intuitions of whole and parts underly- ing the mental processes, — unconsciously and covertly, no doubt, but still capable of being brought out to view for scientific purposes. m. The Relations of Resemblance. — It has been generally acknowledged that man's primary knowledge is of indi- vidual objects : not that he as yet knows them to be in- dividual ; it is only after he has been able to form gen- eral notions that he draws the distinction, and finds that what he first knew was singular. What is meant is, that the boy does not begin with a notion of man or woman, or humanity in general, but with a knowledge of a par- ticular man, say his father, or a particular woman, say his mother ; and it is only as other men and other 200 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. women come under his notice, and he observes their points of agreement, that he is able to rise to the general notion of man, or woman, or humankind. In the mental processes involved in generalization, the most important part is the observational one. When we discover, for example, the resemblance of plants, and proceed to group them into species, genera, and orders, the operation is one of induction and comparison. There is no necessity of thought involved in the law that roses have five petals, or that fishes are cold-blooded, or indeed in any of the laws of natural history. Still there are laws of thought which have a place in the generalizing process. 1. The universal implies singulars. — The mind pro- nounces this judgment when it looks at the nature of the individuals and the generals. The universal is not some- thing independent of the singulars, prior to the singulars, or above the singulars. A general notion is the notion of an indefinite number of objects possessing a common attribute or attributes, and includes all the objects pos- sessing the common quality or qualities. It is clear, thei-efore, that the general proceeds on and presupposes individuals. If there were no individuals, there would be no general ; and if the individuals were to cease, the general would likewise cease. If there were no individual roses, there would be no such thing as a class of plants called roses. 2. When the singulars are real., the universal is also real; always, of course, on the supposition that the generalization has been properly made. There exists, we shall suppose, in natui-e, a number of objects possess- ing common attributes; we have observed their points of resemblance, and put them in a class : has, or has not, the class an existence ? In reply, I say that the genus \ RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 201 has an existence and a reality as well as the individual objects. An indefinite number of animals chew the cud, and are called ruminant ; the class ruminant has an existence quite as much as the individual animals. But let us observe what sort of reality the class has ; it is a reality merely in the individuals, and in the possession of common qualities by these individuals. 3. Whatever is predicated of a class may he predicated of all the members of the class; and vice versd, whatever is predicated of all the members of a class may be predicated of the class. This is a self-evident and necessary propo- sition. It is pronounced by the mind in an individual form whenever it contemplates the relation of a class and the members of the class ; thus, if the general maxim be discovered or allowed, that all reptiles are cold-blooded, and the further fact be given or ascertained that the crocodile is a reptile, the conclusion is pronounced that the crocodile is cold-blooded. The laws mentioned in this section play an important part in Logic, and have a place in the Notion, in the Judgment, and in Reasoning. IV. delations of Space. — I have endeavored to show that the mind in sense-perception has a knowledge of objects as occupying space, and that round these original cogni- tions there gather certain native beliefs. Upon the con- templation of the objects thus apprehended, the mind is led at once and necessarily to pronounce certain judg- ments. They may be arranged as follows : — 1. There are all the mathematical axioms which relate to limited extension, such as, "The shortest distance between any two points is a straight line ; " " Two straight lines cannot enclose a space ; " " Two straight 202 PRIMITIVE JUDGilENTS. lines which when produced the shortest possible distance are not nearer each other, will not, if produced ever so far, approach nearer each other ; " "All right angles are equal to one another." Under the same head are to be placed the postulates involved in the definitions and in the propositions founded on them, such as the following, put in the form of maxims: "A straight line may be drawn from any one point to any other point ; " "A straight line may be produced to any length in a straight line ; " " There may be such a figure as a circle, that is, a plane figure such that all straight lines drawn from a certain point within the figure are equal to one another ; " and that " A circle may be described from any centre at any distance from that centre." I shall have occasion, in speaking of the application of the principles laid down in this treatise to mathematics, to return to axioms, and shall then show that the intuitive judgments pronounced by the mind in regard to the relations of space are all individual, and that the form assumed by them in the axioms of geometry is the result of the generalization, not indeed of an outward experience, but of the individual decisions of the mind, 2. There are certain axioms in regard to motion, such as that '* All motion is in space ; " " All motion is from one part of space to another ; " " All motion is by an object in space ; " "A body in passing from one part of space to another must pass through the whole interme- diate space." 3. There are the primitive truths which arise from the relation of objects to space, such as " Body occupies space ; " " Body is contained in space ; " " Body occupies a certain portion of space ; " and thus " Body has a de- fined figure." But what, it may be asked, do our intui- tive convictions say as to the relation of mind and space ? I RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 203 I am inclined to think that our intuition declares of spirit, that it must be in space. It is clear, too, that so far as mind acts on body, it must act on body as in space, say in making that body move in space. But beyond this, I am persuaded that we have no means of knowing the relation which mind and space bear to each other. As to whether spirit does or does not occupy space, this is a subject on which intuition seems to say nothing, and I suspect that experience says as little. 4. There are certain metaphysical judgments as to space, such as " Space is continuous ; " " Space cannot be divided in the sense of its parts being separated ; " and all those derived from the infinity of space, such as that " Space has no limits ; " " Any line may be infinitely prolonged in space." The Relations of Time. — The apprehension of time is given in every exercise of memory ; we remember the event as having happened in time past. Round this primary conviction there collect a number of beliefs. When time thus apprehended is contemplated by us, we are led, from the very nature of the object, to make cer- tain affirmations and denials. It declares that " Time is continuous ; " that " Time cannot be divided into sepa- rable parts ; " and that " Time has no limits." The mind also declares that " Every event happens in time." VI. The Relations of Quantity. — These are equivalent to the relations of proportion referred to by Locke, and the relations of proportion and degree mentioned by Brown ; they are the relations of less and more. The mind, in discovering them, proceeds upon the knowledge pre- 204 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. viously acquired of objects as being singulars, that is, units ; it is upon a succession of units coming before it that the judgment is pronounced. It also very frequently proceeds on other relations which have been previously discovered ; on perceiving, for instance, that objects re- semble each other in respect of space, time, and property, we may notice that they have less or more of the com- mon thing in respect of which they agree. It is to this intuition I refer the power which the mind has of discovering the relation of simple numbers. I be- lieve that one, or unity, is involved in our primary cog- nition of objects. Not that I think it necessary to call in a special intuition in order to our being able to count or number ; but I believe that, besides the exercise of memory, and the discovery of the relations of the succes- sion in time, there must be the general power of dis- covering the relations of quantity : we must be able, not only to go over the units, but further, to discover the re- lations of the units and of their combinations. To this faculty I refer all those operations in which we discover equality, or difference, or proportions of any kind, in numbers. The mental capacity is greatly aided, and its intuitive perceptions are put in a position to act more readily and extensively, through the divisions and notations by tens in our modern arithmetic ; every ten, every hundred, every thousand, and so on, comes to be regarded as a unit, and the judgments in regard to units are made to reach numbers indefinitely large. These numerical judgments admit of an application to exten- sion in space. Fixing on a certain length, superficies or solid, as a unit, we form judgments which embrace lines or surfaces or solids never actually measured. I am per- suaded that, even in its common or practical operations, — as, for example, in the measurement of distance by RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. 205 the eye, — the mind fixes on some known and familiar length as its standard, and estimates larger space by this. Ever since Descartes conceived the method of expressing curve lines and surfaces by means of equations, mathe- matics may be said to be concerned with quantity as their summum genus. The judgments as intuitive are all individual, but they can be generalized, when they will assume such forms as the " Common Notions," so far as they relate to quantity, prefixed by Euclid to his Elements. " Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another ; " "If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal ; " " If equals be taken from equals, the remaindei's ai'e equal ; " " If equals be added to unequals, the wholes are unequal ; " " If equals be taken from unequals, the remainders are unequal ; " " Things which are double the same thing are equal to one another ; " " Things which are half the same thing are equal to one another." VII. Relations of Active Property. — I have been striving to prove that we cannot know either self or body acting on self, except as possessing property. On looking at the properties of objects, the mind at once pronounces certain decisions. These, like all our other intuitive judgments, have a reference, in the first instance, to the individual case presented, but may be made universal by a process of generalization. Thus, the mind declares, " This property implies a substance ; " " This substance will exercise a property." The abstract truths will seldom be formally enunciated, but, as regulative prin- ciples, they underlie our common thoughts, and we pro- ceed on them, even when entirely unaware of their nature or of their existence. Every action or manifes- 206 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. tation we intuitively regard as the action or exhibition of a something having a substantial being. On falling in with a new substance, say an aerolite just dropped from the heavens, we know not indeed what its proper- ties are, but we are sure that it has properties, and we make an attempt to discover them. i CHAPTER III. RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. Causation has been involved in a denser dust of dis- cussion, especially" since the days of Hume, than any other subject, except Free Will, which is intimately con- nected with cause and effect. There is no agreement among psychologists as to the internal conviction, nor among physicists as to the external relation. I must content myself with enunciating a few principles which are defensible and consistent with the latest discoveries of science. We have a primitive Cognition of Power. I have labored in vain if I have not shown that in all our cog- nition by the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and seeing, and especially by the muscular touch, we know objects as affecting us. We have a special knowledge of power in volition : we will to move our arm or to stay a thought, and the effect follows. I am to show that upon this primitive knowledge of potency our judgment as to cause and effect proceeds. IL Objects, Material and Mental, Act on Each Other. — There is a sense in which body is passive. An atom, if isolated from all other bodies, will continue in the state in which it is. But if brought into relationship with another body, the one body acts on the other, or rather the bodies mutually affect each other, mechanically or 208 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. chemically. Thus viewed, matter is active. The two bodies acting on each other constitute the cause ; the change produced constitutes the effect. " The statement of the cause is incomplete," says J. S. Mill, "unless in some shape or other we introduce all the conditions. A man takes mercury, goes out of doors, and catches cold. We say perhaps that the cause of his taking cold was the exposure to the air. It is clear, however, that his having taken mercury may have been a necessary condi- tion of his catching cold; and though it might consist with usage to say that the cause of his attack was expo- sure to air, to be accurate we ought to say that the cause was exposure to the air while under the effect of mer- cury." More accurately, the true cause of the effect, the cold, was not the air alone, or the body alone, but the air and the body under mercury. There is a like joint action, a concause, in psychical or mental action. I will to move my arm and the arm moves ; in the cause there is the will, but there are con- current physiological processes without which no effect would follow. I will to detain a pleasant thought : there is a volition, but there is also the thought which is de- tained. III. There is Power in the Cause or Concause to produce the effect. We have seen that we know substances, mind and body, as having power. In causation the power is acting. The substances act according to their properties, that is, powers. A change is produced upon the substances, and this is the effect. The body A strikes the body B : this is the cause. The effect is that both A and B are affected : B is moved, and A is stayed in its motion. There has been power both in A and B, and RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 209 the power in the two is the same before and after the collision. We see the error of Hume, who makes causa- tion mere invariable antecedence and consequence ; and of J. S. Mill, who makes it unconditional sequence., It is not the invariable or unconditional succession which con- stitutes causation, but it is the power in the cause which produces the invariable succession. IV. Every effect, that is, every thing Beginning To Be, has a cause. This conviction is not the result of a wide generalization of instances. The causal belief is as strong in infancy as in mature life. It is as strong among sav- ages as in civilized countries. It is entertained by men brought up in very different countries and situations, attached to different sects and creeds. But the circum- stance which proves it to be intuitive is, that the convic- tion is necessary. No possible length or uniformity could or should give this necessity of conviction to the judg- ment. We might have seen A and B, this stone and that stone, this star and that star, this man and that man, together, a thousand, or a million, or a billion of times, and without our ever having seen them separate ; but this would not and ought not to necessitate us to believe that they have been forever together, and shall be forever together, and must be forever together. No doubt it would lead us, when we fell in with the one, to look for the other, and we would wonder if the one pre- sented itself without the other ; still it is possible for us to conceive, and, on evidence being produced, to believe, that there may be the one without the other. It was long supposed that all metals are comparatively heavy, but while every one was astonished at the fact, no one prepared to deny it, when it was shown by Davy that 210 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. potassium floated on water. A very wide and uniform experience would justify a general expectation, but not a necessary conviction; and this experience is liable to be disturbed at any time by a new occurrence inconsis- tent with what has been previously known to us. But the belief in the connection between cause and effect is of a totally different character. We can believe that two things which have been united since creation began, may never be united again while creation lasts ; but we never can be made to believe, or rather think, judge, or decide (for these are the right expressions), that a change can take place without a cause. We can believe that night and day might henceforth be disconnected, and that from and after this day or some other day there would only be perpetual day or perpetual night on the earth ; but we could never be made to decide that, the causes which produced day and night being the same, there ever could be any other effect than day or night. We could believe, on sufficient evidence, that the sun might not rise on our earth to-morrow, but we never could be made to judge that, the sun and earth and all other things necessary to the sun rising on our earth abiding as they are, the luminary of day should not run his round as usual. We see at once that there is a difference between the judgment of the mind in the two cases : in the case in which we have before us a mere conjunction sanctioned by a wide and invariable induc- tion, and that in which we have an effect and connect it with its cause. The one belief can be overcome, and should be overcome, at any time by a new and inconsis- tent fact coming under our observation ; whereas, in re- gard to the other, we are confident that it never can be modified or set aside, and we feel that it ought not to be overborne. RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 211 V. There must be an Adequacy or Sufficiency of power to produce the effect. We look not only for a cause, but for a competent cause. Experience, it is true, and ex- perience alone, can tell us what is a sufficient cause, as it alone can inform us what is the cause. Still there seems to be an inherent conviction of the mind which leads us, in looking for a cause, to make the cause equal to the work which it accomplishes. Powers differ in kind, and they differ in degree. There is need, for instance, of more than human power to create a substance out of nothing. There is need of more than the power residing in material substance to produce thought and emotion and will. The ant which carries a seed of grain is not competent, like man, to carry a sack of corn ; and the strength of man is inadequate to raise a weight which can be lifted with ease by a steam-engine. The lily can reproduce a lily after its kind, but cannot produce a pine or an oak. These facts, I am aware, can be known only by observation. But underneath all our experiential knowledge there is a necessary principle which con- strains us, when we discover an effect, to look not only for a cause, but a cause with the kind of power which is fitted to produce the kind of effect, and to proportion the extent of the power to the extent of the effect. This original principle is the source of a number of most im- portant derivative ones ; as, when we have found a sub- stance exercising a certain sort of power, we anticipate that it will always exercise the same sort of power; and when we have found it exercising a certain amount of force, we expect that it will always be fit for the same, — of course, always on the necessary conditions being furnished. Thus, having found that our niinJs can fol- 212 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. low a train of reasoning, we are sure that thej'' will always be able to do so, — of course, on the supposition that the bodily organism needful to mental operation in man is not in a state of derangement. The amount of force which drives a ball a certain distance to-day, we are sure, will impel it to the same distance to-morrow. If a definite weight of oxygen has been ascertained chemically to unite with a certain definite weight of hydrogen, we are sure it will ever do so ; and if we find the very same amount of oxygen not drawing to it the same amount of hydrogen, we argue that there must have been some change in the conditions of the oxygen. It is acknowledged that in such judgments there is and must be an observational element, which in spontaneous thought is ever the more prominent, — it is ever the one about which the mind is most anxious, as being the only doubtful one ; still there is also a necessary principle, which is overlooked only because it is indisputable and invariable. Rising from earthly to heavenly things, we look on God, who has produced works in which are traces of such large power and admirable wisdom, as a Being possessed of power and wisdom corresponding to the effects we discover, and as capable, whenever he may see fit, of producing works distinguished by the same lofty characteristics. VI. I may now refer to some Defective or Erroneous Views commonly taken of Causation. Some have laid down the principle that it is like that affects like. This seems to have been the principle of Empedocles, the Sicilian phi- losopher, that like is only affected by like. The likeness of things enables us to put them into classes ; bat it eon- tains no principle of power. Very unlike things affect each other. RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 213 We are not constrained to seek for an endless series of causes. An effect comes from a substance or substances with power. But the law of causation does not require us to go further back and seek for an endless series of causes. When we trace the production of all things to God, the self-existent, with all power in himself, the mind is satisfied. It is thus we are to meet the scepti- cism of Hume and the difficulty of Kant as to our being obliged to seek for a cause of God. I have declared that while we have a native and necessary conviction, it does not announce what effect any given cause must produce, or what is the cause of any given effect. On an effect presenting itself we be- lieve that it must have a cause, but what the cause is, is to be determined by observation and a gathered expe- rience. It is of special importance to observe that — Our intuitive conviction is not of the Uniformity or Continuance of the Course of Nature. This is the vague shape in which the principle appears in the works of Reid and Stewart. The former says : " God hath im- planted in the human mind an original principle by which we believe and expect the continuance of the course of nature, and the continuance of those con- nections which we have observed in time past. Ante- cedent to all reasoning, we have by our constitution an anticipation that there is a fixed and steady course of nature." There is a uniformity in nature. It is formed by a number of causes being so arranged as to produce orderly results, such as the alternation of day and night and the succession of the seasons. This regularity does not proceed from mere causation. Day does not cause night, nor night day. Spring does not produce summer, nor does summer produce autumn. Every occurrence might be produced by causation without our having the 214 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. uniformity which we find in nature. To produce the order, it is needful that there be a collocation or adjust- ment of causes. The uniformity of nature is not a self- evident, a necessary, or universal principle of belief, which causation is. It is a circumstance worthy of being noted, that the powerful mind of Kant, in his chase after the Unconditioned, represented by him as ideal, finds a progressus or a regressus of some kind or other in time, in space, in matter, in cause, in the possible or actual, but admits fully and explicitly that in regard to substance the reason has no ground to proceed regressively with conditions. In regard to causality we have a series of causes which go back unendingly, the unconditioned being the absolute totality of the series. But in sub- stance there is no such regressus. " Was die Kategorien des realen Verhaltnisses unter den Erscheinungen anlangt, so schickt sich die Kategorie der Substanz mit ihren Accidenzen nicht zu einer trans- cendentalen Idee, d. i. die Vernunft hat keinen Grund, in Ansehung, ihrer regressiv auf Bedingungen zu gehen" (Kritik d. r. Vernunft, p. 328). We have only to connect this doctrine of substance, not necessarily calling, according to the principles of reason, for a regressus, with his admission that substance involves power, to be able to maintain, and this without falling into any contradiction, that the effects seen in nature of a power above nature argue a substance having power, for which we are not required to seek for a cause. Mr. J. S. Mill is successful in showing {Logic, Book iii. Chap, xxi.) that man's belief in the uniformity of nature is the result of experi- ence, that it is entertained only by the educated and civilized few, and that even among such it has been of slow growth. But Mr. Mill has fallen into a glaring "fallacy of confusion '' in confounding our belief in causation with our belief in the uniformity of nature. The distinction was before him, at least for an instant, when, speaking of the irregularities of nature, he says : " Such phenomena were com- monly, in that early stage of human knowledge, ascribed to the direct intervention of the will of some supernatural being, and therefore still to a cause. This shows the strong tendency of the human mind to ascribe every phenomenon to some cause or other." It is of this tendency that I affirm that it is native and irresistible. He tells us that one " accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagination has RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 215 once learned to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law; nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case." This state- ment about fixed laws is ambiguous. If by fixed law be meant simply order and uniformity among physical events, the statement is true. But if meant to signify an event without a cause, material or mental, the statement is contradicted by our " mental nature," which impels us to seek for a cause of every event. He is right in affirm- ing that " experience " cannot authorize such a belief, but it is just as certain that our " mental nature " constrains us to entertain it ; and surely, if there be laws in physical nature, there may also be trust- worthy laws in our mental nature. There is the same confusion of two different things in the following passage: " The uniformity in the succession of events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be received, not as the law of the universe, but of that portion of it only which is within the range of our means of sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases." I freely admit all this in regard to the order observable everywhere in our Cosmos ; there may or may not be similar uniformity in the regions of space beyond. But our mental nature will not allow us to think, judge, or believe (these, and not " conceive," which is ambiguous, a^e the proper phrases), that in this our world, or in any other world, there can be an event without a cause. It is not to my present purpose to enter on the subject of Miracles, but it does fall in with the topics discussed in the text to remark, that there is nothing in a miracle opposed to any intuition of the mind, — certainly nothing opposed to our intuition as to cause. Hume, the sceptic, takes all sorts of objections to miracles, and the evidence by which they are supported, but he does not maintain that a miracle is impossible. It is "experience," according to him, "which assures us of the laws of nature " (Exsai/ on Miracles) ; and I hold that the same experience shows us effects in nature which constrain us, ac- cording to the intuitive law of causation, to argue a Power above nature, which power is an adequate cause of any miracle which may be attested by proper evidence. Brown has shown us very satisfac- torily that a miracle, with the Divine Power as its cause, is not in- consistent with our intuitive belief in causation (Cause and Effect, note E). Ever since Fichte published his Versuch einer Kritik alter 216 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. Offenbarung, there have been persons in Germany who represent it as impossible for God to perform a miracle. This may be a necessary consequence of those false assumptions regarding our knowing only self, which landed Fichte in an incongruous pantheism, in which he at one time represents the Ego as the All- including God, as the *' moral order; " and at another time represents God as the All, and absorbing the Ego. But it can plead in its behalf no principle either natural or necessary. A miracle is not in accordance with the uni- formity of nature, and the Bible miracles serve their purpose as evidences, because of this ; but they are in thorough accordance, as Mr. Mill admits, with the law of causation, for they claim God as their cause. The result at which we have arrived is, that the question of the occurrence of miracles is to be determined by the ordinary laws of evidence. BOOK IV. OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. CHAPTER I. THEIR GENERAL NATURE. Still deeper interests are involved in our being able to prove that there is an immutable and eternal morality than even in showing that there is immutable and eternal truth. After having labored at such length to demon- strate that there are fundamental principles involved in the intellectual exercises of the mind, it will not be need- ful to take such pains to prove that there are like con- victions of a moral character. While our moral powers are not the same with the intellectual, they are in many respects analogous. We have a power of discerning truth and error ; we have also a power of knowing moral good and evil. The latter is the Conscience, as the former is the Intelligence. I am not here to unfold its properties and its modes of action, as I have done in my " Psychology, the Motive Powers." Nor am I to construct a science of our moral nature, as is done in Ethics. I am simply to set forth the funda- mental principles involved in Morality. II. The primitive moral principles take the same Three Forms as the intellectual ones. We have a moral cogni- 218 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. tion when the acts are immediately before us, and we discern at once that certain of them are good, such as benevolence, and certain of them are evil, such as malice. We have moral beliefs going beyond our immediate per- ceptions, as when we declare the character of Cato to be commendable, and that of Sextus to be vile. We can thus rise to the contemplation of a goodness which is eternal. We pronounce moral judgments, as when we declare that virtue deserves happiness. HI. Our moral intuitions are to be tried by the same three tests as the intellectual, namely, self-evidence, necessity, and catholicity. We perceive at once that this daugh- ter is good when toiling for an invalid mother. When we candidly contemplate the deed, we cannot be made to decide otherwise. We notice, thirdly, that the act meets with an approving response in every bosom. It is of special importance to observe what is the ne- cessity attached to these moral convictions. As every intuition has its own nature, so it has also its own kind of corresponding necessity. A necessity attached to a cognition, that there is a colored surface before my eyes, is somewhat different from the necessity to believe that space is unbounded ; but there is a necessity in both when the mind contemplates the objects. So our con- viction that ingratitude is a sin is different from either of these, while there is a necessity of judgment in each when the cases are fairly represented to it. The neces- sity covers what is involved in the intuition, neither less nor more. CHAPTER II. VIRTUE WITH ITS ATTACHED OBLIGATIONS. I. What is approved of by our Moral Nature, or Con- science, is called Moral Good, or Virtue. I believe we can theoretically determine what virtue is. It is Love ACCORDING TO LAW. In maintaining this position we must include in the love Self-Love. We are bound to love ourselves. Self- love is not merely an impulse, an instinct, it is a duty. But let us understand what we mean when we say so. We do not mean by this a love of pleasure, a love of power, a love of fame, a love of money; all these are selfish affections. The affection that is a duty is a love of ourselves as ourselves, of ourselves as God made us, with intelligence, with feeling, with conscience, moral and responsible. It is to be a love regulated by Law. We are not at liberty to cast away ourselves, our health, our lives, our talents, our affections, our character, our purity, our in- fluence for good. We are bound to respect, to honor ourselves, to improve ourselves, to cultivate the gifts which God has bestowed upon us, and extend our in- fluence for good. Temperance, in the Greek and Roman senses of the term, should be to us one of the cardinal vir- tues : we have to restrain ourselves, our lusts and pas- sions. We are to aim at nothing less than holiness, a separation from all evil. A self-love of this kind, that is, love regulated by law, is a virtue,, and a virtue of the 220 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. highest order. But it is ever to be accompanied with a sister Virtue. 11. It is love to Others. The standard of this is already set : we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It may manifest itself in two forms : — The Love of Complacency. We delight in the object or person beloved. It is thus that the mother clasps her infant to her bosom ; thus that the sister interests herself in every movement of her little brother, and is proud of his feats ; thus that the father, saying little but feeling much, follows the career of his son in the trying rivalries of the world ; thus that throughout our lives, our hearts, if hearts we have, clung round the tried friends of our youth; thus that the wife would leave this world with the last look on her husband ; thus that the father would depart with his sons and daughters around his couch. Love looks out for the persons beloved. The mother discovers her son in that crowd. The blacksmith Hears his daughter's voice, Siuging in the village choir. The Love of Benevolence. In this we not only delight in the contemplation and society of the persons beloved ; we wish well to them, we wish them all that is good. " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." We will oblige them if we can ; we will serve them if in our power ; we will watch for opportunities of promoting their welfare ; we will make sacrifices for their good. This love is ready to flow forth towards relatives and friends, towards neighbors and companions, towards all with whom we come in contact ; it will go out towards the whole family of mankind. We VIRTUE WITH ITS ATTACHED OBLIGATIONS. 221 are ready to increase their happiness, and in the highest exercises of love to raise them in the scale of being, and to elevate them morally and spiritually. III. Moral Good lays an Obligation on us to attend to it. This sense, or rather conviction of obligation, is one of the peculiarities, is indeed the chief peculiarity, of our moral perceptions. Herein do our moral convictions, whether of the natui-e of cognitions, beliefs, or judg- ments, differ from the intellectual convictions which have passed under our notice in the previous parts of this treatise. That a straight line is the shortest be- tween two points, this I am constrained to decide when my attention is called to the subject, but I know of no duty thence arising, no affection which I should thereon cherish, no action which I ought to do. But when I am led to believe that there is a good God who made me and upholds me, the mind declares that it is and must be good to love and obey that Being, and that there is an obligation lying on me to do so. This is expressed by such phrases as Seov, duty, right, ought, obligation, the convictions embodied in which cannot be accounted for on any utilitarian hypothesis. It is shown that a par- ticular action readily within our power will tend to promote the happiness of an individual or of society ; the mind's apprehension of this is one thing, and the conviction that we ought to do it is an entirely different thing, and the two should never be confounded. But the conscience is not only a cognitive, it is a mo- tive, power. This conviction of obligation distinguishes it at once from the other motive, as it does from the other cognitive, powers. The inducements addressed to man's sense of duty are altogether different from those ad- 222 ^ OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. dressed to the other appetencies of the mind. The love of pleasure, of fame, and of activity, do all hold out allurements to man, but none of them carries with it a binding obligation. When we follow them we have no sense of merit ; when we decline them we have no sense of guilt. It is different when our moral convictions say that a particular line of conduct should be pursued. We feel now not only that we may do it, but that we should do it, and that if we neglect to do it we are guilty of sin. Hence arises the great ethical doctrine, expounded in so masterly a manner by Bishop Butler, that the conscience is supreme ; that is, supreme among the other moving powers. Just as appetite craves for food, and the love of society for social intercourse, so the conscience directs to certain conduct, but with this difference, that it de- clares itself superior to the other springs of action. It carries with it its authority, and asserts its claims, and is prepared to denounce us if we disregard them. IV. The Conscience points to an Authority above itself. It is supreme as within the mind, but it is not absolutely supreme. It claims to be superior to all other motives, such as the love of pleasure, and even to the desire of intellectual improvement ; indeed, it seems to point to an authority above the mind altogether. At the same time, it does not seem to announce what is the nature of the object which it would prompt us to seek after. In this respect it is like some of our intellectual intuitions, which impel us to look round for something which the}'- do not themselves reveal. Thus, intuitive causality con- strains us when we discover an effect to look for a cause, but does not specify what the cause is. In like manner our moral faculty seems to me to point to some power, VIRTUE WITH ITS ATTACHED OBLIGATIONS. 223 principle, or being, it says not what, above itself. It does not claim for itself that it is infallible, that it is sufficient, that it is independent. It bows to something which has authority; it acknowledges a standard which is and must be right ; it looks up for sanction and guid- ance. It says that it ought to yield to no earthly power; but it does not affirm of itself that it can never mistake, and that there is no authority to which it should submit. On the contrary, it often finds itself in difficulty and per- plexity, and feels that it should look round and up for a light, and it is sure that there is such a light. What is thus unknown to the intuition itself, but which, not- withstanding, it is ever seeking, is revealed by other processes. V. This obligation, when we are led to believe in a Su- preme Being, takes the form of Law ; and we believe that we are under Law to God. Our moral convictions do not, so it seems to me, of themselves compel us to believe in the existence of God. I am persuaded, how- ever, that like most of our deeper intuitions (as I hope subsequently to show) they do point upwards to God. And whenever we do, by combined intuition and the obvious facts of experience, reach God, the God who gave us all our endowments, and therefore our moral constitution, the mind traces up the obligation under which it lies to him. The expression of this inward conviction now is, not that we are under obligation to an unknown power, but under law, and under law to God. It is thus indeed we get the peculiar idea of moi-al gov- ernment and moral law, not from sense, nor from pleas- ure, nor from utility, but from conscience constraining us to feel obligation, and combined intuition and experi- 224 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. ence leading us to trace up that law to God as the Being who sanctions it. Till this object is reached our moral intuition is felt to be vague, indefinite ; it is craving for something which it feels to be wanting : but when God is found, as he cannot fail to be found when we are in search of him, then the intuition is satisfied, and ever after connects the law with the Lawgiver. VI. Moral good is perceived as having Desert, as Approv- able and Rewardable. This, too, is a peculiar idea, de- rived from the moral power in man, and cannot have been derived from, as it cannot be resolved into, any modification of pleasure, or pain, or sensation of any kind. We are convinced in regard to every good action that it is meritorious ; we bestow upon it our approba- tion, and we look for encouragement and reward. This conviction operates with other considerations in leading us to look to God as the Governor of this world, and as ready to uphold and defend the right. There are times when our expectations on this subject are disappointed, and when we see acts of moral heroism only landing him who performs them in opprobrium and suffering. Still, even in such cases, our instincts keep firm, in spite of all appearances to the contrary ; and we believe that, sooner or later, in this world or in the world to come, the deeds will meet with their appropriate reward. The systems whicli represent man's moral faculty as a mere feel- ing or sentiment, such as those of Adam Smith, of Thomas Brown, of Sir James Mackintosh, are chargeable with two defects : First, the theory does not come up to the full mental facts, which embrace perception or knowledge, and judgment as well as emotion; and as a consequence, secondly, they make it appear as if virtue might arise from the peculiar constitution or temperament of the race. VIRTUE WITH ITS ATTACHED OBLIGATIONS. 225 Mr. J. S. Mill gives up Paley as an expounder of utilitarianism {Dissertations, Vol. ii. p. 460), and allows, as to Bentham, " that there were large deficiencies and hiatuses in his scheme of human nature " (p. 462). To whom, then, are we to look, if we would ex- amine a system which assumes such different shapes; which now takes the form of a selfish system whose principle is that every man should seek his own happiness, now the form of a benevolent system which says that a man should promote the happiness of the greatest number ? In the first of these forms it is at once set aside by an appeal to our nature, and to feelings which Mr. Mill admits to be in our nature. In the second of these forms, that taken by Bentham and Mill, there is a principle of intuitive morals surreptitiously ad- mitted, that we should look to the happiness of others as well as our own. Mr. Mill says, " The matter in debate is what is right, — not whether what is right ought to be done " (p. 460). This is not a full or accurate account of the matter in debate. One question in debate is, Can the utilitarian theory account for our conviction as to right and wrong, merit and guilt? I hold that it cannot. The higher class of utilitarians seem to trace these convictions to the association of ' ideas proceeding on our feelings of pleasure and pain. Thus Mr. Mill says (Vol. i. p. 137), " The idea of the pain of another is natu- rally painful ; the idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable. From this fact in our natural constitution, all our affections, both of love and aversion, towards human beings, in so far as they are different from those we entertain towards mere inani- mate objects which are pleasant or disagreeable to us, are held by the best teachers of the theory of utility to originate. In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral feelings." Let it be observed that this makes the very unselfish part of our nature stand on a selfish basis. "The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable," that is, to ourselves. I hold that we are led to love our fellow-creatures independently of its being pleasant to ourselves ; and that it is when we love them that the affection is found to be pleasant, by the appointment of the Author of our con- stitution, who thus prompts us to benevolence, and rewards us for cherishing it. The theory does not account for our benevolent feel- ings, and it fails still more when it would account for our moral convictions. I admit that it might give some explanation of certain accompaniments, but it can give no account of the conviction of "ought," "obligation," "duty," "merit," "desert," "guilt." 226 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. A second question in debate is, Can the utilitarian show that any- thing is ** right ' ' V that there is truly anything such that it ' ' ought to be done " ? Suppose some sensationalist or sceptic were to main- tain, as against the utilitarian, that he was not bound to promote this happiness of the greatest number, how would the advocate of the greatest happiness principle reply to him? Consistently, he could appeal only to these personal feelings of pleasure and pain ; and if he appealed to anything deeper, it must be to the very moral prin- ciple whose existence he denies. There is a third question in debate, which will be more easily determined after we have settled the other two. For when it is shown that man has convictions as to moral good and evil, and that these require him to do certain acts and ab- stain from others, we may be the better prepared to admit, as to certain of these acts, that they do not contemplate the promotion of happiness. Thus, to love God is good, and to refuse to any one his due affection and gratitude for favors seems to be evil, independently of the happiness of the creature or Creator being thereby augmented or diminished. A. fourth question is, Does utility afford a good test and measure of virtue and vice ? It is foreign to the scope of this treatise to enter on this question, but I may remark that, the ulti- mate appeal to "ought" and "duty" being taken away, and the appeal in the last resource being to pleasure and pain, utilitarianism will not train men to deeds of self-sacrifice, and those who have embraced it will ever be tempted to give way on great emergencies, and to yield and equivocate when they should at all hazards resist the evil. And it has been shown again and again, that it is beyond the capacity of man to foresee the results of acts, or even to dis- cern the tendency of certain acts done in complicated circum- stances. But, omitting this, it is to my present purpose to call on my readers to notice that the theory of an independent moraUty, and of moral conviction, admits and embraces all that is true in utilitarianism. It affirms that we ought to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number ; and in regard to all questions bearing on happiness, the conscience requires us to weigh conse- quences, and to look to long issues and results. CHAPTER III. EKKOR AND SIN". Our academic moralists are commonly averse to look at or consider these two topics. But if there be truth in our world, there is also error; if there be good, there is also evil. Those who profess to expound our nature must look at the one alternative as well as the other. Nor let it be said, with Augustine, that sin is a mere negation. Malice and deceit and adultery are as much realities as goodwill, integrity, and purity. I have been arguing that our intellectual and moral intuitions are all necessary and universal. This doctrine, however, must not be so stated as to imply that it is im- possible for man to fall into error, or for the conscience to come to a false decision, or for human beings to com- mit sin. That men do, in fact, fall into error, is evident from this single circumstance, that scarcely two persons can be brought to accord in opinion, even on points of im- portance. In regard, indeed, to necessary truths, there are certain restrictions laid on the mind. No man who considers the subject can be made to believe that two straight lines will enclose a space. Still, even in regard to such truths, the mind has a capacity of ignorance and of error ; it may refuse to consider them, or, mistaking their nature, it may make statements inconsistent with them without knowing it. Those who have gone through the demonstrations of Euclid are constrained to believe 228 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. the truth of everj^ proposition, but the truths have never so much as been presented to the minds of the great majority of mankind, and many persons might easily be persuaded that the angles of certain triangles are equal to less or to more than two right angles. But whatever the restrictions laid on our liability to error in necessary truth, there seem to be no limits to man's exposure to mistakes in other matters. There is boundless room for them in all conclusions which are dependent on expe- riential evidence, especially when the proof is of a cumu- lative character. In all such matters the mind may refuse to look at the probation, or it may take only what is favorable to one side, and may arrive at most erro- neous and preposterous results. This liability to error is apt to appear in all affairs in which we are under the influence of pride or party spirit, or a biassed and preju- diced disposition ; in short, wherever there is moral evil swaying the will, and leading it to look on evidence in a partial spirit. If I were immediately cognizunt of the heart of a good man, and could see the springs that move him to benevolence and self-sacrifice, I sliould be con- strained to approve of him ; but I may be prepossessed against him, and I twist and torture facts till I bring myself to believe that he is doing all this from a deep designing selfishness. I believe that while ignorance may arise from the finite nature of our faculties, and from a limited means of knowledge, positive error does in every case proceed directly or indirectly from a cor- rupted will, leading us to pronounce a hasty judgment without evidence, or to seek partial evidence on the side to which our inclinations lean. A thoroughly pure and candid will would, in my opinion, preserve man, even with his present limited faculties, not indeed from igno- rance on many points, but from all possibility of posi- tive mistakes. ERROR AND SIN. 229 But the question may be asked, how is the existence of sin, and of wrong decisions of the conscience, consis- tent with the necessity which attaches to our moral con- victions ? The difficulty can easily be removed so far as the existence of sin is concerned ; for sin must ever pro- ceed from the region of the will, which is free to do good, but also free to do evil. It may be necessary for the conscience to decide in a certain manner, but it is not necessary that the will should do what the conscience commands. And it is to the influence exercised by a disobedient will upon the conscience that I attribute all the errors in its decisions. In whatever way we may reconcile them, these two facts can each be established on abundant evidence : the one, that in the primitive exercises of conscience there is a conviction of necessity ; the other, that the conscience is liable to manifold per- versions. Care must be taken not to state the two so as to make the one appear to be inconsistent with the other ; both can be so enunciated as to make all seeming contradiction vanish. If we look directly and fairly at moral excellence, the mind must declare it to be good. But then, first, the mind may refuse to look at it at all; and, secondly, it may not regard it in the right light. If we look upon the living and the true God in the proper aspect, we must acknowledge that we owe him love and obedience ; but then we may refuse to look upon him, we may contrive to live without God, and God may not be in all our thoughts ; or we may fashion to ourselves a Deity with a degraded nature, making him one alto- gether like unto ourselves, and then the proper awe and affection will no longer rise in our bosoms. It is to be taken into account that, while our decisions upon the acts presented may be intuitively certain, yet that the acts are not intuitively presented, and may be 230 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. very inaccurately presented. The conscience, it is to be remembered, is a reflex faculty, judging of objects pre- sented to it by the other powers, and the representation given it may be incorrect. The liability to deception and perversion is increased by the circumstance that the states of mind with which our voluntary acts are mixed up are of a very complicated character. There is room in this way for giving a wrong account of our actual state of mind at any given moment. I contribute a sum of money to relieve a person in distress ; I may do so from very mixed or doubtful motives ; but I am nat- urally led by self-love to look on the motive as good, and then I cherish a feeling of self-approbation, in which I should by no means have been justified had I taken a searching view of the whole mental state. Again, I find a neighbor doing the very same act, and I am led by jealousy to attribute selfish motives to him, and I con- demn him in a judgment which may be equallj'^ unwar- ranted. By such seductions as these the mind may become utterly perverted in the representations which it gives or receives, and in the consequent moral judg- ments which it pronounces. In the case of these perver- sions of the conscience, as in the cp,se of the errors of the understanding (as we have previously seen), the evil is to be traced to the will refusing to give obedience to its proper law, and conjuring up a series of deceptions to excuse and defend itself. The intuition is after all there, but it is difficult in a mind perverted by a corrupt and prejudiced will to put it in a position to act aright. In order to do this it may be needful to have a divine law revealed, and this applied by a teaching and quickening Spirit from above. ERROR AND SIN. 231 n. We are already in the heart of the subject of Sin, a topic which academic moralists studiously avoid, but which must be carefully looked at by those who would give a correct account of our moral constitution. In referring to it here, I do not profess to be able to give an explanation of the origin of sin under the govern- ment of God, whose power is almighty, and who shows that he hates sin. This seems to be a mystery which human reason cannot clear up. The topic certainly does not fall within the scope of our present investigation. I have here simply to consider sin in its reference to our moral convictions. Sin is a quality of Voluntary acts. It always resides in some mental affection or act in which there is the exercise of freewill. The guilt of the sin thus always lies with him who commits it. He cannot throw the blame on any other, for he has himself given his consent to it. Others may have seduced him into it, and in that case the criminality of having tempted him lies with them ; and then the sin of having yielded to the tempta- tion, and having done the wicked deed, lies with himself: he can devolve it on no other. Our moral convictions declare that sin is of evil De- sert, Condemnable, Punishable. This conviction is of precisely an opposite character to that which we entertain in regard to good affection and action. We declare the sin to have in itself evil desert ; we condemn it in conse- quence, and we say of it, that it should be discouraged, nay, punished. The very ideas, so full of meaning, in- volved in these mental convictions, are native, original, and necessary. We cannot get them from mere sensa- tions of pleasure or pain, nor from any intellectual opera- 232 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. tion whatever ; and yet we are constrained to take this view of sin wherever it is pressed fairly upon our notice. It is this conviction that stirs up and keeps alive a sense of guilt and apprehension of punishment in the breast of every sinner. It is found even among children, and among the rudest and most ignorant savages, who are urged thereby to try some means of avoiding or averting the wrath of God, and are prepared in consequence to listen to the parent, or teacher, or missionary, when he speaks of the desert of sin, and points to a Saviour who suffered in our room and stead, and so made reconcilia- tion for transgressors. CHAPTER IV. THE WILL. PRIMITIVE TRUTH LNVOLVED IN WILL. Will has a much larger place in the mind than is commonly allotted. I believe it is exercised in nearly every minute of our waking life, say in guiding our steps as we walk, or in keeping us in the proper position while we sit, or in cherishing wishes or regulating our thoughts. Its essential element is Choice, or the opposite of choice, Rejection. It takes a variety of forms. One of its first is Attention. We detain a present state of mind. We keep before us, for a time, an object 'in which we are interested. This is an important povs^er, as, in retaining the thought, feeling, or object, we may call up all that is associated with it in a lengthened train, or collected in a centre round self. Chalmers speaks of attention as a link between the intellectual and the moral. Will may rise to a higher form ; it may become a Wish : we wish to gain an object or an end, or to be delivered from it. Our wishes or voluntary aversions constitute a large portion of our conscious experience from hour to hour, almost from minute to minute. They are our longings and aversions, our adherences and our antipathies. In the selfish man they become a brooding over successes or reverses ; in the kindly in- clined man they dwell on the happiness or successes of others. They constitute a large portion of the aspira- 234 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. tions of the religious man, as breathing for instance in the Psalms: " Oh that I knew where I could find Him!" Will takes its highest shape in Volition, or the deter- mination towards which it is always tending, and in which it terminates when circumstances admit. Volition starts all our undertakings, and is needful to their exe- cution. A strong will is the original of all great deeds, good or evil; it produces the hero and the powerful villain. The Will in these three forms has its place in all the virtues and in all the graces ; without this they would not be moral. In benevolence we wish well to our neighbors, singly or collectively. In religion faith be- comes trust, and repentance the turning from sin unto God. II. Moral Good and Evil lie in the region of the Will ; Will being viewed in the large sense explained. In every act which is, properly speaking, moi-al or immoral, there is an element of choice under some or other of the forms which it takes. It is in acts or affections which we are free to perform, but from which we are free to abstain, that the conscience discerns a moral quality, and on which it pronounces its sentence. There is choice, and there- fore will, in all cases in which we adopt or reject any proposal laid before us by ourselves or others, as there is also in our wishes and voluntary aversions. The fond- lings, resolutions and rejections may unite themselves with any of our feelings, and even with our intellectual exercises, and make them in a sense voluntary. III. The Will is Free. In saying so I mean to assert, not THE WILL. 235 that it is free to act as it pleases, which is not universally true, for the will may be hindered from action, as when I will to move my arm, and it is not obeyed because of paralysis or physical restraint : I claim for it an anterior and a higher power, a power in the mind to choose, and, when it chooses, a consciousness that it might choose otherwise. This truth is revealed to us by the inward sense, and is not to be set aside by any other truth what- soever. It is a first truth, equal to the highest, to no one of which it will ever yield. It cannot be set aside by any other truth, not even by any other first truth, and certainly by no derived truth. Whatever other proposition is true, this is true also, that man has free- will. If there be any other truth apparently inconsis- tent with it, care must be taken so to express it that it may not be really contradictory. It is a truth which may be expressed in words ; it is so expressed when it is said that the mind has in itself the power of choice. It is the oflBce of the psychologist and the moralist to endeavor to determine exactly what is involved in this. But this is to be done, after all, mainly by an appeal to consciousness. So much is clear, so very clear that any attempts to make it clearer by discussion will only stir up mud and trouble the waters. The difficulties which encompass the subject do not originate in Freewill itself, but in its connection with two other truths. First, there is the Divine Foreknowledge and Sovereignty, doctrines which recommend themselves to high reason, and which are decisively written in the Word of God. Secondly, there is the appearance of causation in the mind, even in its voluntary acts. When we know a man's character we can anticipate what he will do in certain circumstances ; of the man of integrity, that he will not tell a lie. Statis- 236 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. tics of criminal acts depending on freewill can be drawn out as certain as those of mortality depending on phys- ical causes. The statistician can tell us approximately how many thefts and murders will be committed in a year in a given district, just as he can predict how many deaths there will be, and so far as he fails, in either case, it is from a want of knowledge. I do not profess to be able to clear up the difficulty arising from causation on the one side facing freewill on the other. Perhaps the safest course is to affirm that we are obliged to believe in both, and that it cannot be proven that there is a contradiction between them when they are properly expounded. Here as in so many cases we have to believe in truths of which we do not see the full meaning, and to believe that two propositions may be true while we cannot discover the reconciliation, if indeed a reconciliation is needed. I may call attention to two circumstances which may somewhat lessen the perplexities. First, causation is not all of one kind. Cause may act in a different way upon our will from that in which it acts in other departments of our natui^e. The mind has undoubtedly a power of freewill. But consciousness, which is alwa3's of the present, cannot tell what circum- stances antecedent have swayed the will or how. The antecedents do not operate as causes operate in physical nature, or in our intellectual being. It can be shown that cause in mind is of a different nature from cause in matter. It is conceivable that in the peculiar nature of cause, as operating on or in the will, may be found the means of removing the mystery. We know where the secret lies, though we may not be able to find it. Secondly, causation, always with power, seems here, as in a number of other cases, to be of a duplex or complex THE WILL. 237 character. We have seen that in all physical and in all mental causes there are two or more agents. So in vol- untary action there are two antecedents : there is the Motive and there is the Will. Their concurrence is necessary to the product. It is necessary here to ascertain definitely what a Motive is. It is something addressed to the will prior to its action. It differs in the case of different individuals and of the same man at different times. I have known a tradesman who at one part of his life could not pass a tavern without being tempted to enter and seek excite- ment in intoxicating drink. To another tradesman the house presented no such allurement, and it ceased to present any temptation to the first man when he had succeeded in conquering his evil habit. A motive is in the mind prior to action, and alluring to a certain action. It may consist partly of some external circumstance ; it has always an accompanying mental appetence, say the love of pleasure, of renown, or of money. This appetence may be a natural inclination, or it may be the result of a course of action, say our habits, at every step in the formation of which there may have been acts of the will for all of which the individual was responsible at the time. What in the end presents itself to the Will be- fore action is the Motive. The Motive has no compelling power. The Will, or rather the mind in the exercise of Will, is free. It is free to choose, it is free to reject. No action takes place till the will chooses. When it accepts or rejects, it sanctions the motive. For this it is responsible. IV. The Will is Responsible for all its acts of clioice or re- jection, be they volitions or be they acts of attention or wishes. We have seen that our moral nature points to a power above itself, a power which has authority ; it 238 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. should bow to that authority ; it must give account of itself to that power. When God is revealed by his works without or within us, then we are constrained to believe that we are under law to God. So then every one must give account of himself to God. Thus far the philosophy of intuition carries us. I am not convinced that it goes farther. I am not sure that it proves to us that there is and must be a judgment day, but it pi'ompts us to look out for it, and furnishes a presumption in its favor. A different method of reconciling freedom with causation has been introduced by Kant, who has been followed by a long train of theo- logians and metaphysicians. According to this view, the mind knows only phenomena, and not things, and the law of cause and effect is a mental framework giving a form to our knowledge of phe- nomena. It applies, therefore, to appearances and not to things, which, for aught we know, or can know in this world, may or may not obey the law of causation. Kant acknowledges that we are led by the speculative principles of the mind to look on even the will as under the dominion of cause, but then it is quite conceivable that the thing itself may after all be free, and we are led to believe it to be free by the Practical Reason. Now, I have to remark, first of all, on this theory, that it must be taken in its entirety. We are not at liberty (as some would do) to adopt it merely so far as it may suit our purpose, and refuse the very foundation on which it is built. We must, in particular, admit as a fundamental principle that we can never know things; that causation has no respect whatever to things, but is a mere subjective principle of the mind; that we can- not prove the existence of God from causation. But 1 have failed in one of the main ends of this treatise if I have not succeeded in showing that the mind has knowledge of things in its primary exer- cises, that we know objects as having potency, and that the law of cause and effect refers to such objects. If we deny this, we are denying certain of the intuitions of the mind in some of their clear- est enunciations ; and if we deny them in one of their declarations, why not in others ? and if we deny one set, why not every other set? till at last we know not what to believe and what to disbelieve. Those who believe that the mind can come to the knowledge of things, and that they discover power in things, cannot resort to this theory. CHAPTER V. RELATION OF MOEAL GOOD AND HAPPINESS. These two have a number of points of connection and correspondence. Much of moral good consists in the voluntary promotion of happiness, and the diminution of pain in a world in which there is such a liability to suf- fering. A very large number of human virtues, and of vices, too, take their origin from man's capacity of pleas- ure and pain ; and in a state of things in which there was no possibility of increasing felicity, or removing misery, many of this world's virtues would altogether disappear. Still the two, while they have many inter- esting points of affinity, are not to be identified. In par- ticular, we are not to resolve virtue into a mere tendency to promote the pleasure of the individual or happiness of the race. There seem to me to be certain great truths which the mind perceives at once in regard to the con- nection of the two. I. The good is good altogether independent of the pleas- ure it may bring. There is a good which does not immediately contemplate the production of happiness. Such, for example, are love to God, the glorifying of God, and the hallowing of his name: these have no respect, in our entertaining and cherishing them, to an augmentation of the Divine felicity. No doubt such an act or spirit may, by reflection of light, tend to brighten our own felicity ; but this is an indirect effect, which fol- lows only where we cherish the temper and perform the 240 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. corresponding work in the idea that it is right. We do deeds of justice to the distant, to the departed, and the dead, who never may be conscious of what we have per- formed. Even in regard to services done with the view of promoting the happiness of the individual, or of the community, we are made to feel that, if happiness be good, the benevolence which leads us to seek the happi- ness of others is still better, is alone morally good. In all cases the conscience constrains us to decide that vir- tue is good, whether it does or does not contemplate the production of pleasure. Our moral constitution declares that we ought to pro- mote the happiness of all who are susceptible of happi- ness. The only plausible form of the utilitarian theory of morals is that elaborated by Bentham, who says that we ought to promote the greatest happiness of the great- est number. But why ought we to do so? Whence get we the should, the obligation, the duty ? Why should I seek the happiness of any other being than myself ? why the happiness of a great number, or of the greatest num- ber? why the happiness evan of any one individual be- yond the unit of self ? If the advocates of the " great- est happiness " principle will only answer this question thoroughly, they must call in a moral principle, or take refuge in a system against which our whole nature rebels, in a theory which says that we are not required to do more than look after our own gratifications. The very advocates of the greatest happiness theory are thus constrained, in consistency with their view, to call in an ethical principle, and this will be found, if they examine it, to require more from man than that he should further the felicity of others. But while it covers vastly more ground, it certainly includes this, that we are bound, as RELATION OF MORAL GOOD AND HAPPINESS. 241 much as in us lies, to promote the welfare of all who are capable of having their misery alleviated or their felicity enhanced. III. Our moral convictions afl&rm that moral good should meet with happiness. They seem to declare that this is in itself appropriate and good ; and when we are led to believe in the existence of a good God, we are sure that he will seek to secure this end. Experience, no doubt, shows many things in seeming opposition to this, shows many crushed with misfortune and wrung with agony, who are far more virtuous than those who are in the enjoyment of health and prosperity. But our inward convictions guide us to the right conclusions in spite of these apparently contradictory results of outward obser- vation. They lead us to believe that they who are thus aflBicted are after all suffering no injustice, inasmuch as they have sinned against Heaven, and to expect that the wicked will not be allowed to pass unpunished. And since we do not discover a full retribution in this world, they lead us to look forward to a day of judgment, in which all the inequalities and seeming incongruities of this present dispensation will be rectified in appearance as well as in reality, and the justice of God's moral gov- ernment fully vindicated. IV. Our moral convictions declare that sin merits pain as a punishment. There seems to be as close a connection between sin and pain as there is between virtue and happiness. There may indeed be happiness, and there may be suffering, where there is neither virtue nor the opposite, as, for example, among the brute creation ; but we decide that, wherever there is virtue, it merits hap- 242 OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS. piness, and wherever there is sin, that it deserves suf- fering, and we are led to anticipate that the proper con- sequences will follow under the government of a good and a holy God. This conviction keeps alive, in the breasts of the wicked, at least an occasional fear of pun- ishment, even in the midst of the greatest outward pros- perity, and points very emphatically, if not very dis- tinctly, to a day of judgment and of righteous retribution. But as this instinct does not supply the object, it is quite possible that a wroug one may be presented by the baser fears of the heart, or by a degraded superstition, and the final judgment may be thought of as a petty assize, and the judge be regarded as gratifying a personal revenge, and heaven be contemplated as an elysium of sensual joys, and hell as a place of vulgar torture. Still the conviction does demand its object, and when the moral sense is refined, it feels that the account given in Scrip- ture of a judgment day, and of a heaven of light and a hell of darkness, is in thorough correspondence with the intuition which God has planted in our mental consti- tution. But in contemplating and in harmonizing such truths as these. Ethical science finds itself in difficulties : it starts questions which it cannot answer ; it raises doubts which it cannot dispel. We see, on the one hand, that God will be led to punish sin, that he " will by no means clear the guilty." But we have evidence, on the other hand, that he delights supremely in the happiness of his creatures. How then can God be just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly? Natural Ethics here con- duct to a yawning chasm, but show no bridge across ; while we are led most anxiously to long for one, and almost to expect that one will appear. They lead us to a place where we have no light, but where we are led to RELATION OF MORAL GOOD AND HAPPINESS. 243 cry out for a light because of the very thickness of the darkness. How grateful should we be when a light is vouchsafed from heaven to show us that the gulf is spanned, and to disclose the way by which it may be crossed ! PAET THIRD. INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. BOOK I. METAPHYSICS. CHAPTER I. THE SCIENCE DEFINED. The phrase Metaphysics is believed to have taken its rise from the title given to one of the treatises of Aris- totle. There is no reason to think that the name was given to the work referred to by the author. It does not even appear that it was meant to denote the nature of the contents. Andronicus, it is said, inscribed on the manuscripts, To, fjiera ra ^vo-tKo., to intimate that these books were to follow the physical treatises.^ In the writ- ings of Aristotle this department is called, not Meta- physics, but the First Philosophy. Metaphysical speculation is usually supposed, and I believe correctly, to have originated with the Eleatics, who flourished 450 or 500 years before our era. Separat- ing from the physiologists, that is, physical speculators, * On the title, see Bonitz, " Commentarius," appended to his edi- tion of the Metaphysics. See, also, M'Mahon's translation of the Metaphysics, p. 1, where Clement Alexandrinus and Philoponus are quoted as uuderstanding the phrase to denote the supranatural. METAPHYSICS. 246 of the Ionian school, they directed their attention to the dicta of inward reason. Going far below what they rep- resented as the ilhisions of the senses, they sought to penetrate the mystery of being. With them all things were one, and this incapable of motion or of change. Metaphysics are treated, along with all other topics, by Plato, under the somewhat unfortunate name of Dia- lectics, which has nearly the same meaning as Specula- tive Philosophy has in modern times, only the former meant discussion in conversation, the latter discussion in the head, or in books. According to Plato, it was the science which treated of the one Real Being (jo 6V} and the Real Good. This one Real Being was not with him, as with the Eleatics, inconsistent with the existence of the many. It embraced the inquiry into the nature of tlie Good and the Beautiful, and expounded the Eternal Ideas which had been in or before the Divine Mind from all eternity, to the contemplation of which man's soul could rise by cogitation, because it had been formed in the Divine image, and in which the sensible universe participated, thereby having a stability in the midst of its mutability. According to Aristotle, the First Philosophy treats of entity so far forth as it is entity, and of quiddity or the nature of a thing, and of that which is universally in- herent, so far as it is in entity. He argues that if there were not some substance (ouo-t'a) other than those that exist in nature, then Physics would be the first science; but if there be an eternal and unmovable substance, then there must be a prior science to treat of it, and this is to be honored as the first and highest philosophy. But the inquiry into entity is, in fact, an inquiry into causes, or what makes a thing to be what it is ; and he shows that such an investigation conducts to four causes : (1.) The 246 INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. Formal (jrjv ova-iav kol to tl ^v civat) ; (2.) The Material (rrjv vXtjv kol to VTroKei/xevov) ; (3.} The Efficient (^oOev rj "■PXV '''V'* '"VT^crcws) ; (4.} The Final (t6 ov Ivckcv koI t6 ayaOovy, From the bent of his genius, Bacon was no way ad- dicted to Metaphysics, but he allots it a separate and a most important place. He says that Physics regard what is wholly immersed in matter and movable, supposing only existence and natural necessity ; whereas Meta- physics regard what is more abstracted and fixed, and suppose also mind and idea. To be more particular, he represents Physics as inquiring into the efficient and material cause, and Metaphysics into the formal and final.2 The two largest metaphysical treatises of Descartes are entitled Meditations on the First Philosophy/ and Principles of Philosophy. He says that the first part of philosophy is " Metaphysics, in which are contained the principles of knowledge, among which are found the explication of the principal attributes of God, of the im- materiality of the soul, and of all the clear and simple notions that are in us." He represents Philosophy as a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root. Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk.^ In the Wolfian School, which proposed to systematize the scattered philosophy of Leibnitz, Metaphysics was asked to deal with three grand topics, — God, the World, and the Soul, — and should aim to construct a Rational Theology, a Rational Physics, and a Rational Psychol- 1 MetapTi., B. i. c. iii. sec. 1, compared with B. m. c. i., and B. v. c. i. sect. 3. ® De Augmentis, iii. 4. 8 Prin. PhU. Epis. Auth. METAPHYSICS. 247 ogy. Kant takes up this view of Metaphysics, but labors to show that the speculative reason cannot con- struct any one of these thi-ee sciences. The only avail- able metaphysics, according to him, is a Criticism of the Reason, unfolding its a priori elements. He arrives at the conclusion that all the operations of the Speculative Reason are mere subjective exercises, which imply no objective reality, and admit of no application to things ; and he saves himself from scepticism by a criticism of the Practical Reason, which guarantees the existence oi God, Freedom, and Immortality.^ In the schools which ramified from Kant, Metaphysics is represented as being a systematic search after the Absolute, — after Absolute Being, its nature, and its method of development. And what are we to make of Metaphysics in our day ? It is clear that she has lost, and I suspect forever, the position once allowed her, when she stood at the head of all secular knowledge, and claimed to be equal, or all but equal, in rank, to Theology herself. " Time was," says Kant,2 " when she was the queen of all the sci- ences ; and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object- matter, this title of honor. Now it is the fashion to heap contempt and scorn upon her, and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba." Some seem inclined to treat her very much as they treat those de jure sovereigns wandering over Europe, whom no country will take as de facto sovereigns, that is, they give her all outward honor, but no authority. Others are prepared to set aside her claims very summaril5^ The multitudes who set value on nothing but what can be counted in 1 See Method enlehre, in Kr. d. r. Vern. ^ Kritik, translated by Meiklejohn, p. xvii. 248 INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. money, never allow themselves to speak of metaphysics except with a sneer. The ever-increasing number of persons who read, but who are indisposed to think, com- plain that philosophy is not so interesting as the new novel, or the pictorial history, which is quite as exciting and quite as untrue as the novel. The physicist who has kept a register of the heat of the atmosphere at nine o'clock in the morning for the last five years, and the naturalist who has discovered a plant or insect distin- guished from all hitherto known species by an additional spot, cannot conceal their contempt for a department of inquiry which deals with objects which cannot be seen nor handled, weighed nor measured. In the face of all this scorn I boldly affirm that Meta- physics are not exploded, and that they never will be exploded. But if they are to keep or regain a place in this country, they must submit to lower their preten- sions, and secure that the performance be in some meas- ure equal to the profession made. In particular, they must confine themselves to a field which is open to hu- man investigation, and which can be overtaken. Look- ing to the philosophies to which I have just been refer- ring, we see that some have ascribed to it far too wide a province, allotting to it inquiries which in modern times have been happily distributed, owing to the advance in the division of labor, to a great number of sciences. I have allotted to it a defined province. It is not the science of all truth. It is the science of a special depart- ment. It is the science of First and Fundamental Truth. Sometimes it has to look more to the subjective side or knowing powers, when it may be called Gnosiology ; at other times to the objective side or the objects known, when it may be called Ontology. CHAPTER II. FUNDAMENTAL TEUTH AND EVOLUTION. I. Thkoughout this work I have been laboring to find out what first truths are, to ascertain their laws and arrange them into a system. In doing this I have care- fully avoided the inquiry as to how they have been pro- duced. To determine what they are, how they operate, and the objects which they look at, is a most important investigation independently altogether of their origin. It can be shown that it is only by inspecting their nature and exercises that we can discover whence they have come. It is alleged that they may have been formed by evolution. But we cannot inspect development di- rectly as it runs on through long ages. We can infer that there has been such a process only by a study of the effects which it is supposed they have produced. The most powerful speculative speculator of our day argues that our fundamental laws have been formed by evolu- tion. II. The school of Locke maintains that all our knowledge and ideas have been derived from experience. The school of Kant holds that we have a priori ideas ; that is, ideas prior to experience. Mr. Herbert Spencer has made a bold attempt to reconcile the two schools. Hitherto tlie school of Locke, specially represented by the two Mills, father and son, have been laboriously 250 INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. trying to show that all our ideas are got from the ex- perience of the individual. But it was felt all along by many that the effort was a strained one. In my earlier life as an author, I spent much time in exposing the weakness of the theory. There are cognitions and be- liefs which spring up spontaneously, which are enter- tained by all men, young and old, savage and civilized, and which carry in them and with them a conviction of necessity ; such, for example, is the belief in the princi- ple that every effect has a cause. All men act upon it. No man can be made to believe otherwise. Such are the convictions that honesty and benevolence are good, are obligatory, are commendable ; and that deceit, hypocrisy, and cruelty are evil, to be avoided, and condemnable. But it is difficult to see how people of all times and of all countries could be led to hold these beliefs if founded only on the short experience of the individual, and still more difficult to account for the necessity in the convic- tion. So this theory has been abandoned. I know no deep thinker who now holds it. m. The new theory is, that these truths, which profound thinkers regard as a priori, are derived from the experi- ence of the race and are formed by evolution. It is al- lowed, as in the former theory, that they are the result of experience. But the experience began in the lowest of the lower animals, and has come down from the monad through the mollusk, the mammal, and the monkey to man. It has become so massed and compacted that now it is necessary. Hence Spencer's postulate and test, that the belief has become a necessity of which the negative is inconceivable. This theory runs as a thread through each of Mr. FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH AND EVOLUTION 251 Spencer's dozen volumes. He argues that there is an object which is rehited to a subject. The object affects the subject. With Mr. Spencer, the subject affected is the nervous organism. The external object affects it, and thus generates the experience. The internal subject, being the nervous system, is psychical, what is commonly termed mind or soul. When two things come together in our experience, there is a tendency, when the one comes up, to expect the other. " When any two psychical states occur in immediate succession, an effect is produced such that, if the first subsequently occurs, there is a cer- tain tendency for the second to follow it " (P.^z/cA. Vol. I. p. 425). When they come together frequently, the expectation is intensified. When they come together invariably, it becomes so confirmed that we cannot even conceive the contrary. Cause and effect have come to- gether invariably (how have they done so except by some power in the cause ?), and so we cannot conceive the one without the other. Thus are fashioned forms of intuition which are the a priori forms of Kant and the Germans. Being fashioned in the nervous structure, they go down by heredity. Every infant born is in posses- sion of them. Mr. Spencer thus departs and separates from the ordinary experience school. Every one has something native and necessary. The whole is the ac- cumulated experience of humanity. It is a process of the nerves and brain which are so organized as to be compelled to think in one particular way, and cannot be made to think or to act in any other way. IV. We are not requii'ed to review this theory as a whole ; we have to consider it merely in its bearing on funda- mental truth. Two questions are started : Can the pro- 252 INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. duction of first truths be explained by evolution ? If so, is their authority thereby undermined ? I begin with answering the second question, and this will place us in a position candidly to consider the first. If our intuitions have been developed, can we put trust in what they reveal ? I answer that this depends on the nature of the development. We can conceive a development incapable of establishing truth. This would be tlie case if the evolution were merely mechanical, a mere material evolution. It would also be so if the evo- lution were merely one of nerves and their currents, as Mr. Spencer maintains. But there may be a development, a development of soul, which carries truth witb it and reveals it. It has been shown again and again that the existence of evolution does not interfere with the argument for the existence of God. Professor Huxley declares that the doctrine of development does not undermine the doc- trine of final cause. He allows that there is as clear and decisive proof of apparent design in these works of nature, on the supposition that they are evolved in the course of ages, as on the supposition that they may have been created immediately by God. Before the doctrine of development was published, people generally thought that there is proof of design in nature. This has not been weakened but rather strengthened by these late dis- coveries of the prevalence of evolution, as we can now discover fitness and wisdom not only in the objects them- selves, say plants and animals, but in the way in which they have been evolved, and a connection thereby formed between the present and the past, between the children and their parents. Because a thing has come into existence by evolution, this does not alter its true nature, nor the view which FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH AND EVOLUTION. 253 we take of it, nor the use to which we turn it. Be- cause the bread on our table was evolved from the corn growing on the ground, and this from a cereal which ap- peared in the geological ages, we do not therefore decline to eat it. When a hungry man sees a piece of beef he will not turn away from it because it has been the flesh of a cow which has descended from an antediluvian un- gulate. I believe in the reality of these mountains and stars even when it has been shown that they have been formed out of star-dust. I use the eye quite as readily as before, even when told by Darwin that it was formed thousands of ages ago from a sensitive spot in the brain. Aristotle's analysis of the reasoning process will remain true, even though it should be shown that his intellect was inherited from a savage or even from a brute an- cestor. The fact is that among the gifts derived from develop- ment ma)' be man's knowing powers, which are constantly enlarging. From inheritance he has got a power of in- telligence which makes him know things and their wide relations. A man of fifty has gone through a longer pro- cess than a boy of five, and therefore has greater knowl- edge and a greater capacity of knowledge. The present civilized race of men is more enlightened than their re- mote ancestors, just because there has been a longer process of guided evolution. We do not feel tlie less gratitude for gifts because they have come to us by a more or less lengthened passage. Carlyle did not value less the much-prized complimen- tary gift of Goethe because it came through a transport- ing medium. The son does nob put a lower estimate on his patrimony because the father earned it for hira by much toil and privation. 254 INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE SCIENCES. V. We are now in a position, secondly, to inquire with- out fear or prejudice whether these fundamental prin- ciples have been evolved. I have shown in another work that evolution is a manifestation of the deeper and wider law of cause and effect. It is an organized causation. A number of agencies combine ; they act according to their prop- erties, and evolution takes place, seen for instance in the plant growing from the seed, and the animal from the germ. But there are limits to the sphere both of cau- sation and consequent development. A cause can give only what it has got. The stream of evolution cannot rise higher than its fountain. If the waters are raised higher, it must be by a power without and above the stream. It is a firmly established law that there is nothing in the effect which was not potentially in the cause. The organized powers develop according to the powers or properties which they possess. But it does look as if new powers have been produced in the ages, powers not in the original atoms or molecules from which it is supposed all things have come. It might be difficult to determine whether these new powers come in by direct creation, or by a providential arrangement of the previously created agencies. There were long geolog- ical ages in which there was no Life. But we have no proof that the inanimate can produce the animate. There was therefore a new power superinduced when life came forth. There were ages before Sensation was experienced, and there was a new epoch when the first pleasure and pain were felt. There may have been a long period before Instinct was added for the preserva- FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH AND EVOLUTION. 255 tion of the living creature, and when this was done we have a farther era. Instinct acts blindly, but at the fit time there is Intelligence which perceives the meaning of the act, and knowingly uses means to accomplish ends ; and a new age has arrived. Morality comes in, it may be, at the same time, and consummates the work. It thus looks as if the history of our earth develops in epochs, corresponding to the days of Genesis. If so, we may reasonably conclude that these fundamental laws or powers of intuition, not found in the lower animals, ap- pear in the last day or period when man comes on the stage, and are in his very nature and constitution. Our subject does not require us to determine how far development extends. Enough has been advanced to show that evolution, be it in one continuous stream or with accessions from above, does not undermine or lower the authority of fundamental truths. BOOK II. GNOSIOLOGY. CHAPTER I. THE OKIGIN OP OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. What is Science (y.ma-Ty/xT]') ? is the question put by- Socrates in Plato's subtle dialogue of Theatetus. But the word " science " has two meanings. In one sense it can be defined. It is knowledge arranged, correlated, or sys- V tematized. In this sense we speak of astronomy, geol- ogy, logic, and other sciences. But the word had, at least in Greek, another signification, and meant simply knowledge ; and we may suppose the question to be put, s/ What is Knowledge ? To this the reply must be, that we cannot positively define knowledge, so as to make it intelligible to one who did not know it otherwise. Still we can, by analysis, separate it from other things with which it is associated, — such as sensations, emotions, and fancies, — and make it stand out distinctly to the view of those who are already conscious of it. .The science which thus unfolds the nature of knowledge may be called Gno- siology, or Gnosilogy (from yvwo-ts and Adyos). I prefer this to Epistemology, which would signify the science of arranged knowledge. This science should be prosecuted in the same method as every other which has to do with facts, that is, the Inductive. We must now enter upon the inquiries in which Locke and five or six friends, who met in his chamber in Ox- THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. 257 ford, found themselves involved, and which issued twenty- years afterwards in the famous " Essay on Human Un- derstanding." Starting with a far different topic, they found themselves quickly at a stand, and it came into the thoughts of Locke that before entering " upon inqui- ries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." First. We obtain knowledge from Sensation, as Locke expresses it ; or from Sense-Perception, as I express it. Such is the knowledge we have of body, of body extended and resisting pressure, and of our organism as affecting us, or as being affected, with smells, tastes, sounds, and colors. Secondly. We obtain knowledge from Reflection, as Locke calls it ; from Self-Consciousness, as I express it. Such is the knowledge we have of self and of modes, actions, and affections, say as thinking, feeling, resolving. I am convinced that from these two sources we obtain, not all our knowledge, but all the knowledge we have of separately existing objects. We do not know, and we cannot, as will be shown forthwith, so much as conceive of, a distinctly existing thing, excepting in so far as we have become acquainted with it by means of sensation and reflection, or of materials thus derived. Here Locke held by a great truth, though he did not see how to limit it on the one hand, nor what truths required to be added to it on the other, Thiedly. There is the truth involved, and seen intui- tively in Body and Mind. This can scarcely be called a third inlet, but it is an expansion of what is contained in the other two, and may be expediently exposed to view under a third head. I am not sure whether all our knowledge may not be traced up to the two sources of 258 GNOSIOLOGY. the external and internal sense taken with a full and wide meaning. However, there is more revealed in sense than a mere knowledge of an external thing. There is more in self-consciousness than a bare knowl- edge of self as existing. We know bodies as being in space and occupying space, as exercising power over us and over other bodies in particular, as resisting us and resisting each other. We believe in them as extended in three dimensions, and going out towards infinity. This implies a knowledge of and belief in space and the necessary qualities of space as unfolded in mathematics. It involves a knowledge of numbers, and of the relations of numbers as expanded in arithmetic. In self-consciousness we have also a variety of cogni- tions. We know self as having personality and personal identity. We know it as having power over its own acts and over things without us. We know it as acquir- ing knowledge, and as remembering, imagining, judging, reasoning, wishing, willing, discerning between good and evil. As more especially important, we discover certain truths to be also necessary and catholic, that is, believed in by all men. All these exercises go out into infinity. I have been seeking to unfold these, under the heads of primitive cognitions and beliefs, in Part Second of this work. They are not usually put under the heads of sensation and reflection ; they seem to go out and be- yond these inlets. Or they may be resolved, as I rather think they may, into intuitions involved in the exercise of sense-perception and self-consciousness, but requiring to be unfolded. In either case they are intuitive truths. But under whatever head we place them, they are not to be left vague and loose in the enunciation of them. They are to be rigidly tested by the three criteria of self- THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. 259 evidence, necessity, and catholicity, so that we may be sure that they are fundamental truths. The question of the origin of our Ideas is substantially the same with that of the sources of our Knowledge ; but, in discussing this second question, it is of all things es- sential to have it fixed what is meant by " idea." Plato, with whom the term originated as a philosophic one, meant those eternal patterns which have been in or be- fore the Divine mind from all eternity, which the works of nature participate in to some extent, and to the con- templation of which the mind of man can rise by abstrac- tion and philosophic meditation. Descartes meant by it whatever is before the mind in every sort of mental ap- prehension. Locke tells us that he denotes by the phrase " whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species." Kant applied the phrase to the ideas of substance, totality of phenomena, and God, reached by the reason as a regula- tive faculty going out beyond the province of experience and objective reality. Hegel is forever dwelling on an absolute idea, which he identifies with God, and repre- sents it as ever unfolding itself out of nothing into being, subjective and objective. Using the phrase in the Pla- tonic sense, it is scarcely relevant to inquire into the origin of our ideas ; it is clear, however, that Plato rep- resented our recognition of eternal ideas as a high intel- lectual exercise, originating in the inborn power of the mind, and awakened by inward cogitation and reminis- cence. In the Kantian and Hegelian systems the idea is supposed to be discerned by reason ; Kant giving it no existence except in the mind, and Hegel giving it an ex- istence both objective and subjective, but identifying the reason with the idea, and the objective with the sub- jective. Using the phrase in the Cartesian and Lockian sense, we can inquire into the origin of our ideas. 260 GNOSIOLOGY. In accordance with modern usage in the English tongue, it might be as well perhaps to employ the word " idea " to denote the reproduced image or representa- tion in the mind, and the abstract and general notion. Thus explained, it would exclude our original cognitions on the one hand, and also the regulative principles of the mind on the other. An idea, in this sense, would always be a reproduction in an old form, or more com- monly in a new form, of what has first been known. We first know objects, external or internal ; and then we may have them called up in whole or in part, magnified or diminished, mixed and compounded in an infinite va- riety of ways ; or, by an intellectual process, we may contemplate one of their attributes separately, or group them into classes. Our ideas, in this sense, are ever de- pendent on our cognitions; we cannot have an idea, either as an image or a notion, of which the materials have not been furnished by the various cognitive powers, primary and secondary. It is always to be remembered that by increase and decrease, by intellectual abstraction and generalization, our ideas may go far beyond our knowledge; still, as our ideas in the last resort depend on our knowledge, they must be drawn from the same quarters. When the question is put as to the origin of our ideas, we are thrown back on the Three Sources from which all our knowledge is derived. So far as our ideas of separately existing objects are concerned, they are all got ultimately from the outward and inward senses ; to this extent the doctrine of Locke is unassail- able. We cannot imagine or think of any other kind of existence than matter and mind, with space and time, though, for aught we know, there may be other sub- stances and beings in the universe with a far different nature. But then we are led by our cognitive and faith THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. 261 powers, intellectual and moral, to clothe the objects thus known with qualities and relations which cannot be per- ceived either by sensation or reflection. It is not by one or other of these, or by both combined, that I come to believe that space and time are infinite, that this effect must proceed from a cause, that this benevolent action is good, and that this falsehood is a sin ; nor is it by either or by both that I can rise to the conviction that the effect is forever tied to its cause, and that lying must be a sin in all time and in all eternity. The principle. Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in setisu, has been ascribed to Aristotle, but most certainly without foundation, as the great Peripatetic everywhere calls in intuition in the last resort, and is ever coming to truth which he represents as self-evi- dent and necessary. The maxim has been ascribed to the Stoics, who, however, at the same time, placed in the mind a native ruling principle.^ It is assuredly not the principle adopted by Locke, who is so often represented as favoring it ; for the great English philosopher ever traces our ideas, not to one, but to two sources, and de- lights to derive many of our ideas from reflection. It is, however, the fundamental principle of that school in France and in Britain which has been called Sensational. There are three very flagrant oversights in the theory of those who derive all our ideas from sensation : First, there is an omission of all such ideas as we have of spirit and of the qualities of spirit, such as rationality, free- will, personality. Secondly, there is a neglect or a wrong account of all the further cognitive exercises of the mind by which it comes to apprehend such objects as infinite time, moral good, merit, and responsibility. TJiirdly, there is a denial, or at least oversight, of the mind's deep ^ See supra, p. 35, for the view of the Stoics. 262 GNOSIOLOGY. convictions as to necessary and universal truth. Sen- sationalism, followed out logically to its consequences, would represent the mind as incapable of conceiving of a spiritual God, or of being convinced of the indelible distinction between good and evil ; and makes it illegiti- mate to argue from the effects in the world in favor of the existence of a First Cause. Locke is ever to be distinguislied from those who derive all our ideas from the senses. He takes great pains to show that a vast number of the most important ideas which the mind of man can form are got from reflection on the operations of our own minds. His precise doctrine is that the materials of the ideas which man can entertain come in by two inlets, sensation and reflection; that they are at first perceived by the mind, and then retained ; and that they are subsequently turned into a great variety of new shapes by the faculties of discernment, comparison, abstraction, composition, and the power of discovering moral relations. The ideas being thus ob- tained, he supposes that the mind can perceive agreements and dis- agreements among them. In particular, it is endowed with a power of intuition, by which it at once perceives the agreement and dis- agreement of certain ideas, discovers these to be in the very nature of ideas, and necessary. Such being the views of Locke, they are as different from those of the Sensationalists, on the one hand, as they are from those of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant on the other. Indeed, the most careless reader cannot go through the Essay on Human Understanding without discovering that, if Locke has a strong sensational, he has also a rational side. He will allow no ideas to be in the mind except those which can be shown to sj^ring from one or other of the inlets, and yet he resolutely maintains that, with these ideas before it, the mind may perceive truth at once; he thinks that morality is capable of demonstration, and in religion he is decidedly rationalistic. So far, it appears to me, we can easily ascertain the views of Locke. It is more difficult to determine how far he supposed the mind to be capable of modifying or adding to the materials derived from the outward and inward senses. It is quite clear that he represents the mind as having the power to per- ceive and compound and divide these ideas, and discover resem- blances and other relations; but there are passages in which, con- sistently or inconsistently, he speaks of the mind having something THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. 263 more suggested to it, or superinducing something higher. Locke speaks of certain ideas being " suggested " to the mind by the senses, — a phraseology adopted by Reid and Stewart {Essay, ii. vii. 9) ; and of " relation "as " not contained in the real existence of things, but extraneous and superinduced " (ii. xxv. 8). Confining our attention to the points which are clear, I think we may discover, not certainly such grave errors as in the doctrines of the sensationalists, but still several oversights. First, he over- looks the cognitions and beliefs involved in the exercises with which the mind starts. This has arisen, to a great extent, from his attach- ing himself to the theory that the mind begins, not with knowledge, but with ideas, which are at first perceived by the mind, and then compared, upon which comparison it is that the mind reaches knowl- edge. He has never set himself to inquire what is involved in the sensation and reflection which give us our ideas. He takes no notice of intuition enabling us to look directly at the very thing, or of our intuition of extension, or of the cognitive self-consciousness, or of the beliefs gathering round space and time and the infinite. Sec- ondly, he has not given a distinct place and a suflScient prominence to the ideas got from the mind observing certain qualities and rela- tions in objects made known by sensation and reflection. The de- fects of his system, in not giving an adequate account of our idea of moral good, which he gets from our sensations of pleasure and pain, with a law of God superinduced — without so much as his trying to prove how we are bound, on his system, to obey that law — was per- ceived at an early date by British writers, who adhered to him as closely as possible; and Shaftesbury and Hutcheson called in a Moral Sense (as an addition to Locke's outward and inward sense); while Bishop Butler called in conscience, which he characterized as a " principle of reflection." Thirdly, he has not inquired what are the laws involved in the Intuition to which he appeals in the fourth book of his Essay as giving us the most certain of all our knowledge. Had he developed the nature of intuition, and the principles involved, with the same care as he has expounded the experiential element, his system would have been at once and effectually saved from the fear- ful results in which it issued in France, where his name was used to support doctrines which he would have repudiated with deep indig- nation. He is right in saying that the mind has not consciously before it in spontaneous action such speculative principles as that " Whatever is is," or moral maxims in a formalized shape; but he has failed to perceive that such principles as these are the rules of 264 GNOSIOLOGY. our intuitions, and that they can be discovered by a reflex process of generalization. It is but justice to Locke to say that he acknowl- edges necessary truth, but it does not form a part of his general theory. His professed followers have abandoned it ; and sceptics have shown that he cannot reach it in consistency with his system. CHAPTER II. LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, IDEAS, AND BELIEFS. It is instructive to find that not a few of the most profound philosophers with which our world has been honored have been prone to dwell on the limits to man's capacity. The truth is, it is always the smallest minds which are most apt to be swollen with the wind engen- dered by their own vanity. The intellects which have gone out with greatest energy to the furthest limits are those which feel most keenly when they strike against the barriers by which human thought is bounded. The minds which have set out on the widest excursions, and which have taken the boldest flights, are those that know best that there is a wider region lying beyond, which is altogether inaccessible to man. It was the peculiarly wise man of the Hebrews who said, " No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." The Greek sage by emphasis declared that, if he excelled others, it was only in this, that he knew noth- ing. It was the avowed object of the sagacious Locke to teach man the length of his tether, which, we may re- mark, those feel most who attempt to get away from it. Reid labored to restrain the pride of philosophy, and to bring men back to a common sense, in respect of which the peasant and philosopher are alike. It was the design of Kant's great work to show how little speculative rea- son can accomplish. In our own day we have had Sir W. Hamilton showing, with unsurpassed logical power, within what narrow bounds the thought of man is re- strained. 266 GNOSIOLOGY. We have already in our survey gathered the materials for enabling us to settle the general question, in which, however, are several special questions which should be carefully separated : — 1. What are the limits to man's power of acquiring knowledge ? The answer is, that he cannot know, at least in this world, any substance or separate existence other than those revealed by sense and consciousness. There may be, very probably there are, in the universe, other substances besides matter and spirit, other exist- ences which are not substances, as well as space and time, but these must ever remain unknown to us in this world. Again, he can never know any qualities or rela- tions among the objects thus revealed to the outward and inward sense, except in so far as we have special fac- ulties of knowledge ; and the number and the nature of these are to be ascertained by a process of induction, and by no other process either easier or more difficult. This is what has been attempted in this treatise, it may be supposed with only partial success in the execution, but, it is confidently believed, in the right method. A more difficult process need not be resorted to, and would con- duct us only into ever-thickening intricacies ; and an easier method is not available in the investigation of the facts of nature in this, nor indeed in any other depart- ment. After unfolding what seems to be in our primi- tive cognitions, I gave some account of the primitive faiths which gather round them, and classified the rela- tions which the mind can discover, and unfolded the moral convictions which we are led to form. Such are the limits to man's original capacity, of which there are decisive tests in self-evidence, necessity, and catholicity. Within these limits man has a wide field in which to expatiate ; a field, indeed, which he can never thor- LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, IDEAS, AND BELIEFS. 267 ouglily explore, but in which he may discover more and more. What he may discover, and what he may never be able to discover, are to be determined by the separate sciences, each in its ovra department. Thus, what he can find out of mind, of its various powers and original convictions, is to be determined by the various branches of mental science. What he can ascertain by the senses, aided by instruments, must be settled by the phj^sical sciences. 2. The limits to man's capacity of knowledge being as- certained, it is easy to determine the limits to his power of forming ideas. The materials must all be got from the three sources of knowledge which have been pointed out. There are two classes of powers employed in en- larging and modifying these. The one is the imagina- tion, which can decrease, as when on seeing a man it can form the idea of a dwarf ; and increase, as when it can form the idea of a giant ; or separate, as when it sees a man it can form an image of his head ; or compound, as when it puts a hundred hands on man, and forms the idea of a Briareus. It should be observed that the im- agination can never go beyond the rearrangement of the materials supplied by the original sources of knowledge. The mind can further discover a number of relations among the objects primitively known. These I have en- deavored to classify. In particular, out of the concrete it can form innumerable abstracts, and from the singulars construct an indefinite number of universals. It should be observed that man's power of imagination and corre- lation extends over his moi-al convictions as well as his intellectual cognitions. Thus, he can clothe the hero of a I'omance in various kinds of moral excellence of which he has discovered the rudiments in himself or others, and perceive relations among the moral properties which 268 GNOSIOLOGY. have fallen under his notice. These are the limits to man's capacity of forming ideas, determined, first, by his original powers of cognition, and, secondly, by his pow- ers of imagination and correlation. 3. Our beliefs, it is evident, may go beyond our cogni- tions. Still there are stringent limits set to them in our very nature and constitution. Thus, we can never be- lieve anything in opposition to self-evident and necessary truths. There are beliefs which are in our very mental make and frame, and which are altogether beyond our voluntary power. If we except these, however, our power of possible belief is as wide as our capacity of forming ideas. If it is asked what we should believe within these limits, the answer is. Only what has evidence to plead in its behalf, what has self-evidence or mediate evidence. Metaphysics, with their tests, can determine what truths are to be received on their own authority ; as to the kind and amount of evidence required in deriva- tive truth, this can be settled only by tlie canons of the special departments of investigation, historical or phys- ical. But do our beliefs ever go beyond our ideas ? This is a very curious question, and different persons will be dis- posed to give different answers to it. It seems clear to me that every belief must be a belief in something of which we have some sort of conception. A belief in nothing would not deserve to be called a belief, and a belief in something of which we have no apprehension would be equivalent to a belief in nothing. But it will be urged that every man must believe in certain great truths regarding eternity of which he has no conception, and that the Christian in particular has such a truth, in which he firmly believes, in the doctrine of the Trinity. Still, I maintain that even in such a case there is an ap- LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, IDEAS, AND BELIEFS. 269 prehension or conception. Thus, in regard to infinity, we apprehend space or time, or God, who inhabits all space and time, stretching away further and further ; but far as we go, we apprehend and believe that there is and must be a space, a time, a living Being, beyond. Or we apprehend a spiritual God, with attributes, say of power and love ; and we strive to conceive of him, and of these perfections ; and we believe of him and his power and goodness that they transcend all our feeble attempts at comprehension. In every supposable case of belief we have an apprehension of some kind. A trav- eller tells us that he saw in Africa a monstrous animal, which he cannot describe so as to enable us to compre- hend it ; we understand the man's language, and if we have reason to look upon him as trustworthy we be- lieve his statement ; but in doing so our belief goes upon the apprehension of an animal different from all other animals. An inspired writer tells us about there being three persons in one Godhead ; and, having evidence of his inspiration, we believe him : but even here there is an apprehension ; there is a conception of the God of truth as revealing the truth. There is more : this rev- elation is contained in words of which we form some sort of apprehension : thus, we are told that Jesus Christ is God; that he became man ; and yet we discover that he is somehow or other different from God the Father. Thus in all our beliefs thei'e seems to be a conception of something, and of something real and existing ; but still it may be of something conceived by us as having qual- ities which pass beyond our comprehension, or qualities of which we have no comprehension. Some of these conceptions, with their attached beliefs, are those which raise up within us the feeling of the sub- lime, and are, of all others, the most fitted to elevate the 270 GNOSIOLOGY. soul of man. Need I add that it is possible for us to be- lieve in truths which we cannot reconcile with other truths of sense or understanding? It is wrong in us, in- deed, to believe in a proposition unsupported by evi- dence; but when it is properly sustained, and when es- pecially it is seen to have the sanction of God, then the mind asserts its prerogative of belief, even when the truth transcends all sense, all personal, all human expe- rience, nay, even when it is encompassed with darkness and difficulties on every side. Faith feels that it is in one of its highest exercises when founding on the au- thority of God it believes, not indeed in contradictions (which it can never do), but in truths which it cannot reconcile with the appearance of things^ or with other truths which the reason sanctions. CHAPTER III. EELATION OF INTUITION AND EXPEEIENCE. We must now dive into the subject whose depths the great Teutonic metaphysician sought to sound ; not that Kant spoke much of it in the intercourse with his friends, but he was forever pondering it as he sat in his bachelor domicile, as he paced forward and backward in his favorite walk in the suburbs of Konigsberg, as he lectured to his class, or elaborated his published writ- ings. The general question embraces several special ones, which must be carefully distinguished. In seeking to settle these, we must always have it fixed in our minds in what sense we employ the word " experience; " for the phrase may be understood in narrower or in wider significations. It may be confined to the outward fact known or apprehended, or it may also embrace the inward consciousness. It is the aim of this whole work to explain the nature of intuition. In this chapter it is of all things necessary to explain the nature of experience. First, there is Personal Experience, which consists of what each one has passed through. There is no opposi- tion, even in appearance, between intuition and such an experience. Every exercise of intuition is an experience. Second, there is a Gathered Experience, or an Induc- tion. This consists of the experience of mankind gener- ally; in fact, of the aggregate of wliat man can observe. It is the relation of this human experience to intuition that I am to discuss in this chapter. The gathered experi- 272 GNOSIOLOGY. ence depends on the personal experience, but it is the aggregate of experience that we compare or contrast with fundamental truth. No experience of man can reach a law that is neces- sary and must therefore be universal, that is, have no ex- ceptions. All human experience testifies that day has always been followed by night, and night by day ; but it is conceivable, and believable if evidence be produced, that there might be day not followed by night, or night not followed by day. Gravitation within our experience is a universal law, but the discoverer did not believe it to be ultimate, and it is quite possible that in other parts of the universe bodies may be connected by quite a differ- ent law. But there are laws which are necessary and universal. By intuition we discover this to be so in individual cases, but we perceive that it would be the same in every other like case, and we make the law universal. There is a necessity attached to the individual case, and this attaches itself to the general law, so far as the generalization is properly made. In many cases we are sure that we have properly generalized the exercises of the individual intu- itions, — for example, in the law of contradiction, in the axioms of Euclid, and in certain moral maxims, as that we ought to pay our debts. Now it is of great im- portance to draw the distinction very definitely between these two kinds of laws, and thereby be enabled to de- termine as to every law to which class it belongs. Let us view Experience in its relation to each of the Threefold Aspects of Intuition. II. 1. There is the relation of Experience to Intuition considered as a body of Regulative Principles. Under this RELATION OF INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE. 273 Aspect intuition lies in the mind, as gravitation lies in matter, ready to act, in fact ever acting. J. S. Mill has shovrn that all the lav7s of nature, say gravity or chem- ical affinity, are of the nature of tendencies, and they tend to act according to their nature. Under this view intuition, being native, though possibly to some extent hereditary, is prior to experience of every kind, but it tends to act as every law of nature does. There is no exercise of will, but it prompts and instigates to action. All the intuitions seek for objects, and are gratified when the objects are presented. Just as the function of the eye is to see, and light being seen is pleasant to the eyes, so all our cognitive, believing, and judging powers are gratified when the objects to which they look are presented. Intuition, as a regulating principle, is ever inclining us to gather experience, — is, indeed, the most powerful incitement to this. In people of strong intel- lectual power, there is a feeling of restraint, almost of disappointment, when they are not able to gratify these impulses. A feeling of melancholy is apt to come over men of genius when they find that their high ideas are not realized. Our belief as to the boundlessness of space is ever alluring us to explore it in earth and sea, and in the deep expanse of heaven ; and our belief in time without be- ginning and without end is ever tempting us to go back through all the years which human history opens to us, and beyond these, through all the ages which geology discloses, and to look forward, as far as human foresight and Bible prophecy may enable us, into the dim events of the future. Thus, too, our minds delight to dis- cover substances acting according to their properties, and plants and animals developing according to the life that is in them, to find species and genera in the whole or- 274 GNOSIOLOGY. ganic kingdoms, to trace mathematical relations corre- sponding to our higher intellectual cravings among all the objects presenting themselves on the earth and in the starry heavens, and to rise from near effects to re- mote causes in space and time. Nor is it to be omitted that our moral convictions prompt us to look for, and when we have found Him, to look up to, a Moral Gov- ernor of the universe, and to anticipate of Him that He will be ready to support the innocent sufferer, and to punish the wicked. It should be added, that in experi- ence we are ever finding a gratifying exemplification of our native tendencies, and a satisfying corroboration of our intuitive expectations. We expect a cause to turn up for this mysterious occurrence ; we may be disap- pointed at first, but in due time it appears. We antici- pate that this secret deed of villany will be detected and exposed ; and so we are amazed for a season when we hear of the perpetrator flattered by the world, and seemingly favored in the providence of God; but our moral convictions are vindicated when the wicked man is at last caught in the net which had all along been weaving for him, and all his ill-gotten spoils are made to add to the weight of his ignominy, and to embitter his disgrace. 2. There is the Relation of Experience to our Intui- tive Perceptions. Here the Regulative Principle comes forth in active exercise. It is called out by an object which, however, is always apprehended. In many cases it is an external object ; it is thus that our intuition as to matter is stimulated by a body presented to the senses. Our intuition as to personal identity is called forth by the consciousness of a present state with the remem- brance of a past. Our conviction of moral good comes forth on the contemplation of an act as good or evil. RELATION OF INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE. 275 This object is commonly called the " Occasion," and the general law is laid down, that the perception is called up only when there is an object as the occasion. The two together, the inner power and the object or occa- sion, constitute the cause or concause which by their mutual action produces the effect which is the Intuitive Perception. It should be observed that every intuition looks to its own, its corresponding, and appropriate object ; it is a cognition of the object or a belief in it, or a judgment in regard to it. The sense-intuition is called out by a sen- sible object to which it looks and which it knows: the idea of space by an object extended ; the idea of time by an event in time ; our convictions as to causation by an object acting, or an effect produced ; our moral percep- tions, faiths, and decisions by good or evil acts. Thus closely are intuition and experience connected. Our in- tuitive convictions are evoked by personal experiences, and as they know and believe and judge in regard to objects they become experiences. We thus avoid one of the fatal errors of Kant, that our intuitions are a priori forms imposed on objects by the mind out of its own stores, whereas they all look to things and become cogni- tions, faiths, and judgments. We thus establish a real- ism in every part of our nature. 3. There is the Relation of Experience to Generalized Intuitions. We have called attention to the circum- stance that our intuitions as Regulating Principles are not under the eye of consciousness. They are under- ground roots, which come forth as visible plants in the Perceptions and are put in scientific form by the defined Maxim. We must be careful to distinguish between two kinds of laws. One kind is obtained from the observation of 276 GNOSIOLOGY. scattered facts external or internal which may have fallen under our notice, no matter how, through our own experience or that of others also. The other is formed from our primitive perceptions. For laws so different in their nature and in the manner of their being reached, it is desirable to have a difference of appellation or nomenclature. The one class may be called Intuitive, the other INDUCTIVE. The one is A Peiori, the other A Posteriori. The one is Experiential, the other Rational, founded on the perceived nature of things. The one is Necessary, the other Contingent. The one claims to be Axioms or Maxims, the other the Laws of Observation. The latter kinds of law may or may not hold good be- yond the limits of experience. We may be able to say of some of them, as of the law of universal gravitation, that they are wide as the cosmos open to human observation ; but we are not entitled to affirm dogmatically that they do, or that they must, pervade all space. It is a general rule that the leaves of monocotyledons have parallel veins; but the arum and some other plants proceeding from one seed-lobe have netted venation. As a rule mammals are viviparous, but mammals have been dis- covered which bring forth their young by eggs. There may be worlds in which substances obey very different magnetic laws from those to which they are subject in our earth. It is quite possible that, in other parts of the universe, there may be intelligent creatures whose ideas follow an order of succession very different from those of human beings. But it is true over all our earth, and must be true in all other worlds as well as in this, that cruelty is a sin. Present to the mind a phenomenon, that is, a new object or occurrence, and it insists that it must have had a cause, and this whether it be within or beyond the range of pur expeiience. RELATION OF INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE. 277 Considered under this aspect, the contrast is not be- tween intuition and experience, but between General- ized Intuitions and a Gathered Experience. The former are at once the deeper and the higher. They pro- ceed on the nature of things and are immutable as long as the things exist. They are the truths which consti- tute the foundation of our knowledge and on which our minds fall back in the last resort. From the very earliest date men have been seeking to rear some central and abiding truths which may combine all other truths and act as a defence. But this cannot be done by mere empirical facts in which they have only " brick for stone " and " slime for mortar," and the end is a scat- tering as at Babel. However, by these eternal truths which we have been considering men may realize the idea of their youth, and build a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven. CHAPTER IV. ON THE NECESSITY ATTACHED TO OUR PKIMAKY CONVICTIONS. We have seen throughout the whole of this treatise that a conviction of necessity attaches to all our original cognitions, beliefs, and judgments, both intellectual and moral. But we may find ourselves in hopeless perplex- ities, or even in a network of contradictions, unless we determine precisely to what it is that the necessity ad- heres. The proper account is, that the necessity covers the ground which the conviction occupies, — neither less nor more. "We may err, either by contracting it within a narrower or stretching it over a wider surface. It follows that if we would determine how far the necessity extends, we must carefully and exactly ascertain what is the nature of the native conviction, and what are the objects at which it looks. And this requires us to specify with precision what we cannot do in regard to necessary truth. A common ac- count is that we cannot " conceive " the contradictory of such truth. But the word " conceive " is ambiguous, and in itself means nothing more than " image " or " ap- prehend," that is, have a notion ; and certainly we are not entitled to appeal to a mere phantasm or concept as a test of ultimate truth. The exact account is that we cannot be convinced of the opposite of the intuitive con- viction. But our intuitive convictions may take the NECESSITY ATTACHED TO PRIMARY CONVICTIONS. 279 form of cognitions, or beliefs, or judgments ; and, accord- ing to the nature of the intuition, that is, according as it is knowledge, or faith, or comparison, is the nature of the necessity attached. Whatever we know intuitively as existing, we cannot be made to know as not existing. Whatever we intuitively believe^ we cannot be made not to believe. When we intuitively discover a relation in objects, we cannot be made to judge that there is not a relation. From neglecting these distinctions, which are very obvious when stated, manifold errors have arisen, not only in the application of the test of necessity, but in the general account given of primary truths. When we take them along with us, the test of necessity admits of an application at once easy and certain. II. 1. Beginning with our Cognitions, the conviction is that the object exists at the time we perceive it, and has the qualities we discover in it. This implies, according to the law of identity (in the form of non-contradiction)^ that it is not possible that it should not be existing, and that it should not be in possession of these qualities at the time it falls under our notice. But it does not imply that the object has a necessary or an eternal existence. It does not imply that the object must have existed in all other or in any other circumstances. For aught our conviction saj^s, the object in other positions, or with a different set of preexisting causes, might not have existed at all, or might have had a different set of qualities. But while the necessity does not reach further, it always extends as far as the perception ; thus it demands that body be regarded by us as extended and as resisting pressure, that self be looked on as capable of such quali- ties as thought and feeling, and that the properties of 280 GNOSIOLOGY. body and mind should not be regarded as produced by our contemplation of them. 2. Coming now to our original Beliefs, it has been shown in regard to them, that while they proceed on our cognitions, they go beyond them, go beyond the now and the present, — declaring, for instance, of time and space, that they must transcend our widest phantasms or conceptions of them, and that they are such that no space or time could be added to them. And as far as the con- viction goes, so far does the necessity extend. 3. The necessity attached to our Judgments is in like manner exactly coincident with them. These imply ob- jects on which they are pronounced. At the same time, the judgment, with its adhering necessity, has a regard not to the objects directly, but to the relation of the ob- jects. These objects may be real, or they may be imag- inary. I may pronounce Chimborazo to be higher than Mont Blanc, but I may also afl&rm of a mountain 100,000 feet high that it is higher than one 50,000 feet high. As to whether the objects are or are not real, this is a ques- tion to be settled by our cognitions and beliefs, original and acquired, and by inferences from them. But it is to be carefully observed, that even when the object is imaginary, the judgment proceeds on a cognition of the elements of the objects. Thus, having known what is the size of a man, we affirm of a giant, who is greater than a common man, that he is greater than a dwarf, who is smaller than ordinary humanity. Still, the necessity in the judgment does not of itself imply the existence of the objects, still less any necessary existence ; all that it proclaims is, that the objects might exist out of ma- terials which have fallen under our notice, and that the objects, being so and so, must have such a relation. In a sense, then, our primitive judgments are hypo- NECESSITY ATTACHED TO PRIMARY CONVICTIONS. 281 thetical ; the objects being so must have a particular con- nection. There may be, or there may never have been, two exactly parallel lines ; what our intuitive judgnaent declares is, that if there be such, they can never meet. A similar remark may be made of every other class of intuitive comparisons. There may or there may not be a sea in the moon ; but if there be, its waters must be extended, and can resist pressure. There may or there may not be inhabitants in the planet Jupiter ; but if there be, they must have been created by a power com- petent to the operation. But it is to be borne in mind, that when the objects exist, the judgments, with their accompanying necessity, apply to them. And here I am tempted to say a word on a question of nomenclature. Throughout this treatise the phi'ase " intuition " has been applied to our primitive cognitions and primitive beliefs, as well as our primitive judgments. But as there is a difference between intuition as directed to individual objects and as directed to the comparison of objects, I have sometimes thought, when it is neces- sary to distinguish them, "• Intuitive Perceptions " might be the more appropriate phrase for the one, and " Intui- tive Reason " for the other. 4. It holds good also of our Moral Perceptions, that the necessity is as wide as our conviction, but no wider. It implies that the good or evil is a real quality of cer- tain voluntary acts of ours, and this whether we view it or not, and independent of the view we take of it. It involves that certain actions are good or evil, whenever or wherever they are performed, in this land or other lands, in this world or other worlds. Rising beyond cognitions and beliefs, the mind can pronounce moral judgments on certain acts apprehended by it. These judgments do not imply the existence of the objects ; but the decision 282 GNOSIOLOGY. will apply to the realities, if there be such. Thus, there may or may not be ungodliness or ingratitude in the planet Saturn ; but if there be such a thing, we declare that it must be evil and condemnable. It is to be noted that our moral convictions do not imply that we shall certainly practise the good, or that all must be morally good which men declare to be so. ni. As soon as our original cognition or belief assures us of the existence of an object with certain qualities, or as a judgment affirms a necessary relation, the law of iden- tity comes into operation, and insists on our keeping truth consistent with itself ; and in particular, the law of non- contradiction restricts us from thinking or believing the opposite of the truth apprehended. When we know that self exists, we cannot be made to think that self does not exist. Constrained to look on time as without limits, we at once deny that it can have limits. Deciding that every effect has a cause, we cannot be made to believe that it has not had a cause. We have a conviction that murder is a crime, and cannot be made to decide that it is not. We have thus necessity in two forms as a test of fundamental truth ; in its original or positive, and also in a negative form, founded on the law of non-contradic- tion. In no case can the conviction be wrought in us that what we intuitively know or believe to exist does not exist, or that the contradictory of a primitive judg- ment can possibly be true. It has been remarked by metaphysicians that in some cases we can conceive the opposite of a necessary truth, while in others we cannot. The account given above enables us to see how this should be, and determines whence the differences, and how far they extend. In NECESSITY ATTACHED TO PRIMARY CONVICTIONS. 283 the case of our primitive cognitions and beliefs, we can imagine or apprehend the opposite of what we know or believe. We can imagine ourselves not existing at any given time, and that an event remembered by us did not occur. We can conceive, too, though often witli some difficulty, the contradictory of synthetic judgments a priori ; thus we can apprehend (though we can never decide or believe) that there should be a change without a cause. But, in the case of analytic judgments (see swjora, pp. 193, 194), we cannot so much as conceive them contradictory. The reason is obvious. The judgment pronounced is implied in the subject in regard to which the predication is made ; and the denial of the proposi- tion would be destructive of the notion with which we start. We cannot conceive of an island that it should not be surrounded by water, for were it not so enclosed it would not be an island. It should be noticed that the conviction of necessity follows primitive conviction wherever it is found. In what is technically called demonstrative or apodictic rea- soning, all the new steps are seen to be true intuitively, and the necessity goes through the whole process step by step. Thus the necessity adheres not only to the axioms of Euclid, but goes on to the last proposition of the last book. It is the same in all other sciences which are demonstrative, as Ethics and Logic are to a limited ex- tent ; the necessity adheres to whatever is drawn from first truths by intuitive principles. It is needful to add, that in mixed processes, in which there is both intuition and experience in the results reached, the necessity sticks merely to the intuitive part, and does not guarantee the whole. I suppose there is no doubt of the accuracy of the mathematical demonstrations employed by Fourier in his disquisitions about heat, but there are disputes as 284 GNOSIOLOGY. to some of the assumptions on which his calculations pro- ceed. We have here a source of error. In processes into which intuition enters, but is only one of the elements, persons may allot to the whole a certainty which can be claimed only in behalf of one of the parts. One other distinction requires to be drawn under this head. There are cases in which primitive judgments are founded on primitive cognitions and beliefs, and are thus necessary throughout. It is thus that, proceeding on our primitive knowledge and faith as to time, we de- clare there can be no break in its flowing stream. But in other cases our judgment may proceed on a proposi- tion reached by a gathered experience. Thus, having found that laurel-water is poisonous, intuition insists that he who has drunk laurel-water has drunk poison. The necessity here simply is, that the conclusion follows from the premises ; and the conclusion itself is as certain as the observational premiss, neither less nor more. CHAPTER V. CRITICISM OF DISTINCTIONS DRAWN BY METAPHYSICIANS IN REGARD TO THE RELATION OF INTUITIVE REASON AND EXPERIENCE. These distinctions fail to express the exact truth because they do not proceed on the reality of things. The Distinction between the Understanding and the Reason. — Milton draws the distinction between reason " intuitive " and "discursive." Reid and Beattie represent Reason as having / two degrees : in the former, reason sees the truth at once ; in the other, it reaches it by a process. There is evidently ground for these distinctions. But the distinction I am now to examine was first drawn in a formal manner by Kant, and has since assumed divers shapes in Germany and in this country. According to Kant, the mind has three general intellectual powers, the Sense, the Under- standing (Verstand), and the Reason (Vernunft) ; the Sense giving us presentations or phenomena ; the Understanding binding these by categories; and the Reason bringing the judgments of the Under- standing to unity by three Ideas — of Substance, Totality of Phe- nomena, and Deity — which are especially the Ideas of Reason. The distinction was introduced among the English-speaking nations by Coleridge, who however modified it. "Reason," says he, " is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the source and sub- stance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in them- selves. Its presence is always marked by the necessity of the po- sitions affirmed " {Aids to Refection, i. 168). It has become an accepted distinction among a certain class of metaphysicians and divines all over Europe and the Engiish-speakinfj people of the great American continent. These parties commonly illustrate their views in some sut.h way as the following : The mind, they say, must have some power by which it gazes immediately on the true and the good. But sense, which looks only to the phenomenal and fluctuating, can- 286 GNOSIOLOGY. not enable us to do so. As little can the logical understanding, whose province it is to generalize the phenomena of sense, mount into so high a sphere. We must therefore bring in a transcendental power — call it Reason, or Intellectual Intuition, or Faith, or Feel- ing — to account for the mind's capacity of discovering the universal and the necessary, and of gazing at once on eternal Truth and Good- ness, on the Infinite and the Absolute. Now there is great and important truth aimed at and meant to be set forth in this language. The speculators of France, who derive all our notions from sense, and those of Britain, who draw all our maxims from experience, are overlooking the most wondrous proper- ties of the soul, which has principles at once deeper and higher than sense, and the faculty which compounds and compares the material supplied by sense. And if by Reason is meant the aggregate of Regulative Principles, I have no objections to the phrase, and to cer- tain important applications of it, but then we must keep carefully in view the mode in which these principles operate. We may mark the following errors or oversights in the school re- ferred to : (1.) Intuitive Reason is not, properly speaking, opposed to Sense, but is involved in certain exercises of sense. There is knowledge, and this intuitive, in all sense-perception. It may be proper indeed to draw the distinction between the two elements which are indissolubly wrapt up in the one concrete act. Kant en- deavored to do so, but gave a perversely erroneous account when he represented intuition as giving to objects the form of space and time; whereas intuition simply enables us to discover that bodies are in space, and events in time. There is certainly a high intuitional capacity involved in every exercise of mind which takes in extension, or regards objects as exercising property. And then it is altogether wrong to represent sense as the one original source of experiential knowledge, which is derived from consciousness as well as from per- ception through the senses. (2.) It is wrong to represent Intuitive Reason as opposed to the Understanding. There is intuitive reason involved in certain exercises of tlie understanding, as when we infer that what is true of a given class must be true of each of the mem- bers of the class. Nor is it to be forgotten Jthat the understanding can abstract and generalize upon a great deal more than the objects of sense ; it can do so upon the materials supplied by consciousness, and by all the further convictions of the mind, such as the con- science. (3.) It is wrong to represent the mind as gazing immedi- ately and intuitively on the true or the good, upon the necessary or CRITICISM OF DISTINCTIONS. 287 the universal. It can indeed rise to the conception of these, but, in order to its doing so, it has to engage in abstraction and generaliza- tion, which' makes the truth gained no longer a truth of pure reason, but of reason and understanding combined. It is not consistent with the natural history of the mind to represent it as at once rising to the contemplation of some ideal of the fair and good, which it is able to look at when the spirit is not agitated by passion or bedimmed by earthliness. We are undoubtedly led by native taste to admire the beautiful, but it is when embodied in a lovely object. We are con- strained, in spite of a rebellious will, to approve of the good, but it is when a good action, or rather a good being performing a good action, is presented to the mind. The general ideas of the true, the fair, and the good, do not spring up intuitively in the mind, but are fashioned out of intuitive elements by those addicted to reflection. (4.) It is preposterously wrong to suppose that the mind can employ intuitive convictions in philosophic or religious speculations without any associated exercise of the logical understanding. Not being im- mediately conscious of the Regulative Principles of the mind, we cannot employ them in discussion till we have first inquired into their nature by induction, and embodied their rule in a clear definition or a precise axiom. II. Distinction between " A Priori " and " A Posteriori " Principles. — Prior to the time of David Hume, the phrase " k priori " was applied to the procedure from principle to consequent, and from cause to effect, using the word cause in a wider and looser sense than in these times ; while the phrase " h posteriori " was em- ployed to characterize the procedure from consequent to antecedent, or from effect to cause. Cudworth's language is, " The abstract uni- versal rationes, ' reasons,' are that higher station of the mind, from whence, looking down upon individual things, it hath a commanding view of them, and, as it were, * h priori ' comprehends or knows them" (Fmmul. Mor. iii. iii. 2). Since the publication of Hume's philosophic works, and more especially since the Krilik of Pure Reason came to have such an extensive influence, " k priori " denotes whatever is supposed to be in the mind prior to experience; and "k posteriori " whatever has been acquired by experience. The dis- tinction thus indicated and designated may be admitted without allowing that it probes the subject to its depths, and certainly with- out admitting all the views usually associated with it. Even in re- gard to knowledge acquired by experience, I maintain that, prior to 288 GNOSIOLOGY. its acquisition, the mind has the power of acquiring it. The bodily frame has certainly the organs of sense prior to seeing, hearing, tast- ing, touching, or smelling. The mind has certainly the capacity of perception before it actually observes any external object, and the power of comparison before it can notice relations. And, in ac- knowledging the distinction, we must ever protest against the idea that any universal or necessary truth can be discerned by the mind without a process of k posteriori induction and arrangement. So far as the phrase is applied to general maxims, it should be on the understanding that they have been drawn by a logical process out of the individual k priori convictions. Closely allied to the question of k priori truth is the question, Can there be an h priori science? This is a topic which will come more fully before us in some of the chapters of the next book. There is a sense in which certain sciences are k priori, that is, the principles of them are in the constitution of the mind, and are ready to manifest themselves in individual acts. In another sense there can be no k priori science, for science employs general principles, and there are no such principles known k priori. But there are sciences the ground pi'inciples of which are not the generalizations of a gathered experience, but of the necessary decisions of the mind, and these sciences may be called k priori with perfect propriety, provided al- ways that it be understood that, while the general law is in the mind prior to its manifestation, it is discovered by us only through the generalization of the individual exercises. Distinction between Form and Matter. — This phrase- ology was introduced by Aristotle, who represented everything as having in itself both matter (J/Aij) and form (etSos). It had a new signification given to it by Kant, who supposes that the mind sup- plies from its own furniture a form to impose on the matter presented from without. The form thus corresponds to the k priori element, and the matter to the k posteriori. But the view thus given of the relation in which the knowing mind stands to the known object is altogether a mistaken one. It supposes that the mind in cognition adds an element from its own resources, whereas it is simply so con- stituted as to know what is in the object. This doctrine needs only to be carried out consequentially to sap the foundations of all knowl- edge, — for if the mind may contribute from its own stores one ele- ment, why not another? why not all the elements ? In fact, Kant CRITICISM OF DISTINCTIONS. 289 did, by this distinction, open the way to all those later speculations which represent the whole universe of being as an ideal construction. There can, I think, be no impropriety in speaking of the original principles of the mind as forms or rules, but they are forms merely, as are the rules of grammar, which do not add anything to correct speaking and writing, but are merely the expression of the laws which they follow. As to the word " matter," it has either no mean- ing in such an application, or a meaning of a misleading character. Distinction between Subjective and Objective. — The word " subject " has a diversity of meaning in the English language. In logic, it denotes the term of which predication is made; in com- mon discourse, it means the topic about which affirmations are made ; and in metaphysics, the mind contemplating an object. The term " object," too, is not without its ambiguity. Sometimes it stands for a thing contemplated by the mind, and sometimes for a thing considered in itself, and often it denotes the aim or end which the mind has in any of its pursuits. I am afraid it -v^ill be impossible, in common discourse, to dej^rive the phrases of any one of these various significations. The adjectives " subjective " and " objective " have not had such a variety of meaning, and the nouns " subject " and "object," when used together, in philosophic discussion, should be limited so as to be exactly coincident with them. They should, in my opinion, never be used except as correlative phrases, the terms " subject " and " subjective " being employed to designate, not the mind in itself, but the mind as contemplating a thing; and the terms " object " and " objective " to denote, not a thing in itself, but a thing as contemplated by the mind. It is clear that if the phrases were employed in this sense when used at the same time, we should be saved an immense amount of word-warfare, in which subject and object, subjective and objective, act so prominent a part. We should be prevented from speaking, as is so often done, of the mind as sub- ject or subjective, except when it is looking at something; or of the thing as an object or objective, except when it is contemplated by a thinking mind. We would also know at once what is meant when it is said that the subject implies the object, and the object the subject. It does not mean that the existence of mind implies an external thing to be contemplated, or that a thing, as such, implies a mind to con- sider it; it signifies simply that the one implies the other, as the hus- 290 GNOSIOLOGY. band implies tbe wife, and the wife a husband, from which we can- not argue that every man must have a wife and every woman a husband, but merely that when the man is a husband he must have a wife, and when the woman is a wife she must have a husband. The subject implies the objective merely in the sense that when the mind is contemplating a thing, it must be contemplating it; and that when a thing is contemplated, it must be contemplated by a con- templative mind. With a large school of metaphysicians and divines, the words " subjective " and " objective " are used in a Kantian sense, and are made, without the persons employing them being aware of it, to bring in the whole peculiarities of the critical philosophy. In the philosophy which has germinated from Kant, the subject mind is sup- posed to have a formative power, and the object thing is supposed to be a thing, or phenomenon, plus a shape or a color given it by the mind. Pioceeding on this view, the phrase " subjective " comes to express that which is contributed by the mind in cognition. Thus, by a juggling use of these phrases, persons are being involved, with- out their having the least suspicion of it, in a philosophy which makes it impossible for us ever to know things except under aspects twisted and distorted no man can tell how far from the reality. We can be saved from this only by using them as correlatives, and in- sisting, when we do so, that the subjective mind is so constituted as to know the object as it is, under the aspects presented. Logical ant> Cheonological Order of Ideas. — Sir W. Hamilton quotes a saying of Patricius, " Cognitio omnis a mente primam originem, a sensibus exordium habet primum." The distinc- tion is deep in Kant, and has been fully and skilfully elaborated by M. Cousin. It is said that there are ever two factors in the forma- tion of our a priori ideas, reason and experience; and that logically reason is first, whereas chronologically experience comes first. The distinction is not clearly nor happily drawn by such phraseology. For it is difficult to understand what is meant by " origin " as distinguished from " beginning ; " and what is meant by " logical " in such an appli- cation: it cannot mean, according to the rules of formal logic it must mean, according to reason; and then comes in the important fact that reason and experience are not, properly speaking, opposed. The distinction, however, points to a truth, inasmuch as our intui- tions, as mental faculties, laws, or tendencies, are in the mind prior CRITICISM OF DISTINCTIONS. 291 to the exercise of them. There is a difficulty, however, in appre- hending what is meant by the logical or reason element being first, but not chronologically. The intuition as a law is in the mind prior, chronologically, to the experience of it. The individual exhibition of the conviction and the experience of it come chronologically to- gether. It is true, however, in the fullest sense, that an experience is necessary in order to our being able to present the necessary con- viction in the form of an abstract definition or general maxim. This distinction connects itself with another, which I am now to examine. Distinction between Reason as the Cause, and Sense AND Experience as the Occasion. — Cudworth refers to ideas of a high kind, which he admits are " most commonly excited and awakened occasionally from the appulse of outward objects knocking at the door of the senses," and complains of men not distinguishing " betwixt the outward occasion, or invitation, of these cogitations, and the immediate active or productive cause of them " (Immut. Mor, IV. ii. 2). It is allowed that, apart from sense and experience, the mind cannot have any ideas: still, it is not experience which pro- duces our necessary ideas; it is merely the occasion of them, the true cause being the reason. Thus, without an exercise of sense, there could be no idea of space in the mind ; but then the operation is merely the occasion on which the idea of space is produced by an inherent mental energy. Aloof from a special event, there could be no idea of time ; but then it is affirmed that upon an event becom- ing apprehended, the idea of time, already potentially in the mind, is ready to spring up. Without the observation of contiguous con- currences, there could be no idea of cause; but on such being pre- sented, the mind is found to be already in possession of an idea of cause by which to bind them in a necessary connection. Till some human action is presented, there could be no idea of moral good; but on a benevolent action being apprehended, the idea of moral good is ready to spring up. There is important truth which this account is intended to ex- press, but it does not bring it out accurately. It is not so easy to settle precisely the difference between cause and occasion: the oc- casion is, in fact, one of the elements of the unconditional cause, or rather, concause, which produces the effect. In regard to the original faculty or law of the mind, it is undoubtedly the main element of the complex cause which issues in a spontaneous intuitive conviction. 292 GNOSIOLOGY. But there is need of a concurrence of circumstances in order to this faculty operating. But instead of confusedly binding all these up in the one expression " occasion," it is better to spread them out indi- vidually, when it will be found that each acts in its own way. Thus we should show that an action of the organism is needful to call our intuition of sense-perception into exercise. We should show, too, that an apprehension of an object or objects is needed, in order to call into action our intuitions as to the infinity of time, and eternal relations, and moral good ; and then it may be seen that this apprehen- sion may not have been got from sense, and that in our primary cognition of the object there may have been intuition ; thus, it is because we intuitively know every object as having being, that we declare its identity of being at different times. Again, in respect to the generalized maxim, or notion, the account is fitted to leave a very erroneous impression, for it makes it appear as if it were upon the occasion of the presentation of a material object that there springs up the abstract idea of space; and of an event becoming known, that there arises the idea of time ; or of a succession of events being apprehended, that the mind forms an idea of cause. It is all true that there must be experience in order to the construction of the abstract or general notion, but the notion is formed, after all, by the ordinary process of abstraction and generalization. BOOK m. ONTOLOGY. CHAPTER I. KNOWING AND BEING. These are topics which the subtle Greek mind de- lighted to discuss from the time that reflective thought was first awakened within it ; that is, from at least five hundred years before the Christian era. I confess I should like to have been present when they were handled on that morning when Socrates, as yet little more than a boy, met the aged Parmenides, so venerable with his noble aspect and hoary locks, and Zeno, tall and grace- ful, and in the vigor of his manhood, in the house of Pythodorus, in the Ceramicus, beyond the walls of Athens.^ At the same time, I fear that, after all, I could have got little more than a glimpse of the meaning of the interlocutors. It is clear that even Socrates him- self is not sure whether he is listening to solid argument, or losing himself among verbal disquisitions and dialectic sophistries. And who will venture to make intelligible to a modern mind — even to a Teutonic mind — the ar- guments by which Parmenides and Zeno prove that Being is One, and the impossibility of Non-Being ; or translate with a meaning, into any other tongue, the sub- tleties of those Dialogues, such as Parmenides and the Sophist, in which Plato makes his speakers discourse of * See the opening of the Parmenides of Plato. 294 ONTOLOGY. the One and of ttie Existing? The grand error of all these disputations arises from those who conduct them imagining that pure truth lies at the bottom of the well, whereas it is at the surface ; and in going past the pure waters at the top, they have only gone down into mud and stirred up mire. We are knowing^ and knowing ^ being, at every waking hour of our existence, and all that the philosopher can do is to observe them, to sepa- rate each from the other, and from all with which it is associated, and to give it a right expression. But the ancient Greeks, followed by modern metaphysicians, im- agined that they could do more, and so have done infi- nitely less. They have tried to get a more solid founda- tion for what rests on itself, and so have made that insecure which is felt to be stable. They have labored to make that clearer which is already clear, and have thus darkened the subject by assertions which have no meaning. They have explained what might be used to explain other truths, but which itself neither requires nor admits of explanation, and so have only landed and lost themselves in distinctions which proceed on no dif- ferences in the nature of things, and in mysteries of their own creation. Knowing, in the concrete, is a perpetual mental exer- cise, ever under the eye of consciousness ; and we can by an intellectual act separate it from its object, and con- template it in the abstract. In all acts of knowledge we know Being in the concrete ; that is, we know things as existing, and we can separate in thought the thing from our knowledge of it, and the thing as existing from all else which we may know about the thing. The science which treats of Being, or Existence, is Ontology. If we define Ontology as the science of what we know of things intuitively, we are giving it a precise field which KNOWING AND BEING. 296 can be taken in from the waste and cultivated. Gnosiol- ogy and Ontology may be treated to a great extent to- gether in Metaphysics. Still they can be distinguished, and the distinction between them should be steadily kept in view. The one seeks to find what are our original powers, the other to determine what we know of things by these powers. In order to reach this second end, we must go over, one by one, the various classes of objects known by our intuitive powers ; but this not, as in Gnosiology, to de- termine what the power is, but what is the object which it looks at. I have been seeking to accomplish the one as well as the other of these all throughout this treatise. By simple cognitive or presentative powers (as Hamil- ton calls them), we know objects in the singular and in the concrete ; by consciousness we know self as having being, and capable of thought and feeling ; by percep- tion we know body as extended and resisting pressure ; and by both we know self and not-self as having an ex- istence independent of the mind contemplating them. By the reproductive powers we are led to believe in the past event recalled by memory as real, that is, as having occurred in time past ; and round space, known in the concrete in perception, and time, known with Hke event in reminiscence, there gather a number of beliefs which can be ascertained and expressed. Among the objects thus known or believed in, — and, it should be added, imagined out of the materials supplied by the cognitive and reproductive powers, — the mind can discern neces- sary relations, that is, arising from the very nature of the objects. Tiie mind, too, is led to know and believe in a moral excellence in the voluntary acts of intelligent be- ings, and to discover the bearings and relations of moral good and evil. 296 ONTOLOGY. Such a survey as this enables us to determine what are the kinds of reality which the mind is able to discover. In sense-perception and consciousness it is a real thing, known as having certain qualities. In our beliefs, too, we look to a real thing having attributes. We believe, we must believe, space and time to have an existence, not as mere forms of thought, but altogether independent of the contemplative mind. Our judgments may or may not look to a reality, for we may discover relations among imaginary as well as among actual objects. But when the objects are real the relations discovered are also real. The reality discovered by the moral power lies in a quality of certain voluntary acts performed by persons possessed of conscience and freewill. We thus see how such an inspection settles for us not only that there is a reality, but what is the sort of reality ; whether a present or an absent reality, whether an inde- pendent reality or a reality in objects. Thus we main- tain that abstract and general notions have a reality when the objects from which they are drawn are real ; but we are not to understand, as Plato's language would lead us to believe, that they have a reality independent in some intelligible world. The relations of quantity treated of in mathematics have a reality, but it is only in space and time, and in bodies as occupying space and existing in time. Cause and effect have a i-eality inde- pendent of the mind which observes them ; but this is, after all, in the substances which act and are acted on. Moral good and sin are certainly both real, but their ac- tuality is in the dispositions of responsible beings. I flatter myself that by the account given in this treatise, I have avoided the error of those who would dissociate the native laws of the mind from things. Some give a priori principles a formative power in the KNOWING AND BEING. 297 mind, and make them add to the objects, or even create the objects. Now, they are no doubt in the mind, but they are there as powers to enable us to apprehend ob- jects. They are in our very constitution as laws, but they are laws in relation to things. They exist as tendencies prior to operation, but when they come into action it is as cognitions, beliefs, and judgments in regard to objects. But what can metaphysical science do in the way of establishing the reality of objects ? Truly it can do very little ; and by going beyond its own narrow terri- tory, by trying, for instance, to prove first truths, or get a ground for original principles, it has often exposed it- self to most damagmg assaults. Still it can do some- thing if it keep within its own impregnable fortress. It can show what our original principles are, how they work, and what they say ; and all this surely is matter of great speculative importance, independent of the ques- tion as to whether we can confide in their depositions. In particular, it can unfold the process by which the mind attains its convictions, and show how they stand related to things. Thus — in consciousness we have the object — that is, self immediately under inspection, so that we might as well deny the existence of the cognitive con- viction as of the thing apprehended. Again, in sense- perception we have an immediate knowledge of an extended object, and this ever coexisting with the im- mediate knowledge of self, so that we may as well deny self as the external object perceived by the conscious self. Then our intuitive beliefs are not independent of our knowledge of objects ; they all proceed on a cog- nition, or, as derived from it, an apprehension of objects. It is in contemplating the objects known or conceived that we believe them to have qualities which do not fall 298 ONTOLOGY. under our immediate inspection ; and, if we deny our in- tuitive beliefs, it must be on principles which would un- dermine our intuitive knowledge. Again : our intuitive judgments all proceed on our cognitions and beliefs ; on comparing objects known or believed in, we perceive them to have certain necessary relations involved in their very nature. Our original convictions thus consti- tute an organic whole, springing from immediate knowl- edge as the root, and rising into comparisons and faiths, as the branches and leaves. As we thus go round about the tower of human knowl- edge, we find it a compact structure, consolidated from base to summit. He who would attack any part must attack the whole, and he who would attack the whole will find every part strengthening it. The foundation is sure, being well laid ; the building is also sure, as being firmly built upon it ; and he who would assail the super- structure will find the basis bearing it up throughout. The objections which may be advanced against the reality of things will be answered in the chapters which follow. CHAPTER II. IDEALISM. I. Theee are associations in the mind joined with our primitive intellectual and moral exercises. The mivth is not in the merry peal, nor the melancholy in the fune- real toll of the bell ; nor is the music in the flute or organ, but in the soul which breathes and beats and rings in har- mony with the external movements. The view differs according to the point from which men take it, according to men's natural or acquired temperaments, tastes, and characters, and according to the circumstances in which they are placed. How different the estimate which is formed of a neighbor's character, according as he who judges is swayed by kindness or malignity, by charity or suspicion ! The scene varies according to the humor in which we happen to be, quite as much as it changes according to the light or atmosphere in which we survey it. Hope gladdens everything as if it were seen under an Italian sky, whereas disappointment wraps it in mist and cloud. Joy steeps the whole landscape in its own gay colors, whereas sorrow wraps it as in the sable dress of mourning. Do not such facts, known to all observ- ers of human nature, and dwelt on by poets as being largely their stock-in-trade, prove that in all our ideas, views, notions, opinions, there is a subjective element no less prominent and potent than the objective ? And if there be, what limits are we to set to it ? Is our meta- physical philosophy agreed with itself on this subject? 300 ONTOLOGY. Or, with all its refinements, can it draw a decided line which will forever separate the one from the other? 1. All knowledge through the senses is accompanied with an organic feeling, that is, a sensation. Our imme- diate acquaintance with the external world is always through the organism, and is therefore associated and combined with organic affections pleasing or displeasing. Certain sounds are felt to be harsh or grating ; others are relished as being sweet or melodious or harmonious. Some colors, in themselves or in their associations, are felt to be glaring or discordant, while others are enjoyed as being agreeable or exciting. In short, every sense- perception is accompanied with a sensation, the percep- tion being the knowledge, and the sensation the bodily affection felt by the conscious mind as present in the organism. He who is no philosopher finds little diffi- culty in distinguishing the two in practice ; and it ought not to be difficult for the man who is a philosopher to distinguish the two in theory. Every man can distin- guish the sugar in itself from the sweet flavor which we have in our mouth when we taste it, or the tooth and gum from the toothache which is wrenching them ; and the metaphysician is only giving a philosophic expression to a natural difference when he distinguishes between sensation and perception. 2. Certain mental representations are accompanied with emotion. Thus the apprehension of evil as about to come on us, or those whom we love, raises up fear ; the contemplation of good, on the other hand, as likely to accrue to us, or those in whom we feel an interest, excites hope. This is only one example of the kind of emotions which attach themselves to all mental pictures of objects, as having brought, or as now bringing, or as likely to bring, pleasure or pain, or any other sort of good or evil, IDEALISM. 301 and which steep the objects in their own fluid, and im- part to them their peculiar hue. Hence the gloom cast over scenes fair enough in themselves, as by a dark shadow the effect of the interposition of a gloomy self ob- structing the light ; hence the splendor poured over per- haps the very same scenes at other times, as by light streaming through our feelings, as through stained glass or irradiated clouds. Hence the pleasure we feel in certain contemplations, and the pain called forth _ by others. Hence the fear that depresses, that arrests all energy, and at last sinks its victim ; hence the hope which buoys up, which cheers and leads to deeds of dar- ing and of heroism. But while the two are blended in one mental affection in the mind, it is not difficult, after all, to distinguish between the object known and the accompanying emotion ; between the trumpet sounding and the martial spirit excited by it ; between the canvas and oil of Titian and the feeling which his ascending Mary raises within us, glowing and attractive as the splendors of the dying day ; between our friend as he is in himself and the deep and tender regard which we must entertain towards him. 3. Certain ideas are associated with other ideas which raise emotions. It does not concern us at present to ex- plain the nature of the laws which govern the succes- sion of our ideas. It is certain that ideas which have at any time been together in our mind, either simultane- ously or successively, in a concrete or complex state, will tend to call forth each other ; and an idea which has no emotion attached may come notwithstanding to raise up feeling through the idea with which it is associated, and which never can come without sentiment. Thermopylae, Bannockburn, and Waterloo look uninteresting enough places to the eye, and to those who may be ignorant of 302 ONTOLOGY. the scenes transacted there ; but the spots and the very names stir up feeling like a war-trumpet in the breasts of all who know that freedom was there delivered from menacing tyranny. Thus it is that the buds and blos- soms of spring, and the prattle of boys and girls, call forth a hope as fresh and lively as they themselves are. Thus it is that the leaves of autumn, gorgeous though they be in coloring, and the graveyard where our fore- fathers sleep, clothed though it be all over with green grass, incline to musing and to sadness. But neither is it very difficult to distinguish between an apprehension or representation and its associated feeling, to separate between the primrose and the spring emotion which bursts forth on the contemplation of it, between the grave of a sister and the sorrowful tenderness which it evokes. 4. The mind of the mature man cannot look on any one object without viewing it in a number of relations. A house presented to an infant may be nothing but a col- ored surface with a certain outline ; to the mature man it is known as a house, possibly with a loved dweller within. An apple falling to the ground is known intui- tively simply as an object in motion ; but by the edu- cated man it is known as a vegetable fruit falling to the ground in obedience to what seems a universal law of matter. Does not the mind, in such cases, add to the ob- ject relations imposed by itself ? To this I answer, that all that the mind does is, to add to its original a further knowledge, a knowledge of relations discovered in the objects themselves. The object before us is not merely a colored shape ; it is a house, and as a house we are en- titled to regard it. The apple falling to the ground is in fact a fruit obeying a power of gravitation. The let- ters of a book are to the infant mere black strokes ; to IDEALISM. 803 the child learning to read they are figures, signs of sound ; to the grown man or woman they are signs of thoughts or feelings, addressed by a writer to a reader : but the truth is, the letters are real things under all these aspects ; real strokes, real signs of sounds and sense. So far as we proceed accurately, according to the laws of thought using experience, and are employed in discovering the actual relations of things, the conceptions reached imply a reality quite as much as the intuitions with which the mind starts. I am not prepared to say that these are all, but they are the more important, of the natural influences which operate to color or enlarge our knowledge. The Author of our nature certainly means us to add to our knowledge by continual observation, and to graft the acquired on the original stock ; and he has superinduced attached sensations, and made the very laws of our nature to call in associated thoughts and feelings in order to intensify and elevate our enjoyment, or in some cases to be a prog- nostic of evil which should ever be associated with of- fence and disgust. So far as music gives us more plea- sure than wire vibrations, so far as a Swiss valley, guarded by IMont Blanc, or the Matterhorn, or the Jung- frau, is finer than an accumulation of grass, trees, stones, and snow ; so far as the spot where a great and good man was born is more stimulating than the uninteresting hut, which is all the bodily sense perceives, — we owe it to the beneficence of God, who has made us sensitive as well as cognitive beings. So far as we are led to shrink from baser scenes, it is by a provision which is intended to keep us back from what might issue in pain or in sin. It should be added that, while this is no doubt the origi- nal intent of these peculiarities of our constitution, they may, in the voluntary and sinful abuse of them, become 304 ONTOLOGY. a seduction to evil and a scourge to inflict the keenest misery. They may lead man, through a misgoverned imagination, to paint in glowing colors a fictitious object, and then pursue it, when he " Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head ; This shade he worships for its golden hues, And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues." Thus it is that the mind irradiates with a romantic tinge objects unworthy in themselves, and then goes on to love them and delight in them. Man may thus come, too, to be haunted by spectres of his own creation, to be mocked by his own shadow seen across some of the deeper gorges of the earth, and striding opposite as he himself moves. Thus it is that there are to us, for our gratification, glowing colors, burnishing what are in themselves only mists and damps, and spanning the heavens above us with a bow of hope, assuring us that these waters which threaten will not overwhelm us ; thus it is, too, that there are hideous mock suns person- ating the very brightest light which God has planted in these heavens. Still the man of good sense and of sim- ple honesty will find no difficulty in distinguishing prac- tically between things which I have been seeking in this chapter to separate theoretically. II. Our imaginations in their wide excursions and our fancies in their cameo forms have a large field allotted to them in our nature, and this is to be carefully culti- vated. They have a territory rich and fertile in poetry, in romance, in art, and in these they have the privilege of expatiating at pleasure. The ideal spirit is an elevated and an elevating one. There are elements in human IDEALISM. 306 nature fitted — I believe intended — to produce and foster it. It is meant that sensations sliould warm our knowl- edge into a glow, that feelings should buoy up our intel- lectual notions into a higher region than they themselves can reach, and that our colder apprehensions should be linked to others which are more fervent. The glory thus cast around objects, commonplace enough it may be in thenoselves, renders them more lovable and beloved. The melody which the ear gives to the sound increases our interest in the thought or sentiment uttered, and turns, if I may so speak, prose into poetry. The ideal spirit may be an incentive to glorious enterprise ; it steeps the country before us — mountain, vale, sea, and island — in sunlight, and thus allures us to explore it. It is especially elevating when it takes a moral direction, when it places before us a high model to which we ever look, and to which we would become assimilated, and sets us forth amidst sacrifices made, to accomplish some high end, reaching forth far in time or into eternity. Still, it is of the utmost moment that the person steadily draw the distinction between our knowledge of the ob- ject and the light in which we view it. Still idealism is to be confined within very rigid limits. It has no place allowed it in science. Newton did not seek to construct the law of gravitation out of his own brain, nor to impart additions to it on the pretence of improving and beautifying it. What he did was to dis- cover it and detect its exact nature. I am aiming throughout this whole treatise to show that idealism is not entitled to have a place in metaphysics any more than in science. I cannot but admire some of the grand cosmogonies which have been drawn out in Eastern tlieosophies, and by the genius of such men as Plato and Leibnitz, but all 306 ONTOLOGY. the while I feel that they have nothing solid to rest on, and I find that the actual world is more wondrous far than the ideal ones. So I am sure that the realistic method, if carefully prosecuted, will exhibit to us a far grander philosophy than human speculation has ever done. III. While much may be said in praise of the ideal spirit, I can bestow no commendation on idealism as a philo- sophic system, that is, the system which would raise our associated sentiments to the rank of cognitions. I allow that it is vastly superior to sensationalism, which acknowl- edges only the visible and the tangible ; but, in making this allowance, it is proper to add that, on the principle that extremes meet, it sometimes happens that there are persons at one and the same time sensationalists and idealists, believing only in the physical, and yet not be- lieving the physical to be real. But, speaking of ideal- ism in itself, it is an unphilosophic system, and, in the end, has a dangerous tendency. Its radical vice lies in maintaining that certain things, which we intuitively know or believe to be real, are not real. I say, certain things ; for were it to deny that all things are real, it would be scepticism. Idealism draws back from such an issue with shuddering. But, afl&rming the reality of certain objects, with palpable inconsistency it will not admit the existence of other objects equally guaranteed by our constitution. This inconsistency will pursue the system remorselessly as an avenger. Idealism com- monly begins by declaring that external objects have no such reality as we suppose them to have, and then it is driven or led in the next age, or in the pages of the next speculator, to avow that they have no reality at all. At this stage it will still make lofty pretensions to a real- IDEALISM. 307 ism founded, not on the external phenomenon, but on the internal idea. But the logical necessity speedily chases the system from this refuge, and constrains the succeed- ing speculator to admit that self is not as it seems, or that it exists only as it is felt or when it is felt ; and the terrible consequence cannot be avoided, that we cannot know whether there be objects before us or no, or whether there be an eye or a mind to perceive them. There is no way of avoiding this black and blank scep- ticism but by standing up for the trustworthiness of all our original intuitions, and formally maintaining that there is a reality wherever our intuitions declare that there is. The idealist has indeed a truth, which he weaves into the body of his system, but that truth is misapprehended and perverted. Thei'e are impressions and inferences ever mingling, naturally or inadvertently, lawfully or unlawfully, with our knowledge ; and he confounds these, when it is his business, as a professed philosopher, to distinguish them in theory — as men of common sense ever distinguish them in practice. His system is not clearness, but confusion. He Ijas dived below the sur- face, but has not, after all, gone down to the bottom so as to see all, and his view of the deep is more obscure than if he had remained above. Amazed or enraptured with the discovery of certain facts immediately below that which is patent to the vulgar eye, he looks on them as the main or sole facts, and henceforth overlooks all the superficial ones, forgetting that it is true in philos- ophy, as in geology, that the rock strata which jut out into the most prominent peaks are those which, if we follow them, dive down into the deepest interior. He has sought to attain a higher position, but has stopped half-way, and his views, after all, are not so clear as 308 ONTOLOGY. those obtained further down, and they are certainly much more confusing than those which he might have had, had he reached the clear height above all dimming in- fluence ; they are at best like those which the traveller gets on cloudy days when he has climbed a certain eleva- tion up the Alps, and, in the midway mists, catches oc- casional glimpses of the green valleys below him, and of the imposing mountain-tops and sky yet far above him. CHAPTER III. SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. In what I have to say on this subject I do not refer to the forms which scepticism takes in the common affairs of life, where it is often not only legitimate, but a very high duty to discharge in exposing lying and deceit, and generally, in clearing the moral atmosphere. I treat it only as setting itself against deeper and fundamental truth. Scepticism may take a variety of forms which, how- ever, differ in some being more thorough-going than others, some denying the veracity of certain of our cog- nitions, others denying the trustworthiness of all. The most common form which it takes in the present day is what is called Agnosticism. The difference between this and absolute scepticism is, that while the one denies all truth the other tells us that truth cannot be found, especially in philosophy and religion. Agnosticism is Nescience in that it declares that we cannot find truth ; Nihilism in that it asserts that there is nothing to be known. All these forms agree in this, that they set aside theoretically fundamental truths and practically deprive us of the benefit which we might derive from the lofty ideas and faiths which we ought to cherish. Like most kinds of folly, scepticism commonly does not reach its last stage at once, but advances step by step. Some philosopher of eminence sets aside one of our intuitions, and then an advancing thinker, impelled by logical con- 310 ONTOLOGY. sistency, or by the sharpness of his mind, or by levity or wantonness, or by the love of paradox or of notoriety, shows how, on the same ground, we may deny them all. It was thus that Berkeley, in denying the substantial ex- istence of body, prepared the way for Hume, who denied the substantial existence of spirit ; and thus that Kant, in affirming that space and time had no existence out of the mind, opened a path for Fichte, when he declared that the external object in space might also be the crea- tion of the mind ; and for Schelling and Hegel when they made mind and matter. Creator and creature, all and alike ideal. I have already discussed scepticism dis- guised as idealism ; I am now to offer a few remarks on an avowed scepticism. 11. Let us understand precisely how far a sceptic may go. In doing so it is essential to remember the distinction between the spontaneous and reflex use of our intuitions. Under the first of these aspects they not only claim au- thority, they secure practical concurrence and obedience. Every man knows that he has a bodily frame, and be- lieves that it exists in space, and that if he would go in the nearest way to a given point, he must walk in a straight line. Doubt and denial are possible only in re- gard to the reflex statement of intuitive principles. Every man is in fact convinced that he has a solid bodily frame, and that the nearest way to a particular place is a straight line ; but it is possible for him, if he chooses, to deny the propositions in which these truths are con- veyed ; it is quite competent for him speculatively to assert that he has not a body, and that the shortest road to a given point is a crooked line. And this leads me to point out in what respect seep- SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 311 ticism may be allowable, and ■wherein it may even be beneficial. The dogmatist often lays down and employs, for purposes lawful and unlawful, principles represented as indisputable, which have not the sanction of our con- stitution, or which may be expressed in a form only par- tially or approximately correct. Great interests may often be involved in having these principles doubted or disputed. Without this we may find, before we are aware of it, great moral or religious truths assaulted or undermined ; or we may set up for defence of the citadel of truth a crazy and insecure turret, which is a positive weakness, and which, as it falls, may give an easier inlet to the enemy. This, then, is the special mission of the sceptic : it is to lay a restraint on the dogmatist ; at times, if need be, to assail or to lash him. It would be wrong to deny that the scepticism of Hume has cleared the philosophic atmosphere of many weakening and de- leterious influences which had been gathering for cen- turies. The great sin of scepticism lies in this, that it attacks indiscriminately the good and the evil, and would destroy both as by a consuming fire. But surely there may be a means of securing all the good ends which scepticism has produced, without the accompanying de- struction of the good. Socrates seems to me to have succeeded in this, when he attacked the pretentious sys- tems of his age, at the same time that he held resolutely by every great moral and spiritual truth. Let it be ad- mitted that our spontaneous convictions guarantee a truth, but let it be avowed at the same time that any given philosophic expression of them is fallible, and may be doubted, disputed, and denied. Let it be understood, as to every philosophic principle proffered, that we are entitled, nay, in duty bound, to examine it before we as- sent to it, and that the burden of establishing that it is a 312 ONTOLOGY. tborough transcript of the law in the mind lies on him who employs it. By this simple rule, rigidly enforced and scrupulously followed, we might have all the benefits which have arisen from the siftings of scepticism, with- out its fearful throes, and its slaughters — terrible as those of a battle-field — of noble credences and inspiring hopes. III. But what are we to do with the sceptic, that is, with one who speculatively denies intuitive truth ? 1. There are some things which we ought not to do with him. We should not waste our precious feeling in professing to sympathize with him, as if he were practi- cally troubled with doubts as to the existence of himself, or his friends, or his enemies, or his food, or his money, or his earthly interests ; for in respect of all these he is quite as firm a believer as the man who comes to con- vince him with an apparatus of argument. Nor need we be at the trouble of appointing a guard to watch him lest he run against a carriage, or step into a river, or fall over a precipice. For whatever he may profess to us or to himself, he believes in the existence of the carriage, the river, and the precipice, and has a salutary awe of their perilous power. Nor would there be any propriety in declaring him mad, and sending him to Bedlam, for he only pretends to have lost his senses, or rather, never to have had them, and in his simulation has over-acted his part, and gone beyond the madman, who never sets him- self against intuitive trutli. (a) 2. There are some things which we cannot do with the sceptic, and therefore should not attempt to do. We cannot answer him by argument, that is, mediate proof ; for this, if followed sufficiently far back, will conduct ua SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 313 to a principle which cannot be proven, and which there- fore the sceptic will deny. It can scarcely be regarded as a complete refutation to demonstrate that his sceptical denials are inconsistent with certain afl&rmations made by him ; for he may admit the inconsistencies, and then found his argument against the possibility of discovering truth, on the circumstance that he and every other must inevitably fall into contradictions. It is not even a con- futation when it is shown that this scepticism is suicidal, or violates the law of contradiction, for he may find no position so suited to him as that which maintains that all knowledge is contradictory. IV. Still there are some things which we can do for or with the sceptic. 1. We may make use of any admissions avowed by him or incidentally made, in order to shut him up into truths which he denies. Sometimes we may be able to show that the truth which he allows implies the truth which he disallows. In other cases we can ask him on what principle or ground he assents to certain truths ; and when we have his answer, we may be able to show how, on the same grounds, he must admit other propositions. Thus we ask the Berkelej'an on what ground he admits the existence of the subject mind ; and, whatever it be, we may show that the same ground sup- ports the doctrine of the existence of the object matter. Thus, too, we may ask how it is that Kant admits the existence of a thing behind the phenomenon, and by help of this process proves that the phenomenon is the thing. If Fichte admit an Ego, or a self, or a belief, it is competent to proceed thereon to show that we are 314 ONTOLOGY. thereby constrained to believe in the existence of objects out of self and independent of our belief. This argu- mentum ad hominem is perfectly allowable. We can say to him, If you admit this^ you must also admit that. If he is so guarded and stinted in his admissions as to say that he allows this merely practically, and not theoretic- ally or absolutely, we are entitled to demand of him that he likewise believe that practically. Thus, if he admit practically that he has at any time had (what Hume allows at the outset) an impression, or idea, we may show him that he should also admit practically that he has an abiding and an identical self, and that he contem- plates objects out of him, and independent of him, and, as more important, that he should admit practically that he is a responsible being, and must give account of him- self. Should he try to save himself by declaring that he believes the first, or second, or third of those truths, only because obliged to do so, we may show that there is a similar necessity requiring him to believe the rest. This is a telling argument, which has been used with great skill and power by many of the opponents of scep- ticism in all ages. Ifc is emphatically an argumentum ad hominem, for it is one which may be used not merely against a particular individual, but with men as men, with every man. No man but admits something, and that something may be employed to make him admit something else. It can be shown that he who doubts believes, that he who denies affirms, and that he who doubts or denies that he doubts or denies, is in the very act of making an affirmation. Such a process goes at least to shut the mouth of the sceptic, for if he open his mouth, it is to let out language which you can turn against him. His only refuge is in a thoroughgoing scepticism, which affirms that man's supposed knowledge SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 315 is contradictory, and that all argument is delusive. You can at least insist on this scepticism that it remain silent, and not advance arguments v^bich are inconsistent with that judgment or belief to which it would appeal, (b') V. We can carefully explain the nature of a primitive con- viction. The method named under the last head is one which we may quite legitimately employ in dealing with the sophist or the caviller ; we may always kill him with his own weapons. But we have a more satisfactory mode of dealing with the truth-seeking and the truth- loving. We can ask them to examine the nature of the convictions to which we invite them to yield. 1. It can be shown that the mind declares of itself that its primitive perceptions contain knowledge. I do not urge this as a mediate proof, or a new and indepen- dent proof ; it is simply the statement of a fact, that the mind, in contemplating its original convictions, affirms that there is knowledge in them. As to some of its states, it finds that they contain sensations, sentiments, imaginations, but in every one of them, at the same time, a cognition of self, and in certain of them a cogni- tion of an object or truth external to self and indepen- dent of it. It is to these that we ask consent without the aid of further evidence. 2. It may be shown that the intuitive principles of the mind are native, catholic, necessary. It is not truth merely to the individual man, but to all men ; not merely to all men, but to all intelligent beings. It is certain, not only to me but to all beings throughout the universe who have capacity to understand it, that if two straight lines proceed an inch without coming nearer, they will proceed a million of miles without coming nearer ; and 316 ONTOLOGY. ndt only is the wilful infliction of pain a sin on earth, it is a sin in every other part of the universe. 3. The mind declares of certain truths that they need no other truth to support them. There are cases in which it feels that it needs evidence in order to gain its assent. It does not allow that there was such a man as David, king of Israel, or Philip, king of Macedon, till proof is brought forward. It may remain in doubt as to what truth there is in the poetical accounts of the siege of Troy, because no valid evidence is produced. But it draws a distinction between these cases and others in which it needs no probation. When it is asserted that the moon is inhabited, the mind asks proof, but it asks none when it is affirmed that I am the same person to- day as I was yesterday. It is conceivable that the first of these assertions might be substantiated by evidence which would command our assent, but it would not, after all, be a more rational assent than that which we give at once to the other. 4. The mind knows self-evident truth to be the most certain of all truths. What is it that the sceptic de- mands ? It is all-important to put this question, and to fix him down to a specific answer. Does he demand proof or argument ? Then it implies that he would be satisfied with argument. But it can be shown him that in argument there is a first principle involved, the de- pendence of conclusion on premises, and in the last re- sort we come to a premiss not admitting of probation. But surely he who admits argument must admit all that is in argument ; but as to the premiss with which we set out, it is not less evident, it is more evident, than the con- clusion. It is so far a weakness in a proposition, or rather of our mind in reference to it, that we do not see it to be true or false immediately. The mind declares SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 317 that the most certain of all truths are those which are seen to be true at once and in themselves. VI. It can be shown that there is a congruity and con- sistency among the original and derivative convictions of the mind. This is not urged as if it were an indepen- dent and unassailable demonstration. It is conceivable that the power from which human power derives its power might have made all men liable to deception, in- capable of being ever detected, in consequence of its being carefully provided that no inconsistencies should creep in. This is certainly possible, though it is by no means probable, according, at least, to our laws of judg- ment. For, if this power be a Being possessed of good- ness and truth, it is not conceivable that he should form any creature liable to be deceived ; and, if it be a ca- pricious or malignant power, it is by no means probable that all the deceptions would turn out to be congruous : here or there would come out an original conviction in manifest contradiction to another original conviction, or a derivative principle openly inconsistent with both. The consistency of the parts is thus a sort of corroboration of the truth of each part and of the whole. To give only two examples: It is by intuition, I have endeavored to show, that the intellect, on discovering an effect, looks for a cause, and it always finds, in fact, that for every effect there is a cause ; and as it finds this again and again, in an extended and invariable experience, it has in this, not a primary proof, but a secondary confirma- tion of its intuition. Again, we expect that sin will not go unpunished ; from time to time we find it punished in this life, and are thus strengthened in our convictions that it will all be punished at last. All the intuitions 318 ONTOLOGY. Have such corroborations in the daily experience of every man, and these are felt to give a satisfaction to the mind (c). vn. When we reach the great truth that there is a right- eous God, we can plead the Divine veracity in favor of the trustworthiness of the intuitive convictions planted by him in our constitution. Not that even this considera- tion can be adduced as a primary or an absolute proof ; for it is only on the supposition that a God exists that it can be legitimately employed, and our conviction of the Divine existence presupposes a confidence in the veracity of our intuitions and arguments founded on them. But this truth, being once admitted, becomes henceforth the keystone which keeps all the separate and independent parts of our constitution in one compact and stable whole, which can never be broken down, but will be felt to be the stronger the greater the weight that is laid upon it. VIII. No truths, recognized by the mind as such, can be shown to be contradictory. In this line of thought a sound metaphysics may accomplish some good ends. Sceptics have labored — and others not sceptics have done their best to aid them — to prove that certain prop- ositions approved of by the mind are contradictory. But the attempt has failed, as can be shown, I believe, as to every case in which it has been tried. It can be proved, in regard to the opposed propositions, that, in some cases, they have no meaning ; that, in other cases, the mind pronounces in favor of neither the one nor the other ; that, in several cases, the propositions seem to be con- SCEPTICISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 319 tradictory only because improperly stated, and when they are properly enunciated the difficulty altogether dis- appears ; and that, in the remaining cases, there is merely a difficulty in proposing a positive reconciliation, and no actual inconsistency. There is little risk of scepticism producing any in- jurious influence in the common business of life. The reason is, that circumstances ever pressing on the atten- tion constrain men to proceed on their spontaneous prin- ciples, which are sound, even when the speculative prin- ciples are altogether infidel. He who is hungry will partake of food, lie who sees an offensive weapon about to strike him will avoid it, even though they be not pre- pared to avow, as philosophers, that there are any such gross things as bread or iron in the universe, or though they may doubt, as metaphysicians, whether food be fitted to nourish, or a sword to kill. It is not in such urgent matters of animal comfort and temporal interest that scepticism is wont to manifest itself, but in far different subjects, and especially in leading persons to doubt of the great truths of morality and religion, the practical action in which is more under the control of the will. Even liere there will be times when the spontaneous be- lief or impulse will overmaster the speculative unbelief ; as when moral indignation, implying a belief in the reality of sin, is excited by a mean or dishonest action, or when disease has seized us, and death seems in hard pursuit, and tlireatens to hurry us to the judgment-seat. Such occasions will call forth the action of conscience, in spite of all efforts to repress it. But when there is noth- ing of this description to arouse the native feeling, un- belief may succeed in keeping us very much out of the way of all that would call the internal sentiment into activity, and for days, or weeks, or months together it 320 ONTOLOGY. may seldom arise to utter a protest or create a disturb- ance of any description ; and, even when the deeper moral or religious powers come forth to assert their au- thority, there may be a vigorous, and so far a success- ful, warfare waged with them ; that is, they may be so far repressed as not to command the will, or lead to any practical operation. Hence the evil of scepticism in chilling the ardor of youth, and confirming the hardness of age, in repressing every noble aspiration and every high effort, while it leaves the soul the servant or slave of the lower, the sensual, the ambitious, the proud, or the selfish impulses of the heart. (a) M. Morel was asked to examine a prisoner who pretended to be deranged, and asked him how old he was ; to which the prisoner replied, " 245 francs, 35 centimes, 124 carriages," etc. To the same question, more distinctly asked, he replied, " 5 metres, 75 centi- metres." When asked how long he had been deranged, he an- swered, "Cats, always cats." M. Morel at once proclaimed his madness to be simulated, and states : " In their extreme aberra- tions, in their most furious delirium, madmen do not confound what it is impossible for the most extravagant logic to confound." (See Psychological Journal, October, 1857.) (h) It is thus that when Professor Ferrier declares that we know the object mecum, we can show that on the same ground, whatever it be, he should admit an object independent of the me. He says {Scottish Philosophy, pp. 19, 20), that " no man in his senses could require a proof that it [that is, real existence] is." I am glad of this appeal. A man's senses tell him that the stone before us has an existence in- dependent of the contemplative mind. (c) Speaking of primary convictions of the mind, Hamilton says: " They are many, they are in authority coordinate, and their testi- mony is clear and precise. It is therefore competent for us to view them in correlation ; to compare their declarations ; and to consider whether they contradict, and, by contradicting, invalidate each other. This mutual contradiction is possible in two ways : 1st, it may be that the primary data themselves are directly or immediately contradictory of each other ; 2d, it may be that they are mediately or ON THE CONDITIONED AND THE UNCONDITIONED. 321 indirectly contradictory, inasmuch as the consequences to which they necessarily lead, and for the truth and falseliood of which they are therefore responsible, are mutually repugnant. By evincing either of these, the veracity of consciousness will be disproved ; for, in either case, consciousness is shown to be inconsistent with itself, and consequently inconsistent with the unity of truth. But by no other process of demonstration is this possible." He adds : "No attempt to show that the data of consciousness are (either in themselves or in their necessary consequences) mutually contradictory has yet suc- ceeded." CHAPTER IV. (Supplementary.) on the conditioned and the unconditioned. Leibnitz complained of Sophie Charlotte of Prussia that she asked the why of the why. There are some truths in regard to which we are not warranted to ask the why. They shine in their own light ; and we feel that we need no light, and we ask no light, wherewith to see them, and any light which might be brought to aid would only perplex us. In all such cases the mind asks no why, and is amazed when the why is asked ; and feels that it can give no answer, and ought not to attempt an answer. Other truths may be known only mediately, or by means of some other truth coming between as evi- dence. I need no mediate proof to convince me that I exist, or that I hold an object in my hand which I call a pen ; but I need evidence to convince me that there are inhabitants in India, or that there is a cycle of spots presented in the sun's rotation. In regard to this class of truths I am entitled — nay, required — to ask the tohy. Not only so ; if the truth urged as evidence is not self-evident, I may ask the ivhy of the why, and the why of that why, on and on, till we come to a self-evident truth, when the why becomes unintelligible. Now we may say of the one class of truths that they depend (to us) on no condition, and call them Unconditioned ; whereas we must call the other Conditioned, for our rational nature demands another truth as a condition of our assenting to them. But this is not precisely what is meant, or all that is meant, by 322 ONTOLOGY. conditioned and unconditioned in philosophic nomenclature. We find that not only does one truth depend on another as evidence to our minds, but one thing as an existence depends on another. Every- thing falling under our notice on earth is dependent on some other thing as its cause. All physical events proceed from a concurrence of previous circumstances. All animated beings come from a paren- tage. But is everything that exists thus a dependent link in a chain which hangs on nothing ? There are intellectual instincts which re- coil from such a thought. There are intuitions which, proceeding on facts ever pressing themselves on the attention, lead to a very dif- ferent result. By our intuitive conviction in regard to substance, we are introduced to that which has power of itself. True, we dis- cover that all mundane substances, spiritual and material, have in fact been originated, and have proceeded from something anterior to them. But then intuitive reason presses us on, and we seek for a cause of that cause which is furthest removed from our view. It is a favorite principle with Aristotle that there cannot be an infinite series of causes ; see, in particular, Meiaph. i. Minor, ii., where he supports his doctrine by very subtle reasoning. The principle has been sanctioned by most profound thinkers ; see Clarke, Demons, of Being and Attrih. of God, ii., where the proposition is supported by very doubtful metaphysics. I am inclined to think we come to the principle by finding that in following various lines we come to a stop ; particularly, in following substance and quality, we come to self-ex- istent substance. Pursuing various lines, external and internal, we come to a substance which has no mark of being an effect ; to a sub- stance who is the cause, and, as such, the intelligent cause, of all the order and adaptation of one thing to another in the universe ; who is the founder of the moral power within us, and the sanctioner of the moral law to which it looks, and who seems to be that Infinite Existence to which our faith in infinity is ever pointing, — and now the mind in all its intuitions is satisfied. The intuitive belief as to power in substance is satisfied ; the intuitive belief in the adequacy of the cause to produce its effects is satisfied ; the native moral con- viction is satisfied ; and the belief in infinity is satisfied. True, every step in this process is not intuitive or demonstrative, — there may be more than one experiential link in the chain ; but the intui- tive convictions enter very largely ; and when experience has fur- nished its quota, they are gratified, and feel as if they had nothing to demand beyond this One Substance possessed of all power and of all perfection. ON THE CONDITIONED AND THE UNCONDITIONED. 323 If we would avoid the utmost possible confusion of thought, we must distinguish between these two kinds of conditioned and uncon- ditioned : the one referring to human knowledge, and the discussion of it falling properly under Gnosiology ; the other to existence, and so falling under Ontology. The conditional, in respect of knowl- edge, does, if we pursue the conditioned sufSciently far, conduct at last to primary truths, which are to us unconditioned. These are the first truths which we have been seeking to seize and express in this treatise. We cannot be made to think or believe that these pri- mary truths should not be positive truths, and regarded as truths by all other beings capable of comprehending them. But it is to be carefully remarked, and ever allowed, that some of those truths which are original and independent to us, may be seen by higher in- telligences to be dependent on, or to be necessarily interlinked with, other truths. We may by patient induction ascertain what are to us unconditioned truths; but it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to determine what truths are so in themselves, and are seen to be such by the omniscient God. Again, as to conditioned and uncondi- tioned existence, it is quite clear that nothing falls under our notice in this world which is absolutely unconditioned. But the intuitive convictions of the mind, proceeding on a few obvious facts, lead us by an easy process to an unconditioned Being, — that is, whose exist- ence depends on no other. But the question is started, Can we conceive the Unconditioned ? Of truth unconditioned to us we can conceive. It consists, in fact, of that body of truths on which we are ever falling back in the last resort; in other words, of those original perceptions and principles which I have been seeking to unfold in this treatise. But can we conceive of unconditioned existence ? I find no difficulty in doing so. Our intellectual and moral convictions are not satisfied till we reach underived being. I admit the word " unconditioned " is neg- ative; it implies merely the removal of a condition. But we re- move the condition, because we come to cases where our intuitive reason does not insist on it, and where our intuitive perceptions rest on undei'ived existence. Pursuing any one of our native convic- tions, cognitive, fiducial, judicial, or moral, it conducts us to, and falls back on, an object of whom we have a positive conception, — that is a Being from whom all conditions are removed, and whose existence and perfections are themselves underived, while they are the source of all power and excellence in the creature. The above may seem to some rather a prosaic account of a sub- 324 ONTOLOGY. ject which has been lost in such high and dim speculations. But the question is, Is it the correct version? It seems rather an arbi- trary use of language on the part of Sir W. Hamilton {Metaph. Lect. 38) to make the Unconditioned a genus including two species, the Infinite and Absolute. When the Unconditioned is referred to, let us always understand whether it means unconditioned in thought or existence. CHAPTER V. (supplementary.) the antinomies of kant. Kant tries to show that the speculative reason conducts to proposi- tions which are contradictory of each other (Kriiik d. r. Vern. p. 338). It follows that it cannot be trusted in any of its enunciations. Kant extricates himself from the practical difficulties in which he was thereby involved, by declaring that the speculative reason was not given to lead us to positive objective truth, and by appealing from it to the practical reason. It is, however, always competent to the sceptic to maintain that, if the speculative reason deceive us, so also may the practical reason. The doctrine which I hold is, that the reason does not lead directly nor consequentially to any such contradictions. In regard to some of the counter - propositions. Reason seems to me to say nothing on the one side or the other. In regard to others, there seem to be intuitive convictions, but the contradiction arises from an erroneous exposition or expression of them. It is of course easy, on such abstruse subjects, to construct a series of propositions which may seem to be contradictory, or in real- ity be contradictory, — if they have a meaning at all. But these propositions will be found not to be the expression of the actual deci- sions of the mind. Let us examine the contradictions which are sup- posed to be sanctioned by reason. I am to content myself with look- ing at the propositions themselves, without entering on the elaborate demonstrations of them by Kant. These demonstrations proceed on the peculiar Kantian principles in regard to phenomena, space, time, and the nature of the relations which the mind can discover, and these I have been seeking to undermine all throughout this treatise. It will be enough here to show that Intuitive Reason sanctions no contradictions on the topics to which Kant refers. THE ANTINOMIES OF KANT. 325 FIRST ANTINOMY. The world has a beginning in The world has no beginning in time, and is limited in regard to time, and no limits in space, but space. is in regard to both infinite. Now upon this I have to remark, first, that as to the "world," we have, so far as I can discover, no intuition whatever. We have merely an intuition as to certain things in the world, or, it may be, out of the world. Our reason does declare that space and time are infinite, but it does not declare whether the world is or is not infi- finite in extent and duration. We shall find under another anti- nomy what is our conviction as to God. Reason does not declare that space or time, or the God who inhabits them, must be finite. SECOND ANTINOMY. Every composite substance con- No composite thing can consist sists of simple parts, and all that of simple parts, and there cannot exists must either be simple or exist in the world any simple sub- composed of simple parts. stance. Our reason says nothing as to whether things are or are not made up of simple substances. Experience cannot settle the question started by Kant in one way or other. We find certain things com- posite ; these we know are made up of parts ; but we cannot say how far the decomposition may extend, or what is the nature of the furthest elements reached. THIRD ANTINOMY. Causality, according to the laws There is no such thing as free- of nature, is not the only causality dom, but everything in the world operating to originate the phe- happens according to the laws of nomena of the world ; to account nature. . , for the phenomena we must have a causality of freedom. Here I think reason does sanction two sets of facts. One is the existence of freedom : tlie other is the universal prevalence of some sort of causation, which may differ, however, in every different kind of object. These may be so stated as to be contradicitory. But our convictions in themselves involve no contradiction : it is impossible to show that they do by the law of contradiction, which is that " A 326 ONTOLOGY. is not Not- A." " There is some sort of causation even in voluntary- acts ; " and " the will is free ; " no one can show that these two propositions are contradictory. FOURTH ANTINOMY. There exists in the world, or in An absolutely necessary being connection with it, as a part or does not exist, either in the world as the cause of it, an absolutely or out of it, as the cause of the necessary being. world. Our reason seems to say that time and space must have ever ex- isted and must exist. When a God is found, by an easy process the mind is led by intuition to trace up these effects in nature to him as the underived substance. No contradictory proposition can be estab- lished either by reason or experience. A little patient investigation of our actual intuitions will show that all these contradictions, of which the Kantians and Hegelians make so much, are not in our constitutions, but in the ingenious structures fashioned by metaphysicians to support their theories. CHAPTER V. (supplementary.) ON the relativity of knowledge. Sir William Hamilton has not always been successful, as it appears to me, in fusing what he adheres to in the realism of Reid with what he has adopted from the forms of Kant. His own special theory is that of Relativity, which acknowledges a reality, but de- clares that we can never know it except under modifications imposed by our minds. It can be shown, I think, that there is a doctrine of relativity which has been proceeded upon, and expressed, though commonly in a loose way, by nearly the whole chain of philosophers from the earliest ages of reflective thought down to the time when Schelling and Hegel propounded the philosophy of the absolute, which has been overthrown by Hamilton. But it cannot be proven that the great body of metaphysicians would have acknowledged the peculiar doctrine of the Scottish philosopher. There is evidently a ON THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 327 true doctrine of relativity, if only we could express it accurately. It should be admitted : (1.) That man knows only so far as he has the faculties of knowledge; (2.) That he knows objects only under aspects presented to his faculties ; and (3.) That his faculties are limited, and consequently his knowledge limited, so that not only does he not know all objects, he does not know all about any one object. It may further be allowed : (4.) That in perception by the senses, we know external objects in a relation to the perceiving mind. But while these views can be established in opposition to the philosophy of the absolute, it should ever be resolutely maintained on the other hand : (1.) That we know the very thing ; and (2.) That our knowledge is correct so far as it goes. We admit a subtle scepticism when we allow, with Kant, that we do not know the thing itself, but merely a phenomenon in the sense of appearance ; or, with Hamilton, that we perceive merely the relations of things. I have endeavored to show that the mind begins with the knowledge of things, and is thence able to compare things (see supra, p. 58). A still more dangerous error follows where it is affirmed that our knowledge is always modified by the percipient mind, and that we add to the object something which is not, or at least may not, be ia it (see supra, pp. 28, 29). Dr. Mansel, in his able and learned Bampton Lectures, has applied this doctrine of relativity to the knowledge of God, with the view of undermining, which he has successfully done, the theology of the ab- solute. I am prepared to show, bj' a large collation of passages, that the great body of Christian divines have maintained two important points in regard to our knowledge of God. One is that man cannot rise to a full knowledge of God, and that there is much in God which we cannot know. This arises, they show, from the greatness of God, on the one hand, and the weakness of man on the other. But they also hold as another point, that man may truly know God by the light of nature, and still more specially by the light of reve- lation. No doubt they differ in the language wliich they employ to set forth their views ; their mode of statement and illustration is often vague and loose ; and they frequently employ the phrases and distinctions of philosophic systems whose day has long gone by. Still it can be shown that they meant to set forth both these truths. To quote only a few passages from the Fathers : Irensus is trans- lated, " Invisibilis quidem poterat eis ipse (Dens) propter eminen- tiam : ignotus autera nequaquam propter providentiam " (Contra Omnes Uceret. ii. 6). Tertullian says : " Deus ignotus esse non 328 ONTOLOGY. debuit" (Adv. Marcionem, iii. 3). In like manner Lactantius: "Deus igitur noscendus est in quo solo est Veritas " (De Ira, i.). Augustine illustrates what we can know of God thus : " Aliud est enim videre, aliud est totum videndo comprehendere " (Epist. Class. iii. 21 ; see another passage, supra, p. 138). The great body of Christian divines have certainly not maintained : (1.) That God can be known only under forms or modifications imposed by the thinking mind ; (2.) That our idea of God's eternity and omnipres- ence is simply negative ; or (3.) That man has a faith in an infinite God, with no corresponding knowledge or idea. I admit, at the same time, that there have been some respectable theologians holding a doc- trine somewhat like that of Hamilton and Mansel. In particular, Bishop Peter Browne maintains that the true and real nature of God and his attributes is '* utterly incomprehensible and ineffable ; " but then he acknowledges that the Fathers did not lay down the distinc- tion on which he proceeds, nor " pursue it logically through all the particulars of our knowledge, human and divine ; " and he complains in his work on The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understanding, 3d edit., that, so far from his views being generally received, now, twenty-five years after their publication, " the many pious and learned defenders of the faith either declined proceeding on the foundation there laid, or have generally given only some gen- eral, short, and imperfect hints of the analogy." CHAPTER VI. (supplementary.) examination of mr. j. s. mill's metaphysical system. By far the ablest opponent of intuitive truth in this country, in our day, is Mr. John Stuart Mill. It will be necessary to examine his own metaphysical system : I speak thus because he has in fact a metaphysics underlying his whole logical disquisitions. He says, indeed, in the introduction to his Logic, that " with the original data or ultimate premises of our knowledge, with their number or nature, the mode in which they are obtained, or the tests by which they may be distinguished, logic in a direct way has, in the sense in which I mill's metaphysical system. 329 conceive the same, nothing to do." Yet Mr, Mill is ever and anon diving down into these very topics, and uttering very deciiled opin- ions as to our knowledge of mind and body, as to the foundation of reasoning and demonstrative evidence, and as to our belief in causa- tion. This I exceedingly regret ; the more so that his logic in topics remote from first principles is distinguished for masterly exposition, for great clearness, and practical utility. If it be answered that a thorough logic cannot be constructed without building on the foun- dations which metaphysics supply, then I have to regret that Mr. Mill's metaphysics should be so defective. His philosophy might seem to be that of Locke ; but in fact it omits many truths to which Locke gave prominence, as, for example, the high function of intu- ition. Mr. Mill's metaphysical system is that of the age and circle in which he was trained ; it is derived in part from Dr. Brown, and his own father, Mr. James Mill, and to a greater extent from M. Comte. The only satisfactory metaphysical admission of Mr. Mill is, "Whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility of question " (Lor/ic, Introd.). What does this admission amount to ? First, as to self, or mind, he says, " But what this being is, although it is myself, I have no knowledge, other than the series of its states of consciousness." As to body, he says the reason- able opinion is that it is the " hidden external cause to which we refer our sensations " (Logic, i. iii. 8). Sensation is our only primary mental operation in regard to an external world ; and perception is discarded "as an obscure word " (compare Dissertations, Vol. i. p. 94). "There is not the slightest reason for believing that what we call the sensible qualities of the object are a type of anything in- herent in itself, or bear any affinity to its own nature. ' ' " Why should matter resemble our sensations ? " {Logic, i. iii. 7). Speaking of bodies, and our feelings or states of consciousness, he says : " The bodies, or external objects which excite certain of these feelings, to- gether with the powers or properties whereby they excite them, — these being included rather in compliance with common opinion, and because tlieir existence is taken for granted in the common language, from which I cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or profierties as real existence appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy." It is curious to see how extremes meet. Mr. Mill seems in every way the opponent of the Kantian school. Yet he quotes with approbation and evident delight the words of Sir W. Ilnmilton, " All that we know is therefore phenomenal, phenomenal of the unknown" (l. iii. 7). 330 ONTOLOGY. r have to ask my readers to compare this philosophic system with the account I have submitted in this treatise, and judge for them- selves in the light of consciousness. He admits that whatever is known by consciousness is beyond possibility of question ; but I hold that by consciousness we know much more than he admits. He allows that we know " Feelings," — the favorite but most inadequate language of the French sensationalists and of Bi-own. I maintain that our consciousness is of Self as Feeling, and not of Feelings separate from Self. If he ask me to define Self, which I maintain that we thus know, I ask him to define Feeling, which he acknowl- edges that we thus know. It will then be seen that neither can be defined, because both are original perceptions of consciousness. He admits as indisputable only what we are conscious of. I maintain that we must admit all we intuitively know, and that we know body immediately. Mr. Mill, following Brown, maintains that we know body by inference, as the cause of what we feel. Brown can get the inference ; for he holds resolutely by the doctrine that we intuitively believe that every effect has a cause ; and discovering phenomena in us which have no cause in us, he seeks for a cause without us. This process would, I think, leave the external world an unknown thing, and could never give us a knowledge of extension (which not being in the effect we could not place in the cause ) ; still we might thus argue that an external woi'ld existed. But how can Mr. INlill, who denies intuitive causation, get the external world at all? Where, in- deed, is he to get even his causation as an experiential law ? For in a mind shut up darkly from all direct knowledge of anything be- yond, the most common phenomena must be sensations and feelings of which we can never discover a cause, or know that they have a cause. Kant saved himself from the consequences of his speculative system by calling in the Practical Reason ; and Hamilton accom- plished the same end by calling in Faith. I think that these great men were entitled to appeal to our moral convictions and to our necessary faiths. These I hold to be beyond dispute, no less than our consciousness or our feelings. But Mr. Mill makes no such ap- peal to save him from the void ; and he abstains from expressing any opinion as to the great fundamental religious truths which men have in all ages intertwined with their ethical principles, and from which they have derived their brightest hopes and deepest assurances. He is silent on these subjects, as if, on the one hand, unwilling to deny them, and as if he felt, on the other hand, that by his miserably de- fective philosophic principles he had left himself no ground on which to buUd them. mill's metaphysical system. 331 Mr. Mill's derivative logic is admirable; but it is difficult to find what the final appeal is to be. " There is no appeal from the hu- man faculties generally; but there is an appeal from one faculty to another, from the judging faculty to those which take cognizance of fact, the faculties of sense and consciousness " (iii. xxi. 1). This would seem to make sense and consciousness the final appeal. But all that sense gives, according to him, is an unknown cause of feel- ings, and all that consciousness gives is a series of feelings. He says, very properly, that we should make " the opinion agree with the fact;" but he seems to leave us no means of getting at any other facts than floating feelings. I have already noticed his defective account of our moral percep- tion (see supra, p. 225), and of our belief in causation (p. 214), and I may yet have occasion to refer to his theory of mathematical axioms (infra, p. 348). It now only remains at this place to show that he has given an utterly erroneous account of the tests or criteria of primitive or fundamental truth. He is obliged, as for himself, to admit some sort of test. We must admit, he says, " all that is known by con- sciousness ; " and he says there is "no appeal from the human faculties generally." I do regret that he has never patiently set him- self to inquire what is the knowledge given by "consciousness," and in the testimonies of the " faculties generally." This would have led him to truths which he ignores, or contemptuously sets aside. He examines the views of the defenders of necessary truth on the supposition that the test of such truth is that " the negation of it is not only false but inconceivable " (Logic, ii. v. 6). He then uses the word "inconceivable" in all its ambiguity of meaning. By ** conceivable " he often means that which we can apprehend, or of which we may have an idea, in the sense of an image : " When we have often seen or thought of two things together, and have never in any one instance either seen or thought of them separately, there is, by the primary law of association, an increasing difficulty, which may in the end become insuperable, of conceiving the two things apart." He then proceeds to show that what is inconceivable by one man is conceivable by another ; that what is inconceivable in one age may become conceivable in the next. " There was a time when men of the most cultivated intellects, and the most emancipated from the dominion of early prejudice, would not credit the existence of antipodes " (ii. v. 6). I acknowledge that the tests of intuition have often been loosely stated, and that they have also been illegitimately applied; just as the laws of derivative logic have been. But they 332 ONTOLOGY. have seldom or never been put in the ambiguous form in which Mr. Mill understands them; and it is only in such a shape that they could ever be supposed to cover such beliefs as the rejection of the rotund- ity of the earth. The tests of intuition can be clearly enunciated, and can be so used as to settle for us what is intuitive truth. It is not the power of conception, in the sense either of phantasm or notion, that should be used as a test, but it is self-evidence with necessity; the necessity of cognition, if the intuition be a cognition; the necessity of belief, if it be a belief; the necessity of judgment, if it be a judgment. There was a time when even educated men felt a difEculty in conceiving the antipodes, because it seemed contrarj^, not to intuition, but to their limited experience ; but surely no one know- ing anything of philosophy, or of what he was speaking, would have maintained, at any time, that it was self-evident that the earth could not be round, and that it was impossible, in any circumstances, to believe the opposite. The tests of intuition, clearly announced and rigidly applied, give their sanction only to such truths as all men have spontaneously assented to in all ages. CHAPTER VII. (supplementary.) the nescience theory. — mr. herbert spencer. In the reaction against the high ideal or k priori philosophy of the past age, we run a considerable risk of sinking into a systematic Nescience, in the darkness of which there may be quite as much rash speculation as in the empyrean of transcendentalism. Sir W. Hamilton, who did so much to overthrow the Philosophy of the Absolute, has unfortunately prepared the way for this other extreme. Comparing the two philosophies, he says : '■'■ In one respect both coincide; for both agree that the knowledge of Nothing is the prin- ciple or result of all true philosophy: — Scire Nihil, — studium, quo nos laetamnr utrique. But the one openly maintaining that the Nothing must yield every- THE NESCIENCE THEORY. 333 thing is a philosophic omniscience; whereas the other holding that Nothing can yield nothing is a philosophic nescience. In other words, the doctrine o£ the Unconditioned is a philosopliy confessing relative ignorance, but professing absolute knowledge; while the doc- trine of the conditioned is a philosophy professing relative knowl- edge, but confessing absolute ignorance " {Discus. App. i. Pliilos. A). Dr. Mansel has applied the principles of Hamilton to the over- throw of the Absolute Theology which, he shows, has involved itself in inextricable inconsistencies and contradictions. But it was seen by all men capable of looking at consequences, that the doctrine might be turned to far different purposes. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his First Principles, professes to build on the ground furnished to him by Hamilton and Mansel, and has reached results which they would disavow. It remains for the school of Hamilton to show whether this can be done with logical consistency. He justly ob- serves that " it is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowl- edge is a knowledge of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are appearances; for appearances without reality is unthinkable " (p. 88). But then he maintains that this Reality beyond the appearances is and must forever remain unknown to man. Xor is his general doctrine much improved by his allowing that "besides definite consciousness there is an indefi- nite consciousness which cannot be formulated," for this indefinite thing is only the faith and negative judgments of Hamilton in a still vaguer form. He reckons it the province of science to master the known appearances; and he allots to religion the sphere of unknown realities, " that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply " (p. 17). This is the " fundamental verity," " com- mon to all religions," " the ultimate religious truth of the highest possible certainty," that "the Power which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." He quotes with approbation the language of Hamilton about its being the highest effort of thou