TRUTHS
BY
JAMES McCOSH, D. D., LL. D., LITT. D.
THE COGNITIVE POWERS.
i vol. i2mo, $1.50.
THE MOTIVE POWERS.
i vol. I2mo, $1.50.
Ti
1 1 05.
FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAL
TRUTHS
BEING A TREATISE ON
METAPHYSICS
BY
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,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS.
7% Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Co.
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.
PRINCETON, N. J., February, 1889.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
DEFINITION OF THE SCIENCE. The Jive Mental Sciences . . 1
PART FIRST.
GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
CHAPTER I.
NATURE OF FIRST TRUTHS. Meaning of the terms "philosophy"
and "philosophical "......... 5
CHAPTER II.
THREEFOLD ASPECTS OF INTUITIVE TRUTHS. Innate Ideas . 12
CHAPTER III.
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 METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION . . 22
CHAPTER VI.
ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF INTUITION. Locke and Kant ... 27
CHAPTER VII.
LEGITIMATE USE OF FIRST PRINCIPLES. The Sophists . . 31
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII. (SUPPLEMENTARY.)
BRIEF CRITICAL REVIEW 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 OF BODY BY THE SENSES. Account by Mutter.
Cheselden case. Review of Berkeley, Kant, Hamilton, Fichte,
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 VII.
SUBSTANCE. Critical review of opinions of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke,
Berkeley, Hamilton 100
CONTENTS. Vll
CHAPTER VIII.
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, Essence. View of Locke . .110
CHAPTER IX.
BEING 118
CHAPTER X.
EXTENSION. Views of Bain, Midler 121
CHAPTER XL
NUMBER. Views of Aristotle, Locke, and Buffier . . . .124
CHAPTER XII.
MOTION. Views of Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Franz case . .126
CHAPTER XIII.
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, Anselm, Abelard, 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
ofj. S. Mill, Locke, Kant, Hamilton, Bain 181
yiii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
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 Lay ic . . .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 II.
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. Kant s 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 II.
FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH AND EVOLUTION 249
CONTENTS. 1X
BOOK II.
GNOSIOLOGY.
CHAPTER L
THE ORIGIN OP OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS. Statement and
criticism of Locke s views 256
CHAPTER II.
LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, IDEAS, AND BELIEFS . . .265
CHAPTER III.
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 Pmson and
n 285
Experience
BOOK III.
ONTOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
KNOWING AND BEING 293
CHAPTER H.
IDEALISM 2 "
CHAPTER III.
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. (SUPPLEMENTARY.)
Examination of Mill s Metaphysical system 328
CHAPTER VIII. (SUPPLEMENTARY.)
The Nescience theory of Mr. Herbert Spencer 332
BOOK IV.
METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE SCIENCES.
CHAPTER I.
METAPHYSICS IN THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE . . . 337
CHAPTER II.
METAPHYSICS OF PHYSICS. Whewell 339
CHAPTER III.
METAPHYSICS OF MATHEMATICS. Criticism of Kant, Mansel, Stew
art, and Mill 343
CHAPTER IV.
METAPHYSICS OF FORMAL LOGIC 350
CHAPTER V.
METAPHYSICS OF ETHICS. Locke 352
CHAPTER VI.
METAPHYSICS OF 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
(//.era) 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 exam
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 OF 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.
(&) 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 PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
CHAPTER I.
NATURE OF FIRST TRUTHS.
I.
THERE 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 may 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, which 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 which intui
tion looks.
III.
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 body 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, say in breathing and digestion, they
act best when we take no notice of them. An officious
intermeddling with them may tend rather to disturb
their action. Bub 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 that it is as impossible to determine these as it is
to ascertain the laws of the external universe, by a priori
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.
GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
The term Philosophy " has not had a very distinct meaninc for
the last two or three ages. It should always be carefully distin-
gmshed from Science, which generalizes the scattered operations of
nature into laws. Perhaps it may most appropriately be denned 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 (JDe Anim. III. 4),
Plato had spoken of the soul as VO^TOS 1-071-09, the place
of intelligence. Adopting this view, Aristotle calls the
soul the depository of principles which are not in action,
but in capacity, ovre eVreAexeto, aAXa Suva/m TO. 1817. 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.
III.
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 (/coeval emnai) 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.
comparatively 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 I "
Under this aspect they are properly designated as
Koival ^Woidi, Trpwrat IWoiat, TrpaiTa /xo^/xara, naturae judicia,
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 Cherbmy, 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 II. of an abstract or general notion, such as goodness or the good;
nor III. 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 I. 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.
I.
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.
II.
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. But 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 them 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 I. of
this work.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPONTANEOUS AND EEFLEX USE OF 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 oversights, 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 Precision der Verstandeseinsicht betrifft, so
thun sie derselben vielmehr geraeiniglich einigen Abbruch, well sie
nur selten die Bedingung der Regel adaquat erfiillen (als casus in
terminis), und iiberdies diejenige Anstrengung des Verstandes oft-
mals schwachen, Regeln im Allgemeinen, und unabhangig von den
besonderen Umstanden der Erfahrung, nach ihrer Zulanglichkeit,
einzusehen, und sie daher zuletzt mehr wie Formeln, als Grundsatze,
zu gebrauchen angewohnen " (Krit. d. r. V. Trans. Log. p. 119;
Rosen.). This shows tbat Kant had no correct idea of the way in
which the general rule is reached. The same view is evidently
taken by many of the formal logicians of our day.
CHAPTER V.
SOUECES OF EEEOE 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 PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
heavy ; " " Combustible bodies are chemically 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 "heart," 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.
ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF INTUITION.
I.
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.
II.
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 rjower
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) Arj age ago it was of all things the most important to point
out the errors of Locke. Throughout this treatise I am opposing
ERRONEOUS 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.
LEGITIMATE USE OF FIKST PKINCIPLES.
I.
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 MORAL,
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,
$770"! yap irov irdvrcav xP r )f J - arc }V /jierpov avOpwirov eTz/ai, riav fjiev ovrbiv, ws
<TTI, T&V Se /j.7] oi/TQiv, &s ovK H<TTIV. This Socrates expounds ns mean
ing &$ ola fjLv e/ccKTTa fuoi </>atz/eTai, roiavra /J.ev effnv e/toi, ofa Se ffot
(Plato, ThecEtetus , 24: Bekker). Aristotle represents Protagoras as
maintaining that ra SowoiWa iravra eVrlj/ dA.?j07j Kal ra^aiv b^va (Metaph.
Lib. in. Chap. v. : Bonitz). Again, Lib. x. Chap, vi., this Kal yctp
fKelvos e<pir) iravTGw ^^^O.TWV flvai ^rpov &v6pa)irov, ov6ev erepov \4ywv ^ rb
SOKOVV fKaffTca TOVTO Kal elva? irayicos. It will be observed that in these
accounts there is an interpretation put on the language of Protagoras.
But there can be no doubt that Plato, and Aristotle too, labored
each in his own way to show, in opposition to these views, that there
was a reality and a truth independent of the individual and of ap
pearance. It is an instructive circumstance that the Sensationalist
school have reached in our day the very position of the Sophists,
and regard it as impossible to reach independent and necessary
truth, if indeed any such truth exists. We might expect that
these men would seek to justify the Sophists, and disparage the
high arguments of Plato. Cudworth, speaking of the theoretical
universal propositions in geometry and metaphysics, has finely
remarked that it is true of every one of them whenever " it is
rightly understood by any particular mind, whatsoever and where
soever it be; the truth of it is no private thing, nor relative to that
34 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
particular mind only, but is a\rj0ts /cafloAiK^, < a catholic and univer
sal truth, as the Stoics speak, throughout the whole world; nay, it
would not fail to be a truth throughout infinite worlds, if there were
so many, to all such minds as would rightly understand it." (Im
mutable Morality, Book iv. Chap, v.)
CHAPTER VII.
(SUPPLEMENTARY.)
BRIEF CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS IN REGARD TO INTUITIVE
TRUTHS.
I. THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS OF GREECE. The Greek phi
losophers who flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries before
Christ, if they did not exactly discuss, did, at least, start the ques
tion of man s native power of intuition. The Ionian School, founded
by Thales, and continued by Anaximander, Anaximenes, and others,
dwelling among material elements, found only the mutable and the
fleeting; till at length it was laid down systematically by Heracleitus,
that all things are in a state of perpetual flux, under the power of
an ever-kindling and ever-extinguishing fire. Running to the op
posite extreme, the Eleatic School, of which Xenophanes, Par-
menides, and Zeno were the most illustrious masters, appealed al
together from sense (afffBrja-is) and opinion (5<|a) to reason (Tutyoy);
fixed its attention on this abiding nature of things beneath all mu
tation ; dived into profound, but over-subtle, and often confused and
quibbling disquisitions regarding Being ; and ended by making all
things so fixed that change and motion became impossible. It was
in the very midst of the collision of these sects that Socrates was
reared. Professing to have only a practical aim in view, he yet, in
putting down the opposition to that end, indulged in all the subtlety
of a Greek intellect, and thus stimulated the dialectic spirit of his
pupil Plato, who sought to harmonize the fleeting and the fixed.
II. PLATO. It would be altogether a mistake to suppose, as
some have done, that Plato is forever inquiring into the origin of
ideas in the mind, like the metaphysicians who came after Descartes
and Locke. His aim was of a character loftier and wider, but more
CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 35
unattainable by the cogitation of one thinker, or indeed by cogita
tion at all. Nor was it his object to discover the absolute, as if he
had been reared in the schools of Schelling or Hegel. His grand
aim was to discover the real (rb ov) and the abiding, amidst the illu
sions of sense and the mutations of things. And in following this
end he sought prematurely to determine questions which can be
settled only by a long course of patient induction, carried on by a
succession of observers of the world without and the world within.
But in the search he started many deep views of God, of man, and
of the world, which have been established by the Bible, and by in
ductive mental and physical science. 1. He everywhere proceeds
on the doctrine that man is possessed of a power of reason (\6yos,
or vovs, or v6t]ais) above sense, or faith, or understanding (Sufoom).
2. This reason contemplates ideas (t Seat, or eflty) supra-sensible, im
mutable, eternal, which ideas are realities. 3. He sees that there is
a process of thought, especially of abstraction, in order to the mind
rising to these ideas: rb ov is represented as vo-fjffei /*ero \6yov wtpu
XyifTbv (Tim. 29). 4. The discovery of these ideas should be the
special aim of the philosopher, and the gazing on them the highest
exercise of wisdom. But Plato moves above our earth like the sun,
with so dazzling a light that we feel unable, or unwilling, to look too
narrowly into the exact body of truth which sheds such a lustre. 1.
He has given a wrong account of the reality in those eternal ideas,
making them the only realities; denying reality to the objects of
sense, except in so far as they partake of them, and seeming to make
them independent even of the Divine Mind. 2. Under the one
phrase "idea" he gathers an aggregate of things which require to
be distinguished, such as the true, the beautiful, the good, unity
and being, natural law and moral law, the forms of objects, and
even the universals fashioned arbitrarily by the mind. By heaping
together and confounding all these things which should be carefully
distinguished, he has given a grandeur to his views, but at the ex
pense of clearness and accuracy. 3. He does not see that ideas
exist naturally in the mind merely in the form of laws or rules. To
account for them he is obliged to suppose that the soul preexisted,
and that the calling up of the ideas is a sort of reminiscence. 4. He
does not see how the mind reaches them in their abstract, general,
or philosophic form. He does not observe that the mind begins with
the knowledge of particular objects, and must thence rise by induc
tion to generals. He thus lays himself open to the assaults, always
acute, often just, at times captious, of Aristotle, who saw that the
36 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
general exists in the individuals, and that it is from the singulars
that man rises to the universals (Metaph. i. 9). 5. He attaches an
extravagant value to the contemplation of these ideas in their ab
stract and general form. Overlooking the other purposes served by
ideas, and their indissoluble connection with singulars, forgetting
that philosophy consists in viewing law in relation to its objects,
he represents the mind as in its highest exercise when it is gazing
upon them in their essence, formless and colorless : H yap axpdofjLar6s
T Kal aaxTHJLaTiGTOS Kal ava<p)]S ovffia ovrtas ovaa tyvxys Ku/3epj/TjTT?, n6vq>
0eaT?j v(f xpn ral irepl fyv TO rrjs a\T)6ovs e7ri(7T^/x7js ytvos TOVTOV e%ei rbv
T&TTOV (Phcedrus, 58). He thus prepared the way for the extrava
gances of the Neoplatonist School of Plotinus and Proclus, who reck
oned the mind as in its loftiest state when under intuition or ecstasy
which looks on the One and the Good, and who found, I believe, the
gazing idle and unprofitable enough.
III. ARISTOTLE. His views, if not so grand as those of Plato,
are much more sober and definite. He has specified most of the
separate characteristics of intuition, but I have not been able to find
how he reconciles his several statements. 1. He has a power, or
faculty, called Nous, which he represents as concerned with the prin
ciples of thought and being : O vovs effrl irepl ras apxas ru>v vorjTuv
Kal TWV OVTWV (Mag. Mor. i. 35). Elsewhere he shows that it cannot
be <pp6rriffis, nor <ro(pia, nor eTntrr^urj, but vovs, which has to do with
the principles of science : AeiTrerot vovv e?j/cu rS>v apx&v (Eth. Nic. vi.
6; ed. Michelet). 2. He fixes on self-evidence and independence as
tests of what he calls first truths and principles. First truths are
those whose credit is not through others, but of themselves: E<rrt 5 s
a\r)6ri /mtv Kal irpcara ra /n^ St erepcav a\\a 51 avroav exovra T^V TT KTTIV ov
5e? yap ei/ TCUS TTi<rrri(j.oviK.a is apxais tTTifyiTsiaQoi rb 5ia TJ, aAA kK.o.cfTt\v
rwv apx&v avr^v naff eaur^v elj/ai Triffr-ffV (Top. i. 1 ; ed. Waitz.) 3. He
fixes on necessity as a test. Thus he speaks of necessary principles,
and of their being inherent in things: E? ovv etrrlv y aTroSeiwriK^ eVio-T^/i?;
e| avayKatwv apx&v (6 yap firiffTarai, ov Svvarbv a\\aas ex^iv), ra 5e KaO aura
vTrapxovra avaynala roty IT pay fiaff iv, K. T. \. (Anal. Post. i. 6). To e{
avayKrjs ovra cbrAcos atSto, iravra T^ 5 ai Sta ay^vrjra Kal a<j>6apra (Eth. Nic.
vi. 3). 4. In which passage eternity is spoken of as a characteristic
of necessary truth. 5. It is a favorite maxim with him that every
thing cannot be proven. He says that all science is not demon
strative, that the science of things immediate is undemonstrable; for
as all demonstration is from things prior, we must, at last, arrive at
things immediate which are not demonstrable: H/teis 5e <j>ajue/, ovre
CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 37
eiricrrfi/juiv avoSeiKriK^v efj/ai, AAa rfa rwv a/jieauv avaTrdSeiKrov Kal
rovff OTI avayncuov, Qavepdv ei 7ap avdyKf) p.ev eTriffracrOai ra Trp6repa Kal e|
&v T? ct7r<$5ei|ts, Iffrarai 8e irore ra #yue<ra, TOUT cu/oTTo Sei/cra avdyKf} elVai
(Anal. Post. i. 3); see also i. 22, where he says there must be prin
ciples of demonstration : ru>v airo8elewv 6ri avdyKi) apxas eTvai. He
speaks of science and demonstration carrying us to intuition, vovs
(Ib. i. 23); see also ii. 19, where vovs is said to give principles: vovs
av et-r) rwv apx&v. He blames those who seek for a reason of those
things of which there is no reason : \6yov yap forovffiv a>v OVK eo~ri \6yos
(Metaph. iii. 6). 6. He appeals to catholic consent, adding that those
who reject this faith will find nothing more trustworthy: 6 yap iraffi
So/cei, TOUT elvat <J>o/xej/ o 5 avaipwv ravrijv T^V iriffriv ov irdvv Tri(T-r6rpa.
epe? (Eth. NIC. x. 2). 7. He draws the distinction between two
classes of truths. We believe all things, either through syllogism or
from induction : airavra joip irio~Tvofji.ev ^ 5i& <ruAAo7io>iou ^ e| firaywyTJs
(Anal. Prior, ii. 23). To nature, the syllogism is the prior and the
more known ; but to us, that which is through induction is the more
palpable : 4u(rei /j.tv ovv Trporepos Kal yvwpin&Tfpos 6 Sicfc TOU p.iffov ffv\\0m
yiff(j.6s, rifjiTv 8 evapyevrepos 6 5ia TTJS tvayuyw (2b.; compare Eth. Nic.
vi. 3). In explaining this, he says that he calls " things prior and
more knowable to us " those which are nearer to sense, and "things
prior and more knowable simply " those which are more remote; but
those things which are universal belong to the most remote, and
those which are singular, to the nearest: Aeyco 5e irpbs 7)/*as pev irpoVepa
Kal yvc0pi/Ji<aTfpa ra eyyvrepov TT/S alaQ-t] ffews, airXus Se irporcpa Kal yvoapi-
yuwTepa TO irofifKarepov effri 5e TroppwTOTW p*v ra Ka06\ov /j.d\L(rra, fyyvrdra
Se ra Kaff I/COO-TO (Anal. Post. i. 2). But the question is started, How
does the human mind, which must begin with the singulars, as better
known to it, reach the universal ? He seems to say, in the follow
ing passage, we reach universal truth through induction:
f) l-jraywyr) % cbroSe/lei effn 8 ff p*v air6o eiis e /c rcav Ka06\ov, ^ S
K rcav Kara ^epoy aSvvarov S^ ra Ka66\ov Oecopri<Tai p^i 5t eirayvyTJs, firel
Kal ra e| cw/>aipe <rews \ey6peva earai Si 6^07*7^5 yvdpipa iroielv, ort
virdpxti tKaarfi yevei Hvia, Kal el /*)] x u P l(rra * riv i $ Toioi/5 3 Ka(Trov*
fvax^vai 5e /*)] %x ovras atffQi}(riv advvarov riav yap KaQ tKacrrov T] afffOrjffiS
ov yap eVSexeTai \afielv avrwv r)\v eirto T^^.Tji ovre yap e /c ruv Kad6\ov avev
eirayuyris, ovre Si eiray<ayr)S avev rrjs alffO-f)<Tetos (Ib. i. 18; cf. Eth. Nic.
vi. 3). All these are important principles. But how does he recon
cile them V How in particular does he reconcile his doctrine that
universals are gained by induction with his statement as to the mind
having a vovs which looks at principles ? There are passages in his
Metaphysics which show that such questions had been before his
38 GENERAL VIEW OF PRIMITIVE PRINCIPLES.
mind. The question is put whether first principles are universal, or
as singulars of things ; and the further and most important question,
whether they subsist in capacity or in energy, that is, whether they
exist virtually or in act: Uorepov at apxal KaQ6\ov eiffiv 4) us ra Kaff
fjcatTTa ru>v Tcpay/j-dTcov, Kai 8wd/j.ei $) evepyeiq, (Metapli. 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: otfre
&TeAe xeia a\\a Swd^ei ra cffirj. 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 /j.tv ovv
robrcov /iSAAoj/ (patverai T& eirl raw OT^UWI/ Ka.rijyopoviJ.fva. apxal flva.1 rS>v
yfvwv ird\ii> Se TTWS au Set ravras apxas v7r0Aaj8eij> ou pct Sioi/ etireiv. 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 n-ev yap apx^v SeT Kal r^v
alrlav elvai irapa ra irpdy^ara 8>v apx f}, fal Svt/affOai tlvai ^p^o^vtiv
avriav /UOIOVTOV Se n irapa rb Kaff eKaffrov elvai Sia T I av TIS ^TroAajSoi, irXty
or. KaQd\ov Kart)yop?rai Kal Kara irdvrwv ; a\Xa fjt,-fjv, el Sia TOUTO, ra /j.a\\ov
Ka06\ov juaAAoi/ dereov apxds- Sxrrf apxal ra TTptar &/ ffyo-av 761/77 (/6. 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 vn.). But
those who quote this statement often forget that the Stoics placed in
the mind a ruling principle (Yye/ioz/wcbv), and maintained that we have
innate ivvotai and irpo\-f$is. According to Cicero, Topica, they held
by a notion, " insitam et ante perceptam cujusque formed cognitionem
enodatione indigentem." Diogenes Laertius represents them as
maintaining e<m S 5 rj irpoXytyis evviva <PV<TIK}) T$>V na66\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 Legibus; 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 irp6^is t
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 instituto 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 Veritate, 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 evvolal, 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 remark: a, that Herbert does not see that Natural Instinct
runs through all the faculties ; &, 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 npplications 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 im
pressed or 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 alri\(j.ara 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). Cud worth stands up for an immutable morality discovered
by reason, and distinguishes, like More, between occasion and cause
(see infra, Part in. 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 idde est nee avec nous, ou
qu elle est naturellement ernpreinte en nos ames, je n entends pas
quelle se pre sente toujours a 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 facon dont nous les concevons " (Med. Abrege). He
thus explains clearness and distinctness : " J appelle claire celle qui
est presente et manifesto h un t sprit attentif ; de meme que nous
disons voir clairement les objets, lorsqu etant presents a nos
yeux ils agissent assez fort sur eux, et qu ils sont disposes a les
regarder; et distincte, celle qui est tellement precise et differente
de toutes les autres, qu elle ne comprend en soi que ce qui paroit
manifestement a celui qui la considere 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
propridte de quelque chose, mais nous la prenons pour une certaine
verite dternelle qui a son sie ge en notre pensee, et que 1 on 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 dte fait ne peut 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 ve rite s, et non
pas des choses qui soient hors de notre pense e, et il y en a un si
grand nombre de telles qu il seroit malaise" de les ddnombrer " (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 pense es" (Rep. aux 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 imprime de
longue main des opinions en leur cre ance, qui e tait contraires a
quelques-unes de ces ve rite s " (.Prin. i. 50). 4. He expects far too
much from a bare contemplation of the principles or causes of
things: "Mais 1 ordre que j ai tenu en ceci a e te tel : premiere-
ment, j ai tache de trouver en ge ne 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 cre"e, ni les tirer
d ailleurs que de certaines semences de ve rite s qui sont naturelle-
ment en nos ames. Apres cela, j ai examine quels e taient les
premiers et les plus ordinaires effets qu on pouvait de 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 1 eau, de 1 air," etc. (Me th.
Part, vr.)
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 con-
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 refers 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 denned " (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
connaissances ou les verite s, 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 innees sont
implicitement dans Pesprit, cela doit signifier seulement, qu il a la
facultd 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 " necessary 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 particuliere a Faction, et a
une action plutot qu a 1 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 prefdrablement a d autres figures, cette pierre y
seroit plus determined, et Hercule y seroit comme inne en quelque
facon" (p. 196). 4. He represents the intellect itself as a source
of ideas. To the maxim " Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in
aensu," he adds, "nisi ipse intellectus." The expression is not
very explicit. He explains it : " Or 1 ame renferme 1 etre, la sub
stance, 1 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 1 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-
tin^uish 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^).
XII. BUFFIER S principal treatise is on Premieres Verit.es. 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 raise dans tous les homines, ou
manifestement dans la plupart d entre eux, pour leur faire porter,
quand ils ont atteint 1 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 caracteres
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 recues parmi les homines en tout temps, en tous
lieux, et par toutes sortes d esprits, que ceux qui les attaquent se
trouvent, dans le genre humain, etre manifestemont moins d un
contre cent, ou meme contre mille. 3. D etre si fortement im-
prime es dans nous, que nous y conformions notre conduite, malgrd
les raffinements de ceux qui imaginent des opinions contraires, et qui
eux-memes agissent conforme ment, non a leurs opinions imagine es,
mais aux premieres ve rite 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
effect, 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 necessity 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-
50 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 Aristotle, 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, who 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. 51
(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-
gesamrnt im Gemiithe a priori bereit liegen und daher abgesondert
von aller Empfindung kb nnen betrachtet werden ( Werke, Bd. ii. p.
32 ; ed. Rosenkranz). 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 (Kritik 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 wiirde 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 Gegenstande der
Erfahrung niemals an sich selbst." Speaking even of self-conscious
ness, he says, it does not know self as it exists : " Und Selbst 1st
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 Auffor-
derung an die Vernunft, das beschwerlichste aller ihrer Geschafte,
namlich das der Selbsterkenntniss aufs Neue zu ubernehmen und
einen Gerichtshof einzusetzen, der sie bei ihren gereehten Ansprii-
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. n. 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. n.).
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 in. sect.
Hi.). 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.
But 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, Lect. 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 sou vent, que nos jugements sont d abord des jugements par-
ticuliers et de termine s, et que c est sous cette forme d un jugement
particulier et determine que font leur premiere apparition toutes
CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 55
les verite s universelles et necessaires " (Ser. ii. t. iii. Ie9- 1 ; see also
Ser. i. t. i. progr. ; t. ii. progr. 169. 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 Ser. ii. 169. 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 imme diatement ce que le premier objet soumis
k son observation renferme de ge ne ral (Ser. i. t. i. \eq. 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.
MiWs 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 be 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. n. 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 are 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
certainty and error. We who feel as if we were free feel oppressed
under this load.
PART SECOND.
PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
BOOK I.
PRIMITIVE 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 WITH 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 Kritik 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 arid 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.
I.
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 particular, 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 beyond his 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 karn 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 what 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 may 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 difficult
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 (5).
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 rf 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." l 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 Muller 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 very 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 (c). 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.
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 illusions, 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.
III.
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 lie is opposing a
fundamental conviction which will work whenever the
object is presented (d).
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 by 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 (ji).
V.
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,
vn.
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 (#), what
is it doing but affecting our organism in a certain way ?
The very colored surface revealed through sight is
known to us as affecting, that is, having an influence
over, our organism. But there is more than this, the
organism, is known as having power to affect the cogni-
OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 71
tive self. The muscular effort resisted, the visual organs
impressed by the colored surface, are known as producing
an effect on the mind. The organs affected in smell,
in taste, in temperature, in hearing, in feeling, are all
known as rousing the mind into cognitive activity. It
might be further maintained, even in regard to those
senses which do not immediately reveal anything extra-
organic, that they seem to point to some unknown cause
of the affection known ; but it is better to postpone the
treatment of this question till it can be fully discussed.
But in regard to the two senses which reveal objects
beyond the bodily frame, and in regard to all the senses
as far as they make known our frame to us, it seems
clear to me that there is an intuitive conviction of po
tency wrapped up in all our cognitions (#).
VIII.
But it will be vehemently urged that it is most pre
posterous to assert that we know all this by the senses.
Upon this I remark that the phrase by the senses is
ambiguous. If by senses be meant the mere bodily
organism, the eye, the ears, the nerves, and the brain,
I affirm that we know, and can know, nothing by this
bodily part, which is a mere organ or instrument ; that
so far from knowing potency or extension, we do not
know even color, or taste, or smell. But if by the senses
be meant the mind exercised in sense-perception, sum
moned into activity by the organism, and contemplating
cognitively the external world, then I maintain that we
do know, and this intuitively, external objects as in
fluencing us ; that is, exercising powers in reference to
us. I ask those who would doubt of this doctrine of
what it is that they suppose the mind to be cognizant in
sense-perception. If they say a mere sensation or im-
72 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
pression in the mind, I reply that this is not consistent
with the revelation of consciousness, which announces
plainly that what we know is something extra-mental.
If they say, with Kant, a mere phenomenon in the sense
of appearance, then I reply that this too is inconsistent
with consciousness, which declares that we know the
thing. But if we know the thing, we must know some
thing about it. If they say we know it as having exten
sion and form, I grasp at the admission, and ask them to
consider how high the knowledge thus allowed, involving
at one and the same time space, and an object occupy
ing space, and so much of space. Surely those who ac
knowledge this much may be prepared to confess further
that the mind which in perception is capable of knowing
an object as occupying space, is also capable of knowing
the same object as exercising power in regard to us. We
have only to examine the state of mind involved in all
our cognitions of matter to discover that there is involved
in it a knowledge both of extension and power.
(a) The following is the account given by Miiller (Physiology,
trans, by Baly, p. 1080): " First, the child governs the movement
of its limbs, and thus perceives that they are instruments subject to
the use and government of its internal self, while the resistance
which it meets with around is not subject to its will, and therefore
gives it the idea of an absolute exterior. Secondly, the child will
perceive a difference in the sensations produced according as two
parts of its own body touch each other, or as one part ofits body
only meets with resistance from without. In the first instance,
where one arm, for example, touches the other, the resistance is
offered by a part of the child s own body, and the limb thus giving
the resistance becomes the subject of sensation as well as the other!
The two limbs are in this case external objects of perception, and
percipient at the same time. In the second instance, the resisting
body will be represented to the mind as something external and
foreign to the living body, and not subject to the internal self.
Thus will arise in the mind of the child the idea of a resistance
which one part of its own body can offer to other parts of its body,
OUR INTUITION OF BODY BY THE SENSES. 73
and at the same time the idea of a resistance offered to its body by
an absolute exterior. In this way is gained the idea of an external
world as the cause of sensations."
(&) The Cheselden case is reported in Phil. Trans. 1728. I have
noticed other cases in my Psychology, The Cognitive Powers, B. I. C.
i. 11. Berkeley, Stewart, and Brown hold that color without exten
sion is the proper object of sight. Hamilton {Metaphysics, Lect. 27)
seems to me to demonstrate that a perception of colors, and conse
quently of the difference of colors, necessarily involves the perception
of a discriminating line, and that a line and figure are modifications
of extension, so that " a perception of extension is necessarily given
in the perception of colors."
(c) If the eye gives lines and figures, it must in a sense give the
distance (of course not the measured distance) of one point or edge
of a figure from another. This is a necessary modification of the
Berkeleyan theory of vision. What the persons whose eyes were
couched felt as touching their eyes must have been felt as a surface
like their skin. Though they had no intuitive means of determining
the distance of the seen surface from their felt and localized organ
ism, yet it should be observed, they have extension in the original
ocular perception, and a preparation for measuring the distance of
the seen surface with the aid of the muscular sense, more particularly
as the hand moves over the seen object or moves from one seen
object to another. In reference to a cognate question, there can be
no doubt, I think, that persons with a newly imparted power of
vision would by binocular vision see a solid as different from a sur
face, but it does not follow that they would know it to be a solid.
(rf) The convictions referred to in these paragraphs set aside at
once the doctrine of Kant, that the mind, in the intuition of sense,
takes cognizance of phenomena in the sense of appearances. They
should also modify the doctrine of Hamilton. " Our knowledge of
qualities or phenomena is necessarily relative, for these exist only as
they exist in relation to our faculties " (foot-note to Reid, p. 323).
It is a truism that we can know objects merely as our faculties enable
us to know them; but the question is, What is the nature and extent
of the knowledge which our faculties furnish? I admit that what
ever external objects we know, we know in a relation to us. But I
hold that man and his faculties are so constituted as to know things
(with being) exercising qualities, and to know qualities as existing
separate from and independent of our cognition of them by our
faculties.
(e) The convictions spoken of in these paragraphs set aside all
74 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
forms of idealism in sense-perception. Berkeley says that* of un
thinking things without us their esse is per dpi, nor is it possible they
should have any existence out of the minds of thinking things which
perceive them." "When we do our utmost to conceive the ex
istence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating
our own ideas " (Principles of Human Knowledge, ii. xxiv.). I hold,
that according to our intuitive conviction, the thing which we per
ceive must exist before we can perceive it, and that we perceive it
as an extended thing independent and out of the contemplative
mind. Fichte represents the external thing as a creation or projec
tion of the perceiving mind. But the mind, in knowing the self as
perceiving, knows that it is an external thing that is perceived, and
cannot be made to think otherwise. Professor Ferrier bases his
fabric of demonstrated idealism on the proposition, the object of
knowledge " always is, and must be, the object with the addition of
one s self, object plus subject, thing, or thought, mecum " (Inst.
ofMetaph. Prop. ii.). If this proposition professes to be a statement
of fact, I deny that the fact of consciousness is properly stated. If
it professes to be a first truth, I deny that it ought to be assumed in
this particular form. No doubt we always know self at the same
time that we know an external object by sense-perception, but we
know the external object as separate from and independent of self.
We might as well deny that we know the object at all as deny that
we know it to have an existence distinct from self.
(/) Hamilton says, " An extension is apprehended in the appre
hension of the reciprocal externality of all sensations " (Appendix to
Reid, p. 885). Again, " In the consciousness of sensations relatively
localized and reciprocally external, we have a veritable apprehension
and consequently an immediate perception of the affected organism,
as extended, divided, figured," etc. (Ibid. p. 884). Em. Saisset, in
the article Sens, in Diet, des Sciences Philosophiques, dwells on the
localization of our sensations in their various organic seats.
(#) Locke says that impenetrability, or, as he prefers calling it, as
having less of a negative meaning, solidity, seems the "idea most
intimately connected with and essential to body, so as nowhere else
to be found or imagined, but only in matter;" and he adds, we
" find it inseparably inherent in body wherever or however modi
fied;" and in explaining this, he says of bodies that "they do by an
insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands
that press them" (Essay, ii. iv. 1). Herbert Spencer has done
great service to philosophy by showing that force is implied in all
knowledge by the senses.
CHAPTER III.
DISTINCTIONS TO BE ATTENDED TO IN OUR COGNITION
OF BODY.
IT is maintained in this work that all we know by
the senses is real. But we must be careful to deter
mine what we do thus know. In order to defend the
doctrine of Realism we must draw several important
distinctions.
I.
The difference between Extra Mental and Extra
Organic perception. All objects perceived are beyond
the mind, but all are not beyond the body. Probably
our first perceptions, mingled with sensations, are of our
bodily frame ; for anything we know, there may be tac
tile perceptions by the infant in the womb. It is
certain that in our mature life we have organic affec
tions, such as those of the alimentary canal and stomach,
which exercise no action without the body. We must
take care not to give the organic affections an extra
organic validity.
n.
The distinction between Sensation and Perception.
Perception is the knowledge of the object presenting
itself to the senses, whether in the object or beyond it.
Sensation is the feeling associated, the feeling of the
organism. These two always coexist. There is never
this knowledge without? an organic feeling; never a
feeling of the organism without a cognitive apprehen-
76 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
sion of it. 1 These sensations differ widely from each
other, as our consciousness testifies ; some of them being
pleasant, some painful ; others indifferent as to pleasure
and pain, but still with a feeling. Some we call excit
ing, others dull ; some we designate as warm, others as
cold; and for most of them we have no name what
ever, indeed they so run into each other that it would
be difficult to discriminate them by a specific nomencla
ture. The perceptions, again, are as numerous and va
ried as the knowledge we have by all the senses. Now
these two always mix themselves up with each other.
The sensation of the odor mingles with the apprehen
sion of the nostrils; the flavor of the food is joined
with the recognition of the palate ; the agreeableness
or disagreeableness of the sound comes in with the
knowledge of the ear as affected ; and the feeling organ
which we localize has an associated sensation. There
is an organic sensation conjoined even with the knowl
edge we have of the extra-organic object affecting our
muscular sense, or our visual organism. This sensation
may be little noticed because the attention is fixed on
the object ; still, it is always there, as we may discover
by a careful introspection of the combined mental af
fection. But while the two ever coexist, sometimes
with the one prevailing, and sometimes with the other
predominant, and sometimes with the two nicely bal
anced, it is of importance to distinguish them. Every
man of sense draws the distinction between the music
and the musical instrument, between the ear-ache and
1 Reid represents the sensation as being " followed by a perception
of the object ;" on which Hamilton remarks, " that sensation proper
precedes perception proper is a false assumption ; they are simulta
neous elements of the same invisible energy" (Reid s Collected Writ
ings, p. 186. See, also, p. 853).
DISTINCTIONS IN OUR COGNITION OF BODY. 77
his ear. The metaphysician should also draw the dis
tinction, indeed, it is essential that he do so. The
two were given for different ends. Our perceptions are
the main means of supplying us with knowledge,
whereas our sensations are meant to increase our en
joyment, to stimulate to exertion, to give warning, or
perhaps to inflict penalties. We must beware, both
philosophically and practically, of confounding our sen
sations and our perceptions, our feelings and our cog
nitions.
III.
The distinction between Affections in our Bodily
Frame and the Causes, as we infer, of their production.
Thus we have an affection of heat in our body, and
we argue an external cause, which we also call heat.
All that we know intuitively is the bodily affection. In
regard to the nature of the cause, this can be discovered
only by a scientific investigation. This is the case with
the sense of smell, of taste, of touch, and temperature,
and I think also, though with some hesitation, with
the sense of hearing. The intuitive conviction of cause
and effect does indeed intimate that there must be a
cause, but as to where that cause is to be found we must
trust to experience, which tells us that in some cases
it is to be found in the organism itself, and in other
cases in an agent beyond, such as odorous particles,
sapid bodies, heat, undulations from a sounding body, or
a solid object applied to our nerves of touch. In all
cases the affection of sense and the conviction of cause
combined are sufficient to prompt us to look round for
an agent. The senses act as monitors and most im
portant monitors they are of powers working in our
bodily frames, and in the physical universe around us.
I believe that every one of our senses gives us intimation
78 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
of powers, such as floating particles, light, and heat,
which are among the most powerful agencies conducting
the processes of the material world. Still, these are
unknown to our senses, and we become aware of their
existence merely as causes of known effects. As to
what odors, sounds, flavors, heat, and, we may add,
light and colors are, our intuitions are silent, and their
nature is to be determined by observation, indeed, can
be determined only by elaborate scientific research.
This is the proper account of the distinction drawn
between the PKIMARY and SECONDARY QUALITIES of
matter, a real distinction, but often confusedly appre
hended and expressed. The Secondary Qualities, such
as heat and flavor, are not, properly speaking, prop
erties of body, but affections of our vital frame. The
causes are to be ascertained by physical investigation.
To the question so often put, Is or is there not heat in
that fire ? I answer that the heat is primarily a felt
affection of my body, and the cause of it, as ascertained
by science, is a vibration in the ignited body.
The sense of sight presents peculiar difficulties in this connection.
It seems to me clearly to look at an extended surface, not part of our
organism, but affecting it. But what are we to make of color? It
is the greatest difficulty which the metaphysician meets with in the
investigation of the senses. The mind knows the perceived object
to be in its nature extended; but do we also know it as in its very
nature colored? If so, is there color in the object as there is exten
sion ? The following is the solution which I am inclined to offer of
this difficult subject. The sense of color may be regarded as inter
mediate between those senses in which we perceive an extra-organic
object, and those other senses which reveal merely the organism as
affected, but whether by agents within or beyond the organism we
know not. In the sense of color, we primarily know only the organ
ism as affected, but we are intuitively led, at the same time, to look
on what thus affects our organism as not in the organism, but as in
the extended surface in which it is seen. But beyond this, that is
DISTINCTIONS IN OUR COGNITION OF BODY. 79
beyond color being an extra-organic cause of an organic affection,
we know nothing of its nature by intuition. If this account be cor
rect, we see that our sense of color is different, on the one hand,
from the knowledge of our sensations of heat, or smell, or taste, for
we do not know whether the causes of these are within or beyond
the frame, while we do know that color is out of ourselves in a sur
face; and different, too, on the other hand, from the knowledge of
the extended surface and the impenetrability which are revealed
directly by the sight and muscular sense, whereas we do not know
what color is. Hence arises, if I do not mistake, that peculiar con
viction regarding color which has so puzzled metaphysicians. The
sense of color combines, in closest union, the sensation and the per
ception, the organic affection and the extra-organic. I confess I
have always fondly clung to the idea that, sooner or later, color will
be found by physical investigation to have a reality I do not say
of what kind.
IV.
The distinction between our Original and Acquired
Perceptions. In standing up for the trustworthiness of
our perceptions, I always mean our original perceptions
proceeding from the original principles of the mind, and
having the sanction of him who gave us our constitution.
The perceptions acquired by induction and inference will
have a reality only when the processes have been validly
conducted.
I have endeavored in the last chapter to give an ap
proximately correct account of what seem to be our orig
inal perceptions through the various senses. But to our
primitive stock we add others, and in doing so we
employ rules derived from the generalizations of experi
ence, and deductive reasoning in applying them to given
cases. In taste we have originally only a sapid affection
of the palate, but by experience we are able to declare
that this particular sensation is produced by water and
that other by wine. Intuitively we cannot say what
sort of extra-organic object any smell comes from, but
80 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
by observation we have ascertained that this odor comes
from the rose and that from the lily, and we guess at
the distance of the object by the strength of the im
pression, and at the direction by finding it stronger in
one nostril than in another. In hearing we ascertain the
distance by the londness of the sound, and the direction
by finding it louder in one of the ears than in the other,
or, as some suppose, by the affections of the semicircu
lar canals, which are usually three in number, and lie
in different planes. Since the days of Berkeley it has
been all but universally acknowledged that the percep
tion of linear distance from the eye is not an original
endowment of the sense of sight.
Now in our original perceptions, when our organism is
sound and we employ it properly according to its nature,
there can be no errors, but there may be many human
mistakes in our acquired perceptions.
By help of such distinctions we may defend the va
lidity of our native convictions through the senses. We
do not give an extra-organic validity to our organic affec
tions. We stand up for a reality corresponding to our
perceptions proper, but not, therefore, for the associated
sensations. In regard to what are called the Secondary
Qualities of matter, we maintain that we perceive the
organic affections, but the extra-organic causes have to
be determined by scientific observation. We stand up
for the trustworthiness of our original but not necessa
rily of our acquired perceptions. The senses can be sup
posed to deceive us, when the organism and mind are in
a sound state, only when we overlook one or other or all
of these distinctions.
The Eleatics looked upon the senses as deceiving, and appealed to
the reason as discovering the abiding (T& 6v) amid the fleeting. The
question arose : Since the senses are delusive, what reason have we
DISTINCTIONS IN OUR COGNITION OF BODY. 81
for thinking that the reason is trustworthy? Heracleitus the Dark
thought that the senses give only the transient, and that man can
discover nothing more. Plato mediated between the two schools,
and thought that there were two elements in sense-perception, an
external and an internal: Kal 6 877 tKaffTov flvai <$>an*v xp&P- ; $ r * T&
Trpofffid\\ov ovre rb Trpofffia\\6/j.evov eo-rot, dAAcb juerau TI fKaffrtp ISiov
yfyov6s i i av 5u<rxvpi<Taio av us dlov aoi tyaiverai e/catrroi/ xp<* l jia i TO IOVTOV
Kal KVV\ Kal bripouv fay (Theaet. 28). Eyevvnffe yap 877 e /c TOIOI TOV. Kal
Kuvl Kal OTtfo iv facp (TheCEt. 28). Eyfvvyffe yap 877 e/c rcav
fuevcav T& re iroiouv Kal rb irdffxov YAu/ctrTjra T Kal afffOrjffiVf a/io
a/j.<p6Tepa (43). This theory has ever since been maintained by a
succession of thinkers, including the school of Kant. Unfortunately
they can give us no rule to enable us to distinguish between what we
are to allot to subjective and what to the objective factors. Possibly
the following passage, affirming that science is not in sensations but
in our reasoning about them, may have suggested the theory of
Aristotle, which has long divided the philosophic world with that of
Plato : Ev /j.ev &pa TO?S irad-fjfj.aff.v ou/c evi 7ri<rH}/*ij, ev Se T^ irepi fKfivwv
<rv\\oyiff/LLu (107).
Aristotle, with his usual judgment and penetration, started the
right explanation (see De Anima, Lib. in. Chap. i. iii. vi.). He says
that perception by a sense of things peculiar to that sense is true, or
involves the smallest amount of error. But when such objects are
perceived in their accidents (that is, as to things not falling pecu
liarly under that sense), there is room for falsehood ; when, for in
stance, a thing is said to be white, there is no falsehood, but when
the object is said to be this or that (if the white thing is said to be
Cleon), (cf. in. 1, 7) there may be falsehood: C H ofcr07?(m T&V fj.lv
ravra Kal evravOa ^7877 >8ex 6Tal 5:cuJ/eu86<r0ai STI /JLCV yap Aeuicbi/, ov
il/fvSerai, ft 8e rovro rb \evkbv 1^ &\\6 TI, fyet Serat (ill. iii. 12). AAA,
cSffirep rb dpavrov iSiov oArj^es, et 8 avOpwiros rb Acu/cbj/ ^ ^, OVK a\T)6es alft
(in. vi. 7). Aristotle saw that the difficulties might be cleared up
by attending to what each sense testifies, and separating the asso
ciated imaginations and opinions or judgments. The full explana
tion, however, could not be given till Berkeley led men to distinguish
between the original and acquired perceptions of the senses, by
showing that the knowledge of distance by the eye is an acquisition.
The views of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics may be gath
ered from the Academic Questions of Cicero. All of them sought to
save the senses by a distinction of some kind. The Stoics represent
82 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
the senses as simply satellites and messengers (see Cicero, De Legibus,
quoted Lipsius Manud. ad Philos. Stoic, ii. 11), and place above
them a power of comprehension, Kard\rj^is t which judges the infor
mation given by the senses. The Epicureans thought the senses
never deceive, but then they give us things only as they appear.
The Academics maintained that the intellect and not sense is the judge
of truth: "Non esse judicium veritatis in serisibus, mentem volebant
rerum esse judicem." They held "sensus omnes hebetes et tardos
esse arbitrabantur, nee percipere ullo modo eas res, quae subjectse
sensibus viderentur; quae essent aut ita parvse, ut sub sensum cadere
non possent; aut ita mobiles et concitatae, ut nihil unquam ununa esse
constans" (Acad. Quoes. i. 8), and so reality becomes a matter of
opinion or probability.
Augustine follows out the views of the Greek philosophers, spe
cially those of Aristotle. Thus in his exposition of Categorice Decem
ex Aristotele Decerptce, v.: "Sunt igitur ilia qua? aut percipimus sensi
bus, aut mente et cogitatione colligimus. Sensibus tenemus quae aut
videndo, aut contrectando, aut audiendo, aut gustando, aut odorando
cognosciums. Mente, ut cum quis equum, aut hominem, aut quod-
libet animse viderit, quanquam unum corpus esse respondeat, intelligi
tamen multis partibus esse concretum." He illustrates his meaning
elsewhere: "Si quis remum frangi in aqua opinatur, et cum inde
aufertur integrari; non malum habet internuntium, sed malus est
judex. Nam ille pro sua natura non potuit aliter sentire, nee aliter
debuit; si enim aliud est aer, aliud aqua, justum est ut aliter in acre,
aliter in aqua sentiatur " (Lib. de Ver. Relig. c. 33). The subject
is discussed Contra Academicos, 24-28. Anselm treats the subject
in much the same way as Augustine (Dialog, de Verit. vi.). He says
the error is to be ascribed, not to the senses, but to the judgment of
the mind: " Falsitas non in sensibus sed opinione." It is the mind
that imparts the false appearances, as the boy fears the sculptured
dragon. " Unde contingit ut sensus interior culpam suam imputet
sensui exteriori.
In modern times, metaphysicians have vacillated between the
Platonic and Aristotelian theories; some, as Kant and Hamilton,
making every perception partly subjective, and others ascribing the
supposed deception to wrong deductions from the matter supplied by
the senses. The Sensational School of France and T. Brown make
all external perception an inference from sensations in the mind,
and refer the mistakes to wrong reasoning.
CHAPTER IV.
APPARENT DECEPTION OF THE SENSES.
ALMOST all forms of idealism (the system which sup
poses certain of our supposed cognitions to be creations
of the mind), and all forms of scepticism (the system
which would set aside all our cognitions), plead the de-
ceitfulness of the senses. Our senses are not to be
trusted in some things, says the idealist, and we are to
determine by reason when they are to be trusted. Our
senses delude us in some things, says the sceptic, and we
may therefore distrust them in all. It is of vast moment
to stop these errors at the point at which they flow out,
by showing that the senses, meaning our original per
ceptions through the senses, can all be trusted in regard
to the special testimony which they furnish.
But how, it is asked, does the stick in the water, felt
to be straight by the sense of touch, seem crooked to the
sense of sight ? The answer is, that the knowledge of
the shape of an object does not primarily fall under the
sense of sight, and that when we determine whether a
stick is or is not straight, by the sense of sight, it is by
a process of inference in which we have laid down the
rule that objects that give a certain figure before the eye
are crooked, a rule correct enough for common cases,
but not applicable to those in which the rays of light
are refracted in passing from one medium to another.
Why does a boy seem a man, and a man a giant, in a
mist, whereas, if you clear away the mist, both are in
stantly reduced to their proper dimensions? A reply
84 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
can easily be given. We have laid down the rule that
an object seen so dimly must be distant ; but an object
appearing of such dimensions at a distance must be large:
and the phenomenon is felt to be a deception only by
those who are not accustomed to move in the mist.
Why does a mountain, viewed across an arm of the sea,
seem near, while the same mountain, seen at an equal
distance beyond an undulated country studded with
houses and trees, appears very remote ? The answer is,
not that the eye has deceived us, but that we have made
a mistaken application of a rule usually correct, that an
object must be near when few objects intervene between
us and it ; and it is to be noticed that those who are
accustomed to look across sheets of water commit no
such mistakes, for they have acquired other means of
measuring distance. Again, we have found it true, in
cases so many that we cannot number them, that when
we are at rest and the image of an object, say a carriage,
passes across the vision, the object must be in motion.
That rule is accurate in all cases similar to those from
which it was derived ; but it fails the landsman when,
feeling as if he were at rest in the ship, he infers that
the shore is moving away from the vessel. In all such
cases we see that it is not the senses, that is, the natural
and original perceptions of the senses having the author
ity of God, which deceive us, but rules formed or applied
illegitimately by ourselves.
CHAPTER V.
THE ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OP MATTER.
LOCKE speaks of the Primary Qualities as being in
matter in whatever state it may be. Reid speaks of
them as being directly perceived by us. These two
marks coincide, presenting the same truth under two dif
ferent aspects, the one objective the other subjective.
They are the essential qualities of matter known in all
its states, and known at once and intuitively. They are
two in number.
I. There are the Qualities of Matter by which it oc
cupies Space and is contained in Space, that is, Exten
sion. We have this knowledge, I believe, through each
of our senses ; for in each we know the corresponding
organs as extended and out of each other, and through
two of the senses we know objects beyond our bodily
frame as extended. Hamilton represents extension as a
necessary constituent of our notion of Matter, and evolves
it from " two catholic conditions of matter : (1) the oc
cupying space, and (2) the being contained in space.
Of these, the former affords (A) Trinal Extension, expli
cated again into (i.) Divisibility, (n.) Size, containing
under it Density or Rarity, (m.) Figure ; and (B) Ulti
mate Incompressibility ; while the latter gives (A) Mo
bility, and (B) Situation. Neglecting subordination, we
have thus eight proximate attributes : 1. Extension ; 2.
Divisibility ; 3. Size ; 4. Density or Rarity ; 5. Figure ;
6. Incompressibility absolute ; 7. Mobility ; 8. Situa
tion." 1
1 Hamilton s Reid, Note D, p. 848.
86 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
II. The Qualities which one body exercises in refer
ence to another; in other words, the Properties or Forces
of matter. I have expended much labor in vain if I
have not shown, in previous sections, that here we have
a necessary conviction. In the visual and locomotive
senses, we know an extra-organic object as affecting us
and our organism. All this seems to be involved in our
perception, and to be a native conviction of the mind, to
which it is ever prompted, and from which it can never
be delivered. Not only so, we are ever led to look for
a producing cause, even of our purely organic affections
in the ear and palate and nostrils. A knowledge of
power, and a conviction of power being in exercise, are
thus involved in our very perceptions through the senses.
Adhering to these views, we must set aside at once
two opposite doctrines which have had the support each
of a number of eminent metaphysicians or metaphysical
speculators. The one is that matter is known as pos
sessing no other quality than extension. This error
originated with Descartes, and has prevailed extensively
among those metaphysicians who have felt his influence.
But the view is opposed to that intuition which repre
sents all matter as having and exercising energy. On
the other side, there are speculators who maintain that
all the phenomena of matter can be explained by sup
posing it to possess potency. This mistake sprang from
Leibnitz, who supposed that the universe of matter (and
of mind) was composed of monads having power, and to
which the mind imparted the relation of space. But
the dynamical theory of body, so far as it denies the
existence of space, and body as occupying space, is
utterly inconsistent with that fundamental conviction,
of which the mind can never be shorn, which declares
that the matter which has force must be extended, and
THE ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OF MATTER. 87
the force exercised is a force in a body in one part of
space over another body in a different part of space.
44 L espace ou le lieu inte rieur et le corps qui est compris en cet
espace, ne sont diffe rents aussi que par notre pense e. Car, en effet
la meme e tendue en longueur, largeur et profondeur qui constitue
Pespace constitue le corps" (Des. Med. p. ii. 10). Leibnitz held
that bodies are endowed with some sort of active force. " Les corps
sont dou^s de quelque force active." This force may be called life :
44 C est une realite immate rielle, indivisible et indestructible: il en
met partout dans le corps croyant qu il n y a point de partie de la
masse oil il n y ait un corps organise, doue de quelque perception ou
d une maniere d ame " (Op. p. 694: ed. Erdmann). That he looked
upon space as a relation will come out below.
CHAPTER VI.
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OB SPIRIT.
I.
IT is probable, though it never can be positively
proven, that the first knowledge acquired by the mind
is of our own bodily frame, through the sensitive organ
ism, a view which does not imply that, apart alto
gether from such perceptions, the spirit would not have
operated. But whatever may be the theory formed on
this speculative subject, it is certain that whenever or
however the mind is aroused into an act of intelligence,
there is always involved in the exercise a knowledge of
self. Coexisting with every intelligent act of mind there
is always a self-consciousness. But let it be carefully
observed that this knowledge is not of an abstract being
or substance, or of an ego, or of an essence, but of the
concrete self in the particular state in which it may be,
with the particular thoughts, sensations, or purposes
which it may be entertaining at the time.
The language of Tennyson is often quoted :
" The baby new to earth and sky
Has never thought that this is I."
There is a truth here, or rather a half truth, which leads
to a mutilated account of the whole truth. Not till after
the years of infancy are past does any one entertain an
idea of self or mind apart from the operations of mind.
No one is likely to pronounce the judgment till a doubt
arises or a denial is made. But meanwhile there is a
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OB SPIRIT. 89
knowledge of self in the midst of all the exercises of the
mind. All our sensations and feelings, our judgments
and reasonings, are known by us as our own. My pains
are of myself and not of any one else. My pleasures are
pleasures of my own and not of another. Let us observe
arid seek to evolve what is involved in the cognition of
self.
II.
We know Self as having Being, Existence. The
knowledge we have in self-consciousness, which is asso-
O
ciated with every intelligent act, is not an impression, as
Hume would say, nor a quality, as certain of the Scottish
metaphysicians maintain, nor of a phenomenon in the
sense of appearance, as Kant states it, but of a thing or
reality. In affirming this we are simply bringing out and
expressing what is embraced in our primitive cognition.
No account which falls short of this can be regarded as
a full exhibition of the facts falling under our eye when
we look within. If any man maintain that all we can
discover is a mere idea, impression, phenomenon, or
quality of an unknown thing, I ask him for his evidence,
and he must, in replying, call in the internal sense, and
I can then show him that this sense, or cognitive power
(for it is not a sense except in an abusive application of
the term), declares that we know a something, or a thing
with a positive existence.
This is a knowledge which cannot be explained, nor
defined in the sense of being resolved into anything
simpler, or founded on anything deeper. It is a simple
element implied in every intelligent act, and not derived
from any other act or exercise. It is a basis on which
other knowledge may be reared, and not a superstructure
standing on another foundation.
As it is a primitive, so it is a necessary, conviction.
90 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
We cannot, by any other supposed knowledge, under
mine or set aside this fundamental knowledge. We
cannot be made by any process of speculation or ratio
cination to believe that we have not being. The process
of reasoning which would set aside this cognition can
plead no principle stronger than the conviction which we
have in favor of the reality of self.
In saying that we know self as possessed of being, we
do not mean to affirm that we know all about self, or
about our spiritual nature. There are mysteries about
self, as about everything else we know, sufficient to awe
every truly wise man into humility. All that is meant
is, that, whatever may be unknown, we always know
being whenever we know any of the objects presented
to us from within or from without.
III.
We know Ourselves as Persons. Our perception of
personality is closely connected with our knowledge of
being, but there is more in personality than in being.
We know material objects as having existence, but we
have a special apprehension in regard to self beyond
what we have in regard to material objects. Like every
other simple perception, it cannot be defined, but it may
be brought out to separate view by abstraction ; and con
sciousness (with memory) will recognize it as one of the
cognitions which it had seen before in company with
others. We express this conviction when we say we are
persons. The abstract idea is one not likely to be spon
taneously formed. The infant, the child, the savage, are
not in the habit of making any such analysis of conscious
ness, nor are the great body of mankind at the trouble of
asserting their own existence. Such a proposition, with
its subject and predicate, will be formed only after phi-
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OB SPIRIT. 91
losophy has taken a shape, probably only after sophis
try and scepticism have been attacking our original con
victions. It is only the metaphysician who will ever take
the trouble of affirming that he exists, and the wise me
taphysician will refrain from going further, and trying to
prove that he exists.
Yet it is a conviction which the mind ever carries
with it ; it is one of the high characteristics of humanity.
Inanimate matter is without it. The brute shows that
he is tending towards it, yet can have it only in an
incipient degree. It is an essential characteristic of the
man s individuality, and is one of the main elements in
his sense of independence, in his sense of freedom, in his
sense of responsibility. As possessing it, man feels that
he is independent of physical nature ; independent of all
creature intelligences ; independent, in a sense, of God,
against whom, alas! he may rebel, and to whom he must
for certain give an account. It is a conviction to be
used and not abused. It would certainly be perverted
were it to seduce man to isolate himself from the objects
around him, to try to become independent of the provi
sions made in physical nature to aid his weakness, or to
separate himself from his brothers or sisters of human
ity ; and still more, were it to tempt him to rebel against
God. It is properly used when, under the guidance of
moral law, it is leading him, not to be ever floating on
with the stream, but at times to be standing up in the
midst of it and acting as a breakwater in its current, or
as a martyr seeking to stem the tide of corruption, or,
Prometheus -like, rising up, not against the true God,
but against the false gods who rule in Olympus. Powers
hostile to the progress of humanity have sought to sub
due this principle. Absolutism would crush it, and
make man live for some slavish end, political or ecclesi-
92 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
astical. Pantheism would dissipate it till man loses all
individuality, and becomes relaxed, as he moves listlessly,
in a hot and hazy atmosphere. It is this conviction
which makes man feel that he is not a mere bubble on
the surface of being, blown up in one chance agitation,
and about to be absorbed in another. It keeps man
from being lost, lost in physical nature, lost in the
crowd of human beings, or lost in the ocean of being :
he is, after all and amid all, a person. As such he has
a part to act, an end to serve, a work to do, a destiny to
work out, and an account to render.
The cognitions which have been unfolded in this
chapter form, when memory begins to be exercised, the
ground of our recognition of our personal identity, and
lead us to believe in a self which abideth amid all
changes of thought, and mood, and feeling. This sub.
ject will be resumed by us under the head of Primitive
Judgments (a).
IV.
We know Self as not depending for its existence on
our Observation of it. Of course we can know self only
when we know self; our knowledge of self exists not
till we have the knowledge, and it exists only so long as
we have the knowledge. But when we come to know
self, we know it as already existing, and we do not look
on its continued existence as depending on our recogni
tion of it.
V.
We know Self as being in itself an Abiding Exist
ence. Not that we are to stretch this conviction so far
as to believe in the self-existence of mind, or in its
eternal existence. We believe certainly in the perma
nence of mind independent of our cognition of it, and
amidst all the shiftings and variations of its states. Yet
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OR SPIRIT. 93
this does not imply that there never was a time when
self was non-existing. For aught this conviction says,
there may have been a time when self came into exist
ence : another conviction assures that when it did, it
must have had a cause. It must be added, that this
conviction does not go the length of assuring us that
mind must exist forever, or that it must exist after the
dissolution of the body. Intuition does indeed seem to
say that, if it shall cease to exist, it must be in virtue
of some cause adequate to destroy it ; and it helps to
produce and strengthen the feeling which the dying man
cherishes when he looks on the soul as likely to abide
when the body is dead. But as to whether the dissolu
tion of the bodily frame is a sufficient cause of the de
cease of the soul, as to whether it may abide when
the bodily frame is disorganized, this is a question to
be settled not altogether by intuition, but by a number
of other considerations, and more particularly by the
conviction that God will call us into judgment at last,
and is most definitely settled, after all, by the inspired
declarations of the Word of God. But it is pleasant to
observe that there is an original conviction altogether in
unison with this derivative belief, a conviction leading us
to look on self as permanent, unless there be a cause
working adequate to its dissolution.
According to the views presented under these heads,
the existence of self is a position to be assumed, and not
to be proven. It does not need proof, and no proof
should be offered; no mediate proof could be clearer
than the truth which it is brought to support.
VI.
We know Self as exercising Potency. We have seen
that we know it as having being ; but we know it further
94 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
as having active being. We know it as acting, we know
it as being acted on, we know it as the source of action.
Even in sense-perception we know it as being acted on
from without ; nay, we know it as itself acting in pro
ducing the result. So far as we know objects acting
on it, we know it as capable of being influenced; in
other words, as having a capacity of a particular descrip
tion. So far as we know it acting in producing changes
in itself or other things, we know it as a potency, as
having power. When we recollect, when we fix the
thoughts on a particular object, when we fondly dwell
on a particular scene, we are exercising power, and by
consciousness we know that we are doing so. When in
consequence of coming to know of events bearing upon
us personally, say of some blessing about to descend,
or calamity about to befall, we rejoice or grieve, an
effect is experienced. This conscious potency is espe
cially felt in all exercises of the will, whether it be di
rected to the mental action which we wish to stay or
quicken, or the bodily organism which we propose to
move. I demur, indeed, to the view maintained by
some philosophers of eminence, that our idea of power
is obtained exclusively from the consciousness of the
power of will over the muscles. But I am persuaded
that our most vivid conviction of power is derived from
the influence of the will both on bodily and mental
action, and that the influence of the will on the organ
ism is what enables us to connect mental with bodily
action ().
But here it will be necessary to offer an explanation
to save ourselves from obvious difficulties, which many
have not seen their way to overcome. We shall find,
under another head, that while we believe intuitively
that every effect has a cause, we do not know by intui-
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OR SPIRIT. 95
tion what the cause is apart from experience ; and that
while we are convinced that the cause produces the
effect, it is only by experience we know what the effect
is. It follows that we do not know intuitively what or
how many powers must concur to produce a given effect.
This qualification will be found to have a great signifi
cance imparted to it by the circumstance to be after
wards noticed, that in order to most creature effects
there is need of a concurrence of causes, or of a concause.
When I will to move my arm, I know that the will is
one of the elements in producing the effect, but I do not
know, till physiology tells me, how many others must
cooperate. It follows that one of the elements of a
complex cause may act and no effect follow, because one
part of the concause is absent. I may will to take a
cheerful view of everything, and yet not be able,
owing to the rise of gloomy thoughts. I may will to
move my arm, and yet the arm may not move, because
paralysis has cut off the concurrence of the organism.
This subject will again come before us under various
aspects.
VII.
We know the Knowing Mind to be different from the
Material Object known, whether this be the organism as
affected or the object affecting it. Not that we know
by intuition wherein the difference lies ; not that we are
in a position to say whether they may not, after all,
have points of resemblance, and a mutual dependence,
and a reciprocal influence ; on these points our only
guide must be a gathered experience. But in every act
in which we know a bodily object, we know it to be
different from self, and self to be different from it. This
is a conviction which we can never lose, and of which no
sophistry can deprive us. We carry it with us at all
96 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
times, and wherever we go. It makes it impossible for
any man to confound himself with the universe, or the
universe with him. Man may mistake one external ob
ject for another, but it is not possible that he should
mistake an external object for himself, or identify him
self with any other object. This conviction is thus a
means, as shall be shown later in the treatise, of deliver
ing us from the more common forms of idealism, and
from every form of pantheism.
VIII.
We know Self in every One of its States, as these
pass before self-consciousness. And herein lies an im
portant difference between the knowledge we have of
mind, and the greater portion of the knowledge we have
acquired of the material universe. The knowledge which
we have of matter by intuition is extremely limited.
What we thus know, indeed, is supremely valuable, as
the ground on which we erect all our other information ;
still it is in itself very narrow, being confined to an
acquaintance with our organism as extended and as
exercising an influence on the mind, and to objects
immediately in contact with it. The greater part even
of the knowledge which we have of our organism, and of
objects in contact with it, is derivative ; and there is a
process of inference in all that we know of objects at a
distance, of sun, moon, stars, of hills, rivers, valleys,
and of the persons, and countenances, and conversations
of our friends. But in regard to our own minds, we
know all the individual facts directly and intuitively.
We gaze at once on the mind thinking, imagining, feel
ing, resolving. In this view it may be safely said that
we know more of certain of the states and of the action
of the mind than we know of the whole material uni-
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OK SPIRIT. 97
verse, even in this age of advanced science. It should
be added, in order to save the remark from appearing to
some incredibly extravagant, that while we thus know
spontaneously so much about the workings of the mind,
the majority of men think far more about their objec
tive than their subjective knowledge.
(a) " This self-personality, like all other simple and immediate
presentations, is indefinable; but it is so because it is superior to
definition. It can be analyzed into no simpler elements, for it is
itself the simplest of all ; it can be made no clearer by description
or comparison, for it is revealed to us in all the clearness of an
original intuition, of which description and comparison can furnish
only faint and partial resemblances (Mansel, Prolegomena Logica,
p. 129 ; see, also, Metaphysics ). It was the greatest of all the over
sights of Kant that he did not give personality a place among the
intuitions of the mind, to which it is entitled quite as much as space
and time. Held in by no primary belief in personality, those who
came after, such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, wandered out into
a wide waste of Pantheism. Taking with them no belief in the per
sonality of self, they never could reach personality in God.
It has been keenly disputed how we are to understand the " Co-
gito, ergo sum" of Descartes. Are we to regard it as a process
of reasoning ? If it be so, it is either a petitio principii, or its
conclusiveness may be doubted. If the cogito be understood as
embracing ego, that is, be understood as ego cogito, then the ego is
evidently involved in it, is in fact assumed. If it means anything
short of this, then it might be difficult to establish the accuracy of
the inference ; thus, if the cogito does not embrace the ego, it is
not clear that the conclusion follows. Or are we to regard the
statement as a sort of primitive judgment, not implying mediate
reasoning or a middle term ? Taken in this sense, I would reckon
that the connection between thought and existence is involved in
our knowledge of self as existing, rather than that the knowledge
of self issues from the perception of the connection between thought
and personal existence. Or are we to look on the expression as
simply a mode of stating an assumption ? In this case, the word
ergo, the usual symbol of inference, comes in awkwardly ; and be
sides, the truth to be assumed is not the complex judgment, cogito,
ergo sum, but the fact revealed at once to consciousness of ego
98 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
cogiians. This primitive cognition may be the ground of a number
of judgments, but it is to reverse the order of things entirely to
make any one of these judgments the ground of the cognitions.
Kant has a powerful criticism of the " Cogito, ergo sum," con
sidered as an argument, in his Paralogismen in the Kritik. See the
subject discussed by M. Cousin, Prem : Ser : tome 1.
In answering the objections of Gassendi, Descartes says : " Cum
advertimus nos esse res cogitantes, prima qusedam notio est quae et
nullo syllogismo concluditur ; neque etiam quis dicit Ego cogito,
ergo sum, sive existo, existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum
deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notam simplici mentis intuitu
agnoscit."
Buffier gives the correct account with his usual clearness : " C est
par une meme perception de notre ame que nous e*prouvons le senti
ment intime et de notre pensee et de notre existence " (Buffier,
Prem. Ve r. p. i. c. i.).
The Scottish School generally maintains that we do not know
mind and body, but only the qualities of them. Reid indeed says,
" Every man is conscious of a thinking principle, or mind, in him
self " (Collected Writings, p. 217). Campbell, in his Philosophy of
Rhetoric, speaks of consciousness being concerned with " the exist
ence of mind itself, and its actual feelings," etc. (Book i. Chap.
v. But this language is not free from ambiguity. Reid says
that " sensation suggests to us both a faculty and a mind, and not
only suggests the notion of them, but creates a belief of their ex
istence ; " and he defends the use of the word " suggest," which I
reckon a very unfortunate one in such an application (Collected
Writings, pp. 110, 111). This view is carried out and elaborated by
D. Stewart: "It is not matter or body which I perceive by my
senses, but only extension, figure, color, and certain other qualities,
which the constitution of my nature leads me to refer to something
which is extended, figured, and colored. The case is precisely
similar with respect to mind. We are not immediately conscious of
its existence, but we are conscious of sensation, thought, and voli
tion, operations which imply the existence of something which feels,
thinks, and wills" (Elem. Vol. i. p. 46; see also Vol. 11. p. 41, and
Phil. Essays, p. 58).
Kant holds that the inner sense gives no intuition of the soul as
an object. " Der innere Sinn, vermittelst dessen das Gemiith sich
selbst, oder seinen inneren Zustand anschaut, giebt zwar keine
Anschauung von der Seele selbst, als einem Object " (Kr. d. r. V.
OUR INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF OB SPIRIT. 99
p. 34). He speaks of the subject envisaging itself, not as it is but as
it appears : ** Da es denn sich selbst anschaut, nicht wie es sich
unmittelbar selbstthatig vorstellen wiirde, sondern nach der Art wie
es von innen afficirt wird, folglich wie es sich erscheint, nicht wie es
ist" (Zw. Aufg. p. 718). He says that by the inner sense we know
the subject self as phenomenon, and not as it is in itself: " Was die
innere Anschauung betrifft, unser eigenes Subject nur als Erschei-
nung, nicht aber nach dem, was es an sich selbst ist, erkennen "
(Ibid. p. 850). Dr. Mansel has done great service to philosophy by
maintaining so clearly and resolutely, in his Prolegomena Logica and
Metaphysics, that we intuitively know self. " I am immediately
conscious of myself seeing and hearing, willing and thinking " (Prol.
Log. p. 129). Hamilton speaks of our being conscious every moment
of our existence, and of the ego as a " self-subsistent entity " (Metaph.
Lect. 19).
(6) It can be shown that Locke consistently or inconsistently
states that we know power as being in body, but especially in mind.
** Bodies by our senses do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea
of active power as we have from reflection on the operations of our
own mind." In deriving our idea of Power from Sensation and Re
flection he supposes the mind to be actively and intelligently exer
cised. u Whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a
power somewhere to make that change " (Essay, n. xxi. 4). But
Locke has omitted to inquire what it is in the mind which insists
that it must collect a cause wherever there is a change.
Hamilton admits all I am pleading for. "I know myself as a
force in energy, the not-self as a counter-force in energy " (Note D,
p. 666, of Ap. to Reid). And again we have a perceptive power of
the secundo primary quality of resistance in an extra-organic force
as an immediate cognition " (p. 883). Is this statement an essential
part of his doctrine, or an incidental admission? If part of his sys
tem, it should modify the view he has given elsewhere of our convic
tion of power as being a mere impotency (see Appendix to Discuss.).
If it be inadvertent, it is a proof that truth will come out of honest
men in spite of the errors of their system.
CHAPTER VII.
SUBSTANCE.
I.
SIR W. HAMILTON remarks that the word "substance"
may be " viewed as derived from subsistendo, and as
meaning ens per se subsistens (ouo-ta in Greek) : or it
may be viewed as the basis of attributes, in which sense
it may be regarded as derived from substando, and id
quod substat accidentibus ; like the Greek vTroo-rao-t?,
v7roKt/>tcvov. In either case it will, however, signify the
same thing viewed in a different aspect." With this
latter statement I cannot concur. In the first of these
senses there is such a thing as substance, and its charac
teristics can be specified. But I can see no evidence
whatever for the existence of any such thing as a sub
stance in the other sense, that is, as a substratum lying
in and beyond, or standing under, all that comes under
our immediate knowledge. There is no topic on which
there has been a greater amount of unsatisfactory lan
guage employed than on this. We know, it is said, only
qualities, but we are constrained by reason, or by com
mon sense, to believe in a something in which they
inhere. Or qualities, it is said, fall under sense, while
substance is known by vofc, or reason. Others, proceed
ing on these admissions, maintain that, qualities alone
being known, we may doubt whether there is such a
thing as substance, and may certainly affirm that we can
never know it. Now in opposition to all this style of
thinking and writing, which has prevailed to so great an
SUBSTANCE. 101
extent since the days of Locke, I maintain that we never
know qualities without also knowing substance. Quali
ties as qualities distinct from substance are as much un
known to us as substance distinct from qualities. We
know both in one concrete act.
All that the metaphysician can do in regard to sub
stance is to show that our cognition of it is original and
fundamental, and to evolve what is contained in the cog
nition. He should not attempt to prove how it is so and
so (the Ston of Aristotle), but he may show that it is so
and so (the on of Aristotle). He could not give the
dimmest idea of it to one who had not already the
knowledge, but he may separate it by analysis from the
other cognitions with which it is combined, and make it
stand out distinctly to the view. He may so weigh and
measure it as to show its extent and boundary, and de
liver it from those crudities in which speculators have in
crusted it. The following is the best analysis I am able
to furnish.
II.
In all knowledge of substance there is involved BE
ING or EXISTENCE, not of being in the abstract, but of
something in being. This we have seen is an essential
element in our cognition, both of mind and body. The
mind starts with knowledge, and with the knowledge of
things as existing. This is the foundation, the necessary
foundation, of all other exercises. If the mind did not
begin with knowledge, it could not end with knowledge.
In particular, if it had not knowledge in the concrete, it
never could reach knowledge in the abstract. If there
were not a knowledge of things in the premises with
which we set out, there never could be knowledge in the
conclusion. But having knowledge, obtained by intui
tion, to set out with, we find that when we proceed
102 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
legitimately that is, according to the laws of thought
in our discursive exercises, we have always reality in
the conclusion.
Those who assert that substance has a substratum, a
something standing under it, have caught a glimpse of a
truth which however they have not fully comprehended.
All substance has a Being which combines and gives a
unity to what is embraced in it.
III.
In all knowledge of substance there is involved AC
TIVE POWER. We cannot know self, or the mind that
knows, except as active, that is, exerting power, or as
being affected. Nor can we know material objects ex
cept as exercising or suffering an influence, that is, a
certain kind of power. They become known to us as
having a power either upon ourselves or upon other ob
jects, and we express this when we say that we know
matter by its properties.
This is a doctrine which has been opposed by a large
school of metaphysicians that have felt directly or in
directly the influence of Descartes, who represented ex
tension as the essence of matter. This oversight has
marred their whole speculations, and landed them in
innumerable difficulties. For, not finding power in our
original cognitions, they have either with the sceptic
Hume denied that we have any such cognition, or with
Kant they have made it a form which the mind imposes
on objects. Still a large amount of authority can be
pleaded in behalf of the doctrine, that power is involved
in our idea of substance. It is the expressed view of
Locke. It is maintained by Leibnitz with all the inge
nuity of his speculative genius. Even Kant acknowledges
(though, from the subjective character which he ascribes
SUBSTANCE.
103
to our intuitive convictions, he can turn it to no profit
able account) that cause is involved in our idea of sub
stance. It has been incidentally admitted by many who
have theoretically denied it.
IV.
There is involved in our knowledge of substance a
conviction of its having a PERMANENCE. This propo
sition must be very guardedly stated. By being loosely
and inaccurately announced, it has led to very erroneous
and dangerous doctrines. But there is a truth here, if
we could only properly apprehend and express it. A
substance is not a spectre which appeared when we
began to see it, and which may cease to exist when we
have ceased to view it. This conviction is at the basis
of the belief in the abiding nature of every existing
thing, amid all the changes which it may undergo.
However a piece of matter may be beat or cut mechan
ically, we do not believe it to be destroyed. However it
may be evaporated or decomposed by heat or chemical
processes, we are not convinced that it is annihilated.
When the moisture on the earth disappears, we do not
therefore conclude that it has vanished into nothing ; we
look for it in a new form, and our expectation is gratified
when we discover it in the vapor of tne atmosphere or
the cloud. When fuel is put on the fire it gradually dis
appears from the view, but we inquire for it elsewhere,
and find it in the ashes and in the smoke. Our convic
tion of the abiding nature of self is still more deeply
rooted and fixed. We believe in its continuance amid
all the changes of thought and sensation, mood and feel
ing, lethargy and activity.
But while there is all this in our apprehension of
substance, there is not more than this, and the errors
104 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
have arisen from supposing that there is more. In par
ticular, our conviction does not require us to believe
either in the necessary existence of every substance, or
in its indestructibility. Our intuition does not say
whether it has or has not been created, whether it does
or does not need the Divine power to maintain and
uphold it, whether it may or may not be destroyed. It
does not entitle us to affirm that matter must have
existed forever, or must, if formed, have been fashioned
out of preexisting materials. Nor does it say how long
it has existed, or how long it will exist. An analogous
intuitive conviction that of cause says that if pro
duced, it must have been produced by a cause ; that if
destroyed, it must be by a power independent of itself.
Hence we cannot assert positively, when we see a sub
stance, say a piece of burned coal, disappearing from
our view, that it must still exist, for in the operation of
combustion there may have been a power to destroy it ;
all that we can affirm is, that the substance did not van
ish of itself. All that our intuition guarantees is, that
in itself substance has permanence, and that, if destroyed,
it must be by something ab extra.
V.
According to the account now given, the Conscious
Self or Spirit must be a substance. We know it as
having being, we know it as having power and perma
nence. While it has these, it is to be studiously noticed
that we do not know it to have all, or indeed any, of
these independently. For aught our intuition says, it
may be dependent for all of these on the creative power
or concurrent power of God. Not only so, it may, for
anything our intuition intimates, be dependent for some
of these on its association with the bodily organism in
SUBSTANCE. 105
this present state of things. If we wish to settle these
questions, we must look to other circumstances and con
siderations.
Many metaphysicians have felt greater difficulty in
allowing that Matter is a substance. But, explaining
substance as has been done in this section, it is entitled
to be so regarded. It, too, has being, power, and endu
rance. We can deny this only by refusing to follow
our native convictions. But in standing up for the sub
stantial nature of body, it is still more necessary than
in the case of spirit to bear in mind the qualifications
under which we make the statement. We cannot affirm
of matter that it has derived its characteristics from no
source independent of itself. Nor can we declare of it
that it can subsist of itself, and independent of the co
operating power of mind, that is, the Divine Mind. We
are stretching intuition altogether beyond its province
if we make it pronounce oracular decisions on any such
questions.
But are mind and matter different substances? I
reply that there are certain positions on this subject
which can be defended against all opposition. First, in
the cognition of the knowing mind, which ever coexists
with our cognition of matter, we always know the two
to be different. When we look at these hills we have
ever an accompanying cognition of self as looking at
the hills, and we know the hills to be different from self,
and self to be different from the hills. Secondly, we
know that the very things by which substance is charac
terized existence, potency, and permanence are not
the same in the case of mind and body. Thus, the
being of mind is not the same with that of matter, nor
are the powers of mind the same with those of matter,
nor does the permanence of body depend on human beings
106 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
observing it, nor can it be shown that the permanence
of mind depends on the permanence of the bodily frame.
With these proofs or presumptions in our favor, we may
surely throw the onus probandi of proving that they are
the same substance on our opponents. But thirdly, all
attempts to resolve mind into matter, or matter into
mind, have utterly failed. If we deny that matter has
an existence independent of the contemplative mind, we
are trampling on one of the intuitions of our nature.
Those who resolve mind into matter always overlook
the very essential qualities of the knowing, the con
scious, the thinking, the moral, the responsible soul.
We are thus entitled, from all we can know of substance,
to declare them to be different substances. As to
whether they may not, after all, have some unity in the
view of higher intelligences, who take a deeper view of
substance, this is a question which we need not start, for
we cannot settle it ; the alleged unity must be such that
we can never discover nor comprehend it. It is enough
for us that they are different substances in all the char
acteristics of substance known to us.
By the limitations drawn above, we are saved from certain per
nicious consequences which were supposed to follow from the doc
trine of Descartes. According to him, a substance is that which
subsists of itself, which has no need of anything else in order to
its existence. 1 Proceeding on this definition, Spinoza labored to
show that there was and could be only one substance, of which
everything is an attribute or a mode. The school of Descartes
sought to save themselves from this pantheistic consequence by
1 " Per substantiam nihil aliud possumus, quam rem quse eta exis-
tet, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum. Et quidem substantia
quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intellige nempe
Deus. Alias vero omnes non nisi ope concursus Dei existere posse
percipimus " (Prin.: Phil: i. 51.) He speaks of created substances,
"quod sint res quae solo Dei concursus egeunt ad existendum." Ib. 52.
SUBSTANCE. 107
various devices. To me it appears that we must amend the defi
nition of Descartes, and reject the definition of Spinoza, and then
all the conclusions founded on them must fall to the ground,
understand," says Spinoza, " by substance, that which is in itself
and conceived by itself ; that is to say, that of which the concept
can be formed without having need of the concept of any other
thing." 1 There is a whole aggregate of things jumbled in this defi-
nituTn. That which is in itself is one thing ; that which is con
ceived by itself is another thing, which is not necessarily the same as
that which is given in explanation, viz., that of which a concept
can be formed without having need of the concept of any other
thing. I object to our conviction in regard to substance being
called a concept, a phrase denoting an abstract or general notion
formed by a discursive process of the understanding : the conviction
is an intuition. The intuition says of every substance that it is a
thing or reality, but it does not say whence the reality has pro
ceeded. It says that substance has power, but it does not say
whence that power. No doubt a substance is a thing known (not
merely conceived) in itself, but the same may be said of space and
time, and everything apprehended intuitively. Having removed
this definition out of the way, as not the expression of our intuitive
knowledge, we leave the whole pantheism of Spinoza without a
foundation. I am certain that our native conviction as to substance
gives no countenance to pantheism of any kind. Our intuition says
that substance has being, but it does not say that it is underived,
or whence it is derived. It says that it has permanence, but does
not say that it has not been created and that it cannot be destroyed.
"If any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure
substance in general, he will find that he has no other idea of it at
all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such
qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us ; which
qualities are commonly called accidents" (Locke, Essay, n. xxiii.
23). His view is thus fully expounded in his Letter to Stillingfleet :
" Your Lordship well expresses it, We find that we can have no true
conception of any modes or accidents, but we must conceive a substratum
or subject wherein they are : i. e. that they cannot exist or subsist of
themselves. Hence the mind perceives their necessary connection
1 " Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se percipitur
hoc est id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alternus rei, a quo
formari debeat."
108 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
with inherence, or being supported; which being a relative idea,
superadded to the red color in a cherry, or to thinking in a man,
the mind frames the correlative idea of a support. For I never
denied that the mind could frame to itself ideas of relation, but
have showed the quite contrary in my chapters about relation. But
because a relation cannot be founded on nothing, or be the relation
of nothing, and the thing here related as a supporter or support is
not represented to the mind by any clear and distinct idea, therefore
the obscure, indistinct, vague idea of thing or something is all that
is left to be the positive idea which has the relation of a support or
substratum to modes or accidents ; and that general undetermined
idea of something is by the abstraction of the mind derived also
from the simple ideas of Sensation and Reflection ; and thus the
mind, from the positive simple ideas got by sensation or reflection,
comes to the general relative idea of substance, which without these
positive simple ideas it could never have. ; I have quoted this
passage because it lets us see fully what Locke s precise theory is,
and what are its defects. The mind gets all its ideas from sen
sation and reflection, but in comparing ideas it discovers necessary
relations. Among these is substance, of which the idea is very
obscure. Still the mind is led to suppose that there is such a thing
acting as a support or substratum.
Berkeley admits the existence of all that we perceive : " That
what I see, hear, and feel doth exist, that is to say, is perceived by
me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being." But he adds :
"I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof
of the existence of anything which is not perceived by sense "
(Prin. Hum. Know. 40). In particular, he is not satisfied that there
is a material substratum to what we perceive or a support of it. " It
is evident support cannot here be taken in its usual or literal sense,
as when we say that pillars support a building ; in what sense, there
fore, must it be taken ? If we inquire into what the most accurate
philosophers declare themselves to mean by material substance, we
shall find them acknowledge they have no other meaning annexed to
those sounds but the idea of being in general, together with the rela
tive notion of its supporting accidents " (16, 17). Now Berkeley is
right in saying that we are not required to allow the existence of
more than we perceive. But (1) he is wrong in maintaining that
we can perceive nothing more than ideas in our own minds. " When
we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we
are all the while only contemplating our own ideas" (23). Then
SUBSTANCE. 109
(2) he errs in not unfolding how much is comprised in the object as
perceived by us; we perceive body as having being, power, and
existence without us and independent of us. " It will be urged that
thus much at least is true, to wit, that we take away all corporeal
substances. To this my answer is, that if the word substance be
taken in the vulgar sense for a combination of sensible qualities,
such as extension, solidity, weight, and the like, this we cannot be
accused of taking away. But if it be taken in a philosophic sense,
for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind, then
indeed I acknowledge that we take it away, if one may be said to
take away that which never had any existence, not even in imagi
nation" (37). Berkeley was misled throughout by following the
Lockian doctrines that the mind perceives immediately only its own
ideas, and that substance is to be taken merely as the support or
substratum of qualities. It is important to add that Berkeley is
wrong (as Brown also is) in holding that we perceive material sub
stance " as a combination of sensible qualities." I am not aware
that intuitively we perceive qualities separately or a combination of
them ; we know body as an existing thing with extension and solidity.
Hamilton says, that when we think a quality we are constrained to
think it " as inhering in some basis, substratum, hypostasis, or sub
stance," which substance is represented as unknown: he speaks of
being "compelled to refer it to an unknown substance" (Discuss.
App?i. A). I hold that in the one concrete act we know both sub
stance and quality.
CHAPTER VIII.
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, ESSENCE.
Two great truths press themselves on the reflecting
mind when it contemplates this world of ours. One, the
more obvious, is the mutability of all mundane objects.
Nothing seems to be enduring ; all is perceived as fluc
tuating. This has been a favorite theme with poets, to
whom it has furnished a succession of kaleidoscope pic
tures ; moralists and divines have dwelt upon it, in order
to allure us to seek for something more stable than this
world can furnish ; and even libertines have turned it to
their own use, and exhorted us to catch the enjoyment
while it passes, to shoot the bird on the wing : " Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Philosophies
have been built on this doctrine of the fluctuation of all
things. Heracleitus of Ephesus taught that all things
are in a perpetual flux ; that we cannot enter the same
stream twice ; whereon Cratylus corrected him, and
showed that we cannot do so once. But there is another
truth which has a no less important, indeed a deeper,
place in the nature of things. In the midst of all these
mutations objects have, after all, a permanence. Ever
changing, they are yet all the while ever the same. Per
sons of deeper thought, or at least more addicted to
abstraction, looking beneath the changing surface, dwell
on this permanence, which they discover to be like the
fixed mountain, while the changes are merely like the
colors that pass over its surface ; and some have so mag
nified it as to make it set aside the mutability. The
Eleatics carried their doctrine so far as to maintain the
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, ESSENCE. Ill
oneness and unchangeableness of all being. The founder
of the school, Xenophanes, identified this immutable
oneness with the Divine Being. His disciple, Par-
menides, degenerating in religious faith, though superior
to the master in logical power, narrowed this unity into
metaphysical being. Zeno, who followed, showed his
subtlety by pointing out the difficulties in which they
are involved who maintain the existence of multiplicity
and motion. The expansive mind of Plato wrestled with
both these extremes, and sought by his doctrine of supra-
sensible ideas, and an exuberance of subtleties, to es
tablish a doctrine of being not inconsistent with mul
tiplicity and change. In modern times Descartes and
Spinoza have magnified the importance of Substance
quite as much as the Eleatics did Being ; while the great
mass of physicists, and all the speculators of the Sensa
tional School, never go down deeper than the fleeting,
the superficial, and the phenomenal.
The wise and the only proper course is to assume
both ; to assume both as first truths. No attempt should
be made to support either by mediate proof ; each carries
with it its own evidence. Neither can be set aside by
any sophistical reasoning founded on the other. It is
the business of philosophy not to attempt to discard
either, but rather to give the proper account of each,
when they will be seen not to be inconsistent. The
doctrine of the permanence of objects is founded on
being and substance. We must take a view of the other
truth in this section.
Every substance, we have seen, is known as having
being, power, and endurance. But every terrestrial sub
stance is at the same time known as changing. Self
changes as we look in upon it; the material world
changes as we look out upon it. No attempt should be
112 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
made to explain how the two can coexist, the permanent
and the changeable. For mind and body are known at
one and the same time as both. The one is quite as
much known, and therefore quite as conceivable ever
afterwards, as the other ; and there can be no difficulty
(whatever metaphysicians may ingeniously urge in oppo
sition) in conceiving of their compatibility, since they
were ever known to exist together. It is one of the
permanent characters, both of mind and body, that they
are ever known as changing. Their liability to change
is an element in their very nature. Now the appropriate
term to express the given state of any one substance is
MODE ; or if we wish a convenient change of phrase
ology, Modification, State, or Condition.
From this account we see in what sense it is that sub
stance implies mode, and mode implies substance. Mode
implies substance, not only inasmuch as a state must be
the state of something, but inasmuch as mode is the
state of a substance liable to change, and so capable of
manifesting itself in more than one phase. Substance
implies mode, inasmuch as it must always be in a certain
state, and is liable to be in different states. The maxim
is more than a verbal one, more than a truism, more
than an identical (analytic) judgment involved in the
terms ; it is a judgment affirming a truth intuitively dis
covered by the mind when looking at the things (a
synthetic judgment a priori).
Every object is known not only as having being, but
is known as having a certain being or nature. That by
which it manifests itself to us may be something com
mon to this one thing with other things, or it may be
something peculiar to the thing itself. Every particular
substance known is known as at least having being and
potency and an abiding nature, and is known also as pos-
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, ESSENCE. 113
sessing peculiar or distinguishing attributes. That by
which the object is thus known to us as in itself, or as
acting, may be called a quality of the substance. Sir
W. Hamilton speaks of the qualities of substance as " its
aptitudes and manners of existence and of action." l
But let us properly understand the relation of the two,
substance and quality. The two are ever known in one
concrete act. Thus when at a given moment we know
self as rejoicing, we do not know the self as separate, or
the rejoicing as separate, but we grasp the self and the
rejoicing at once. But then it is necessary for many
purposes to distinguish between them, and we do so by
analysis ; indeed, the analysis is in a sense done for us
naturally. For while self is rejoicing to-day, it may be
grieving to-morrow. To express the distinction it is
needful to have a nomenclature, and so we distinguish
between the substance and the quality. Not that the
substance can ever exist without the quality or the quality
without the substance. On the contrary, the one implies
the other. The substance must always have at least the
qualities by which all substance is characterized, and it
may have many others. The qualities must always be
qualities of a thing having these characteristics. The
maxim that the substance implies the quality, is thus a
proposition of the same character as that the substance
implies the mode.
The word " substance " may be used either as an ab
stract or a general term. As an abstract term it desig
nates the thing as having the characteristics of sub
stance, which I believe to be existence, potency, and con
tinuance. As a general term it denotes all those things
which have the characteristics of substance. Quality,
too, may be employed as an abstract or a general term.
1 Metaph. Lect. 8.
114 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
As an abstract term it denotes that in any given sub
stance by which it acts or manifests itself. As a general
term it denotes all the manifestations or actions of a
substance. Some of these qualities are found in all sub
stance: such are the characteristics of substance of which
I have so often spoken. Others are peculiar to certain
substances, or manifest themselves in certain substances
at certain times. Particular qualities are known by us
intuitively to be in mind or matter. Thus we know
consciousness, personality, thought, and will, as in mind ;
while we know extension and incompressibility as being
in matter : these may appropriately be styled Essential
Qualities of spirit and body. Other qualities are dis
covered by a gathered experience. Both mind and body
may have qualities which can never be known by us. As
to the qualities which become known to us by experience,
and the qualities concealed from us, we can never know
whether any of them are, or are not, essential either to
body or mind.
If this view be correct, we see that a wrong account is
often given of substance and qualities, and the relation
between them. Thus it is very common to say that
substance is a thing behind the qualities or underneath
them, acting as a substratum, basis, ground, or support.
All such language is in its very nature metaphorical ;
the analogy is of the most distant kind, and may have a
misleading character. The substance is the very thing
itself, considered in a certain aspect, and the qualities
are its action or manifestation. Again, it is frequently
said that qualities are known, whereas substance can
not be known, or, if known, known only by some deeper
or more transcendental principle of the mind. Now I
hold that we never know quality except as the quality of
a substance, and that we know both equally in one un-
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, ESSENCE. 115
divided act. This is a somewhat less mystical or mys
terious account than that commonly given by metaphysi
cians, but is, as it appears to me, in strict accordance
with the revelations of consciousness.
I have said that the term " quality " expresses all in
the substance by which it acts or manifests itself. That
in substance which acts is power, and in all substance
(we have seen) is power. The term PROPERTY, which
signifies peculiar quality, might, I think, in accordance
with a usage to which it has of late been approximating
more and more, be appropriated to express the powers
of any given substance, as the power of thinking or
feeling in mind, or of gravity or chemical affinity in
body. To vary the phraseology, the word Faculty may
be employed when we speak of mental powers, and Force
when we speak of material powers. It is the business of
science to determine by observation and generalization
the powers or properties of mind and body.
Another phrase with the ideas involved in it requires to be ex
plained here, and that is ESSENCE. It is a very mystical word,
and a whole aggregate of foolish speculation has clustered round it.
Still it may have a meaning. As applied logically to classes of
objects, it has a signification which can be precisely fixed ; it de
notes the common quality or qualities which are found in all the
members of the class. Thus the possession of four limbs is the
essence of the class quadruped. It is to be remembered that when
the class is one of what some logicians call Kinds, it is impossible to
specify all the common qualities which go to constitute it. Thus
we cannot tell all the attributes which go to make up such natural
classes as those of metal, dog, or rose. All that we can do is to spe
cify some of the more marked, which are signs of others. But for
such logical purposes the phrase " common attribute " or " differ
entia" is the better, and is more frequently employed. It is in meta
physics that the word " essence " is supposed to have a place. Thus
the question is often put, What is the essence of mind ? or, What
is the essence of body? or, What is the essence of this individual
116 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
mind, or of this piece of clay or chalk ? Now, we can answer such
a question as this, only when we are allowed to draw distinctions
and offer explanations. First, we may allowably conceive that
every one object, and every class of objects, has an aggregate of
things which go to constitute it, and we may with perfect propriety
refer to such an essence as possibly or probably existing, but always
on the distinct condition, forthwith to be specified more formally,
that we do not speak of the essence as something which can be
known by us in all its totality. Locke (Letter to Stillingfleet) takes
Essences "to be in everything that internal constitution, or frame, or
modification of the Substance, which God, in his wisdom and good
pleasure, thinks fit to give to every particular creature when he
gives it a being ; and such essences I grant there are in all things
that exist." Secondly, there are some things which we know to
belong to the essence of certain objects ; thus we know that being,
power, and permanence are essential to all substance, and that
certain qualities, such as consciousness and thought, belong to
mind, and certain qualities such as extension and incompressibility,
to body. But we must ever guard against the idea that there may
not be other qualities also essential to these objects. For, thirdly,
the essence of a thing, at least in its totality, must always be un
known to man. How many things are united in body or mind, or
in any individual mind or material object, this can never be ascer
tained by human observation or ingenuity. In this sense it is proper
in us to ppeak of the essence of things as being unknown to man;
meaning thereby, not that we cannot know the substance, which I
maintain we do know, or that we cannot know some of the qualities
which go to make up the essence, but merely that we cannot know
what precisely constitutes the essence in its entireness. But,
fourthly, we are not warranted to maintain that there must be some
thing lying further in than the qualities we know, and that this one
thing is entitled to be regarded as the essence of the object. We
have no ground whatever for believing that there must be, or that
there is, something more internal or central than the substance and
quality which we know. True, there are probably occult qualities,
even in those .objects with which we are most intimately acquainted,
but we are not therefore warranted to conclude that what is concealed
must differ in nature or in kind from what is revealed, or that it is in
any way more necessary to the existence or the continuance of the
object. I have a shrewd suspicion that there is a vast amount of un
meaning talk in the language which is employed on this special subject
MODE, QUALITY, PROPERTY, ESSENCE. 117
by metaphysicians, who would see something which the vulgar cannot
discern, whereas they should be contented with unfolding the nature
of what all men perceive. It is quite conceivable, and perfectly
possible, that, though we should know all about any given material
or spiritual object, we should after all not fall in with anything
more mysterious or deep than those wonders which come every day
tinder our notice in the world without, or the world within us.
CHAPTER IX.
BEING.
THE abstract notion of Being is one which the mind
is not much disposed to fashion. As to many other
abstractions, it is led naturally to form them ; they are
framed for it, or it is compelled by the circumstances in
which it is placed to frame them. Thus I see an indi
vidual with a black coat one day, and with a gray coat
the next, and I cannot but separate the man from his
clothing. But in such high abstractions as Being, that
which we contemplate is never, in fact, separated from
any one thing. Still Being is an abstraction which we
are constrained to make for philosophic purposes, and it
was, in fact, formed so early as the age of the specula
tors of the Eleatic School. It is the one thing to be
found objectively in all our knowledge. Hence in all
our abstractions it is that which remains ; in the ascend
ing process of generalization it is the summum genus.
This does not prove that Being can exist apart from a
special mode of existence, or the exercise of some qual
ity. Nor does it prove that we can know Being separate
from a concrete existence. I hold the one as well as
the other of these to be impossible. But in all knowl
edge we know what we know as having existence, which
is Being.
I cannot give my adhesion to the opinion of those who
speak so strongly of man being incapacitated to know
Being. I have already intimated my dissent from the
Kantian doctrine that we do not know things, but ap-
BEING.
119
pearances ; and even from the theory of those Scottish
metaphysicians who affirm that we do not know things,
but qualities. What we know is the thing manifesting
itself to us, is the thing exercising particular qualities.
But then it is confidently asserted by Kantians that we
do not know the "thing in itself." The language, I
rather think, is unmeaning ; but if it has a meaning, it
is incorrect. I do not believe that there is any such
thing in existence as Being in itself, or that man can
even so much as imagine it ; and if this be so, it is clear
that we cannot know it, and desirable that we should
not suppose that we know it. Of this I am sure,
that those Neo-Platonists who professed to be able to
rise to the discovery of Being in itself (which could only
be the abstract idea of Being), and to be employed in
gazing on it, had miserably bare and most unprofitable
matter of meditation, whether for intellectual, or moral,
or religious ends. But if any one mean to deny that we
can know Being as it is, I maintain in opposition to him,
and I appeal to consciousness to confirm me when I say,
that we immediately know Being in every act of cogni
tion. But then we are told that we cannot know the
mystery of Being. I am under a strong impression
that speculators have attached a much greater amount of
profundity to this simple subject than really belongs to
it. Of this I am sure, that much of the obscurity which
has collected around it has sprung from the confused
discussions of metaphysicians, who have labored to ex
plain what needs no explanation to our intelligence, or
to seek a basis on which to build what stands securely
on its own foundation. I do indeed most fully admit
that there may be much about Being which we do not
know ; much about Being generally, much about every
120 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
individual Being, unknown to us and unknowable in this
world. Still I do affirm that we know Being as Being,
and that any further knowledge conveyed to us would
not set aside our present knowledge, but would simply
enlarge ifc.
CHAPTER X.
EXTENSION.
THE knowledge of extension is involved in every ex
ercise of sense -perception, even as the knowledge of
personality is implied in every exercise of self -conscious
ness. We certainly cannot employ the senses of sight
and muscular energy, we cannot, I believe, perceive
through any of the senses, without knowing the ob
ject, be it the organism or something affecting the organ
ism, as possessing extension, always along with other
qualities. This, then, is historically the origin of our
idea of space, that is, we have a perception of it in
every cognition of body. But in this primitive knowl
edge we do not apprehend it as distinct from body. It
is an extended and a colored surface, which we know
through the eye; it is an extended body capable of
resisting us, which we know through the muscular sense
and locomotive energy; it is a set of organs localized
and out of each other, that we know by the other senses.
But by an easy intellectual act we can separate the
extension from the impenetrability and the associated
sensations. We are greatly aided in our apprehensions
of empty space by certain exercises of sense-perception.
For we have experience ever presenting itself of two
bodies seen or felt, with nothing between obvious to
the senses. True, scientific research shows that the in
terval is not a pure vacuum, that there is air, or ether,
between the bodies; still it is in our apprehension a
void, that is, a space, with no perceived body to fill it.
We are thus led to an apprehension of space as different
122 PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF PRIMITIVE TRUTHS.
from body occupying space. We are not to look on the
extension thus reached as an illusion, a nonentity, or as
nothing. If we know, as I maintain we do, body in
space, the space must have an existence (I do not say
what sort of existence), just as much as the body has.
When we separately contemplate the extension, we are
contemplating a reality just as verily as when we per
ceive the body. It will not do to dismiss space sum
marily by describing it as a mere abstraction : in order
to our apprehension of it there is need of abstraction,
but it is an abstraction of a real part from a real whole.
To this cognition of space, and to every apprehension
of it, there is attached a number of intuitive beliefs.
It is the business of the metaphysician to unfold these
in an inductive manner, and point out and determine
their nature and laws as precisely as possible. This re
quires to be done in another Book of this Treatise, to
which therefore I adjourn the further discussion of space,
as it embraces a larger faith than it does of a cognitive
element in our apprehension of it.
Prof. Bain maintains (The Senses and Intellect, 2d ed. p. 397),
that the localization of our bodily feelings is the result of experi
ence. I admit that it is by the muscular sense and the eye that we
know the external configuration of our frame, and that it is by a
gathered experience we connect this with the internal feelings. But
I hold that we give an externality and a direction to our bodily
sensations. Mr. Bain acknowledges that the body is to us an ex
ternal object (p. 397). If so, it must be known in space. But it
has never yet been shown how we can know an object as external
to us and in space except intuitively. "I do not see," says Mr.
Bain, in criticising Hamilton (p. 376), "how one sensation can be
felt out of another without already supposing that we have a feeling
of space." What we suppose is that in thus regarding the body as
external and localizing the sensations we get the idea of space. It
is a law of this localizing that the sensation is felt at the part of the
body to which the nerve reaches. And " when different parts of
EXTENSION. 123
the thickness of the same nerves are severally subjected to irrita
tion, the same sensations are produced as if the different terminal
branches of these parts of the nerves had been irritated. If the
ulnar nerve be irritated mechanically, particularly by pressing it
from side to side with the finger, the sensation of pins and needles is
produced in the palm and back of the hand, and in the fourth and
fifth fingers. But according as the pressure is varied the pricking
sensation is felt by turns in the fourth finger, in the fifth, in the
palm of the hand, on the back of the hand, and both in the palm
and on the back of the hand the situation of the pricking sensation
is different according as the pressure on the nerves is varied, that is
to say, according as different fibres or fasciculi of fibres are more
pressed upon than others " (Miiller s Physiology, pp. 745-747).
Surely all this is instinctive, not acquired. So deep is the disposi
tion to localize that it cannot be eradicated. " When a limb has
been removed by amputation, the remaining portion of the nerve
which ramified in it may still be the seat of sensations which are re
ferred to the lost part." " These sensations are not of an undefined
character ; the pains and tingling are distinctly referred to single
toes, to the sole of the feet, to the dorsum," etc. A case is quoted
of a person whose arm had been amputated, and who declared
twenty years after that " the sense of the integrity of the limb is
never lost." There is appended a note by Baly : " Professor Val
entin has observed, that individuals who are the subjects of conge
nital imperfection or absence of the extremities have nevertheless
the internal sensations of such limbs in their perfect state. A girl
aged nineteen years, in whom the metacarpal bones of the left hand
were very short, and all the bones of the phalanges absent, a row of
imperfectly organized wartlike projections representing the fingers,
assured M. Valentin that she had constantly the internal sensation of
the palm of the hand on the left side as perfect as in the right."
CHAPTER XI.
NUMBER.
WE seem to derive our knowledge of number from
our cognition of being, and especially from our cognition
of self as a person. We know self as one object; we
also know other and external objects as singulars. Al
ready then have we number in the concrete, involved in
this our primary knowledge. Every object known, and
especially self, is known as one. Every other object
known is known as another one. If we know self as
one, then the external object which is known as different
from self is known as a second one. The mind can now
think of one object, and of one object + another object,
or of two, and of one object -f another object + another
object, or of three. It can then, by a process of ab
straction, separate the numbers from the objects, in
order to their separate consideration. Not that it sup
poses for one instant that numbers can exist apart from
objects, but it can separately contemplate them. One
cannot exist apart from one object, or two from two
objects, but the mind can think about the one or the two
apart from the peculiarity of the objects. Its judgments
and its conclusions in all such cases, if conducted ac
cording to the laws of thought, will apply to objects;
that is, all its judgments regarding one, two, or a thou
sand, will apply to a corresponding number of objects.
Having obtained in this way a knowledge of numbers in
the concrete, and numbers in the abstract, the mind is
prepared to discover relations among numbers in a man-
NUMBER.
125
ner to be afterwards specified in the book on Primitive
Judgments.
But before leaving our present topic, it may be
proper to state that the mind has no such conviction of
the existence of numbers separate from the objects num
bered, as it has of space, distinct from the objects in
space, or as it has of time, distinct from the events which
happen in time ; nor has it any intuitive belief as to the
necessary infinity of objects or of numbers. True, it
can set no limit to the number of objects, but it is not
compelled to believe that there can be no limits, as it is
constrained to believe that there can be no bounds to
space or to time.
Aristotle places number among the sensibles perceived by the
common sense (De Anima, n. 6 ; in. 1). He says each sense per
ceives unity: l K dffT-ri y&p ev cuffOdvercu aW-riffis (ill. 1, 5, ed. Trend.).
Descartes makes number perceived by us in all perceptions of body
(Prin. Part i. 69). Locke says of Unity or One : " Every object
our senses are employed about, every idea in our understandings,
every thought of our minds, brings this idea along with it " (Essay,
n. xvi. 1). Buffier says that the knowledge that / exist, I am, 1
think, is in a sense the same as, or at least includes this, I am one
(Prem. Ver. Part n. 10).
CHAPTER XII.
MOTION.
OUR perception of motion is, as it appears to me,
intuitive. But it supposes more than sense, or sense-
perception, in the narrow sense of the term. It is prob
able that we have an apprehension of change of place,
from the movement of our intuitively localized organs,
say from a member of the body being moved by the
locomotive energy, as when I lift my arm ; this percep
tion will be especially apt to arise when we move the
hand along organs to which a place has been given. Or
we may apprehend an extra-organic body by the touch
or muscular sense, and by the same sense feel our hand
or some other extra-organic body passing over it. We
may also get the perception by the sense of sight. The
child touching a part of the body by its hand, will see
the image of its hand moving to perform the act. Be
sides, the " image of our own body occupies, in nearly
all pictures on our retina, regularly some determinate
space in the upper, middle, or lower part of the field of
vision ;" it remains constant while the other images are
seen moving. There is more here, however, than imme
diate cognition. There is a brief exercise of memory;
we must, at the same time that we perceive the body as
now in one place, remember that it was formerly in
another place. There is an exercise, too, of comparison
in noticing the relation between the object in respect of
the place in which it has been, and the place in which it
now is. And upon our discovering change of any kind
MOTION.
127
in the motion, the intuition of cause comes in to declare
that there must have been active power at work. This
is one of those cases which will come before us more and
more frequently as we advance, in which cognitions,
beliefs, and judgments mingle together ; and yet the act
can scarcely be described as complex, except in this
sense, that on other occasions some of the parts can exist
separately or in other combinations. The circumstance
that these other elements conjoin in our conviction as to
motion, will bring the subject before us in other parts of
the Treatise.
Miiller s Physiology, trans, by Baly, p. 1083. Aristotle places
motion, like number, among the common sensibles ; Descartes
among the properties perceived in every perception of body (see
places in last note); and Locke among the primary qualities of
bodies, which are always in them (n. viii. 22). The young man
operated upon by Dr. Franz for cataract, three days after the opera
tion, saw "an extensive field of light, in which everything ap
peared dull, confused, and in motion." In a case reported by Dr.
Wardrop, the woman returning home after the operation saw a
hackney coach pass, and asked, " What is that large thing that
passed us ? " (See Abbott, Sight and Touch, p. 153.)
CHAPTER XIII.
POWEK.
I HAVE been laboring to show, in the last chapter and
in this, that power is involved in our knowledge of sub
stance. We can never know either self, or bodies be
yond self, except as exercising influence or potency.
Not that we are to suppose that we have thus by in
tuition ;in abstract or a general idea of power ; all that
we have is a knowledge of a given substance acting.
This seems the only doctrine in accordance with the
revelations of consciousness. It is involved in the com
mon statement that we cannot know substance except
by its properties; for what are properties but powers
acting when the needful conditions are supplied? I
reckon it as an oversight in a great body of metaphy
sicians that they have been afraid to ascribe our appre
hension of power to intuition. In consequence of this
neglect, some never get the idea of power, but merely of
succession, within the bare limits of experience, which
can never entitle us to argue that the world must have
proceeded from Divine Power ; others have been obliged
to find cause, not in any perception of the mind as it
looks on things, but in some form imposed by the rnind
on subjects ; while a considerable number hesitate and
vacillate in their account, representing it now as an
original conviction, and now as an acquisition of expe
rience.
Wherever there is power in act, there is an effect.
But the discovery of the relation between cause and
POWER. 129
effect cannot be discovered except by an exercise of
judgment. The discussion of the nature of our convic
tion of Power will be resumed under the head of Primi
tive Judgments.
It is by overlooking the varied attributes perceived by intuition,
as specified in these last chapters, that J. S. Mill reaches his deplo
rably defective definitions of matter and mind. He says: "Matter
may be defined a permanent possibility of sensations " (Examination
of Hamilton, p. 198). No doubt there are accompanying sensations,
but matter is perceived by us as a thing without us, extended and
with potency in multiplied forms. Mind "is a series of feelings
aware of itself." But we know it as vastly more : it is a series not
only of feelings, but of perceptions of things, memories, imaginations,
judgments, moral decisions, volitions. And then there is an itself^
of which, it is acknowledged, we are aware, and this makes the
whole a substance.
BOOK II.
PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
CHAPTER I.
THEIR GENERAL NATURE.
I.
OUR primary cognitions and beliefs are very inti
mately connected, and they run almost insensibly into
each other. Yet they may be distinguished. The
phrase " primitive cognition," when we find it needful
to separate it from faith, might be confined in strictness
to those mental energies in which the mind looks on
an object now present, say on body perceived by the
senses, or on self in a particular state, or on a represen
tation in the mind ; and then " faith " would be applied
to all those exercises in which we are convinced of the
existence of an object not now before us, or under im
mediate inspection.
Philosophers have drawn the distinction between Pre-
sentative and Representative Knowledge. In the former
the object is present at the time ; we perceive it, we feel
it, we are conscious of it as now and here and under our
inspection. In Representative Knowledge there is an
object now present, representing an absent object. Thus
I may have an image or conception of Venice, with its
decaying beauty, and this is now present and under the
eye of consciousness ; but it represents something absent
and distant, of the existence of which I am at the same
time convinced. When I was actually in Venice, and
THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 131
gazed on its churches and palaces rising out of the
waters, there would have been no propriety in saying
that I believe in the existence of the city, the correct
phrase would have been that I know it to exist. I know,
too, that I have at this moment an idea of Venice ; but as
Venice itself is not before me, the proper expression of
my conviction is, that I believe in its existence. I main
tain that whenever we have passed beyond Presentative
Knowledge, and are assured of the reality of an absent
object, there faith it may be in a very simple form,
but still real faith has entered as an element. So far
as I am conscious of an imaging of the past, or a judg
ing of it, or a reasoning about it, my mental state is
cognition ; but so far as I am convinced of the existence
of the absent object, my state of mind is belief. In such
examples the faith is of a low order, and need not be
distinguished from knowledge, except for the purposes
of rigid science ; but still faith is there, and there in its
essential character ; and he who would know what faith
is, must view it in these lower forms, " which exist more
simple in their elements," as well as in the higher, just
as he who would know the nature of the plant or animal
must study it in the lichen or zoophyte. These are the
incipient movements of a mental power which is capable
of rising to the greatest heights of earth, and looking
up to the heaven above, which can call before it all time,
and go forth even into the eternity beyond.
According to this account we are said to know our
selves, and the objects presented to the senses and the
representations (always, however, as presentations) in
the mind ; but to believe in objects which we have seen
in time past, but which are not now present, and in
objects which we have never seen, and very specially in
objects which we can never fully know, such as an Infi-
132 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
nite God. The mind seems to begin, not with faith, but
with cognition. It sets out with the knowledge of an
external object presented to it, and with a knowledge of
self contemplating that object. I cannot, then, agree
with those who maintain that faith I mean natural
faith must precede knowledge. I hold that knowledge,
psychologically considered, appears first, and then faith.
But around our original cognition there grows and clus
ters a body of primitive beliefs which goes out far be
yond our personal knowledge. Knowledge is, after all,
the root ; but from this stable and more earthly ground
there spring beliefs which mount in living power and in
lovely form and color toward the sky.
II.
By this account we keep faith from being wrapt up in
such a cloud as it often is. We see how it joins on to
cognition and mingles with it. Faith, as the telescope,
shows objects which unaided sense cannot discern, but
still there is a personal knowledge, an eye to guarantee
the accuracy of the vision. We have immediate knowl
edge always with us we have self in a particular state
or exercise ; but rising from this we believe in an object
which is absent, in the loftier exercises of faith we
believe in objects which we have never seen, and which
we never can see in this world. We are thus prevented,
too, from making faith a mere subjective feeling, and
separating it from things. It is in regard to objects ap
prehended, and apprehended because we have known
them, or have known others with like qualities, that we
entertain faith. It is from the contemplation of such
objects that we are led to believe that they have quali
ties which do not fall under our immediate cognizance.
In a sense we know space, for it is present to us ; cer-
THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 133
tainly body occupying space is ever before the senses ;
but when we look on space as having no bounds, we are
beyond the territory of knowledge, we have mounted
into the region of faith.
An important question is here raised, Can there be
faith without some idea of what is believed ? I am con
vinced that there is always an apprehension of some
kind in faith. Without an image or notion to fix on,
there could be no faith. But to qualify this statement
we must take along with us several other truths equally
important. We may believe in truths which we cannot
comprehend in the sense of knowing all their qualities
and relations. In this sense it may be said that we
cannot fully comprehend any one object in earth or
heaven ; for everything known to us has references to
other things which are unknown ; beyond every country
known, there is to us a terra incognita. But there are
objects which impress us with the conviction that we
have scarcely any acquaintance with their nature, and
that there is much in them or about them which is to
us incognizable. Thus in the doctrine of the Trinity
there is so much apprehended by us because revealed, but
there is more which we try in vain to compass. We be
lieve, too, in truths which we cannot reconcile with other
truths; and we may adhere to them resolutely in spite
of improbabilities and difficulties. I apprehend, indeed,
that in all such cases our intellectual nature will con
strain us to believe that there must be some method of
reconciliation, though the link cannot be perceived by
us. Were it shown in regard to any proposition that it
is inconsistent with an acknowledged truth, I suppose
our faith in it would vanish. Could it be demonstrated
which, however, it never has been that a primary
faith is contradicted by any other primary truth, I be-
134 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
lieve we should be landed in absolute scepticism. Fur
ther, we may believe objects to possess qualities of
which we have no notion. Thus in heaven there are
pleasures such as it hath not entered into the heart of
man to conceive. Thus, too, on earth we often find
effects proceeding from causes which are utterly un
known. Still even in such cases there is an apprehen
sion ; there is an apprehension of ah object with a qual
ity ; there is an apprehension of a place with pleasures
of a kind different from those which we enjoy on earth ;
there is the apprehension of a cause producing this effect.
In such exercises the mind is impressed at times pain
fully, at times sublimely, with the inadequacy of its ideas
to represent the object, and this is often one of the pecu
liar features of our faith, marking it out from our clear
intellectual notions and judgments. In many of our
faiths the mind sees but a speck of light in midst of
circumambient darkness.
The two, knowledge and faith, differ psychologically,
and there are important philosophic ends to be served by
distinguishing them ; but after all it is more important
to fix our attention on their points of agreement and
coincidence. The belief has a basis of cognition, the
cognition has a superstructure of beliefs. The one con
viction, equally with the other, carries within itself its
validity and authority. No man is entitled to restrict
himself to cognitions, and refuse to attend or to yield to
the beliefs which he is also led to entertain by the very
constitution of his mind. No man can do so, in fact.
He who would do so must needs go out of the world.
Every man must act upon his native beliefs as well as
upon his cognitions. He requires no external considera
tion to lead him to trust in the one any more than in the
other, for each has its sufficiency in itself. He who
THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 135
would weakly give up his native faiths because assaults
are made on them, and doggedly resolve to yield to
nothing but immediate cognitions, will find that the scep
tic who has driven him from the beliefs will go on to
attack the cognitions likewise, and that he can defend
the cognitions only on grounds which might have ena
bled him to stand by his credences likewise. On the
other hand, I grieve over the attempts, for the last age
or two, of a school of thinkers who labor to prove that
the understanding, or the speculative reason, leads to
scepticism and nihilism, and then appeal to faith to save
us from the abyss before us. I have no toleration for
those who tell us with a sigh, too often of affectation,
that they are very sorry that knowledge or reason leads
to insoluble doubts and contradictions, from which they
are longing to be delivered by some mysterious faith.
It is time to put an end to this worse than civil strife,
to this setting of one part of the soul against another.
I do not believe that the understanding, or the reason,
or any other power of the mind, lands us in scepticism.
Each cognitive faculty conducts in its own way to its
own truths. The intelligence and the faith are not con
flicting, but conspiring elements. I am sure that the
criticism which has attacked the knowledge would, if
followed out, be no less formidable in its assaults on the
belief. In these pages I am endeavoring to show how
they concur and cooperate, being almost always associ
ated in one concrete act, which we analyze merely for
scientific ends.
III.
But while we must yield to our intuitive beliefs as
well as perceptions, we are not therefore to suppose that
our faiths are beyond inspection and above examination.
They are liable to be tried, and should at times be tried,
136 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
by the very same tests as our cognitions. We are not to
allow ourselves, without examination and without review,
to yield to whatever may suggest itself to our own
minds, or be recommended to us by others, as a primi
tive belief. We must try the spirits, whether they are
of God. In nothing is man so apt to run into excess
and extravagance, into folly and error, as in yielding to
plausible beliefs. The tendency of faith is upwards, but
it needs weights and plummets to hold it down, lest it
mount into a region of thin air, and there burst and
dissolve. Fortunately we have a ready means at hand
of trying our constitutional beliefs, and determining for
us when they should be disallowed, and when they
should be allowed to flow out freely. Are they self-
evident? Are they necessary, so necessary that we
cannot believe the opposite? Are they universal?
These three questions, searchingly asked and honestly
answered, will settle for us whether we ought or ought
not to follow a belief proffered to our acceptance. We
are at liberty to employ a belief in argument, appeal,
and speculation, only under the same conditions as a
cognition ; that is, having shown that it is a constitu
tional one, we must further determine more accurately
its nature and law, its extent and limits. Thus, and
thus only, can we hope on the one hand to be kept from
mistaking our own fancies, misapprehensions, wishes, or
prejudices for primitive and heaven-born beliefs, and, on
the other hand, be justified in appealing to the faiths
which have the sanction of our constitution, and the God
who gave us our constitution, and in using them as a
basis on which to rear a fabric of philosophical, or eth
ical, or theological truths.
The question is started, Whence the seeming mistakes
of memory? We find at times two honest witnesses
THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 137
giving different accounts of the same transaction. We
have all found ourselves at fault in our recollections on
certain occasions. I believe we must account for the
seeming treachery of the memory in much the same
way as we do for the deception of the senses. There
ever mingle with our proper recollections more or fewer
inferences, and in these there may be errors. In order
to clear up the subject we draw the distinction between
our natural or pure reminiscences and those mixed ones
in which there are processes of reasoning. 1
The distinction between Presentative and Representative Knowl
edge is drawn by Hamilton in his edition of Reid, Note B. The
view given by me in the text seems to be in accordance with such
language as the following, used by him in Metaph. Lect. 12 : " Prop
erly speaking, we know only the actual and the present, and all
real knowledge is an immediate knowledge. What is said to be me
diately known is in truth not known to be, but only believed to be."
Speaking of memory, he says : "It is not a knowledge of the past
at all, but a knowledge of the present and a belief of the past."
Consistently or inconsistently, he says that " belief always precedes
knowledge" (Lect. 3). Speaking of the external world, he says:
" We believe it to exist, only because we are immediately cognizant
of it as existing " (Reid, p. 750). With this I concur. But I can
not agree with what follows, where he seems to found our knowledge
on a belief, and represents our knowing that we know as founded on
a belief prior to or deeper than knowledge. "If asked, indeed,
How do we know that we know it ? ... how do we know that this
object is not a mere mode of mind illusively presented to us as a
mode of matter ? then indeed we must reply that we do not (?) in
propriety knoiv that what we are compelled to perceive as not-self is
not a perception of self, and that we can only on reflection believe
such to be the case, in reliance on the original necessity of so believ
ing imposed on us by our nature."
Augustine gave a province both to knowledge and faith without
very distinctly clearing up the boundaries: " Quamvis enim, nisi
1 See this explained in my Psychology : The Cognitive Powers, pp.
163, 164.
138 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
aliquid intelligat nemo possit credere in Deum ; tamen ipsa fide qua
credit, sanetur, et intelligat ampliora. Alia sunt enim quse nisi
intelligamus non credimus ; et alia sunt quae nisi credamus non intel-
ligimus" (Enar. in Psalm 118). There were profound discussions
in the scholastic ages as to the relation of faith and knowledge, but
it was in regard to matters of religion, specially of revelation includ
ing church authority. Anselm gave the first or deeper place to
faith : " Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intel-
ligam " (Med. 21). Abelard, on the other hand, maintained that we
must begin with finding reasons to show the truth of Christianity,
and thence reach faith, and go on to a higher cognition or intuition
(Theol. u). The discussion has been renewed from age to age ever
since by theologians. Romanists and High ChurchDivines have
commonly given the precedence to faith, and decided Protestants to
knowledge. In particular, the Puritans represent a certain amount
of knowledge as necessary to faith, but also add that faith has a
powerful influence in increasing knowledge. Thus Charnock (Knowl
edge of God} : " There can be no act about an unknown object"
; Faith cannot be without the knowledge of God and Christ."
" Knowledge is antecedent to faith in the order of nature." There
was confusion in this whole discussion owing to its not being deter
mined psychologically what is the precise nature, and whatare the
differences, of knowledge and faith, and of reason and faith. In
every exercise of mind about the great objects and truths of religion,
there must be both cognitive and faith elements embraced, andrea-
son always comprises faith when it refers to the existence of absent
objects.
Kant labored to demonstrate that the Speculative Reason lands us
in contradiction, and was not given us in order to reach objective
truth ; but then he called in a Practical Reason which guaranteed a
moral law, a God, and immortality. See the Methodenlehre in the
Kritik of Pure Reason. Jacobi admitted far too readily, to Kant
and Fichte, that speculation and philosophy led to scepticism, but he
fell back on Faith (Glaube) or Sentiment (Gefiihl), which he repre
sented as a Revelation (Offenbarung). See his David Hume: Ueber
den Glauben, and Jacobi an Fichte. He has given views of intuition
and of faith as true as they are beautiful ; but he has not unfolded
the precise nature of faith, nor seen its relation to the understand
ing. Even Fichte, after trying to show that knowledge (Wissen)
leads to an absolute idealism, in which we know not whether our
very thought may not be a dream, resorts to Faith (Glaube), and
THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 139
allows an appeal to the Heart (Hertz) (Bestimmung des Menschen,
Buch in. Glaube). Sir W. Hamilton maintains that u all that we
know is phenomenal of the unknown " (Discuss, p. 644, 2d ed.),
and that "the knowledge of Nothing is the principle or result
of all true philosophy" (p. 609), but delights to recognize a faith
which looks beyond ; not explaining, however what he means by
faith. " We are warned," he says, " from recognizing the domain of
our knowledge as necessarily coextensive with the horizon of our
faith." And he adds : " And by a wonderful revelation we are thus,
in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above
the relative and the finite, inspired with a belief in the existence
of something unconditioned, beyond the sphere of all comprehensive
reality " (p. 15). Hamilton is often appealing to faith, but has left
a very imperfect account of it. "He adopts," as Mr. Calderwood
acutely remarks, "the Kantian distribution, which embraces the
mental phenomena under the three divisions of Cognition, Feeling,
and Appetency. The first embraces the phenomena of knowledge ;
the second, of pleasure and pain; and the third, of will and desire.
If, then, faith has any place in its distribution, it is to be found
among the phenomena of knowledge" (Philosophy of the Infinite,
where are many fine remarks on faith and knowledge, 2d ed.
p. 136). But the truth is, it is not clear in which of the three divi
sions Kant or Hamilton would put faith. The difficulty of finding a
place for faith, and we may add, for conscience and imagination,
shows that their three-fold division of the mental attributes is defec
tive ; the same may be said of that of Professor Bain (Senses and
Intellect, pp. 2-10, and App. I.). But passing over this, it would
almost look as if Hamilton would have to put faith into the compart
ment of feeling. " Knowledge and belief differ not only in degree but
in kind. Knowledge is certainly founded on intuition. Belief is
certainly founded upon feeling " (Logic, Lect. 37). We cannot
conceive a more radically defective account than this of faith, to
found it upon feeling, which he explains as consisting in pleasure
and pain. The disciples of Hamilton have not thrown any light on
the subject. Faith is explained by Professor Fraser (Essays, p. 32)
as " the belief of principles which in themselves are incognizable or
irreconcilable by the understanding, and yet unquestionable." But
surely we have faith in God, who yet is not incognizable. Professor
Veitch says (Art. Hamilton in Diet. Univ. Biog.): " The absolute or
infinite is cast beyond the sphere of thought and science ; it is still,
however, allowed by Hamilton to remain in some sense in conscious-
140 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
ness, for it is grasped by faith, and faith is a conscious act. The
question, accordingly, at once meets us : In what sense and how far
can there be an object within consciousness which is not properly
within thought or knowledge ? In other words, how far is our faith
in the infinite intelligent and intelligible? This point demands
farther and more detailed treatment than it has met with either at
the hands of Sir W. Hamilton himself, or any one who has sought
to carry out his principles." For years past I have been calling on
the disciples of Hamilton to explain what they mean by faith. Till
this point is cleared up, there is an unfilled-up chasm in the whole
psychology and philosophy of the school
CHAPTER II.
SPACE AND TIME.
I.
OF Space in the concrete we have an immediate
knowledge ; that is, by the senses, certainly by some of
them, such as the touch and the sight ; most probably by
all of them we know bodies, say our own bodily organ
ism, as extended, that is, as occupying space. By ab
straction we can fix our attention on the space as distinct
from associated qualities, and by inward reflection we
can gather what are the convictions attached. These
convictions pass beyond knowledge proper, and become
beliefs, that is, convictions in regard to something which
we do not immediately know, nay, which we may never
be able to know.
With Time, also, we have an immediate acquaintance.
In sense-perception and self-consciousness we know a
particular object or mental state as now present. Our
consciousness is continuous ; speedily does immediate
consciousness slide into memory; the present becomes
past, and is remembered as past. The child s organism
is now in a state of pain ; immediately after the pain is
gone, but the pain of the past is remembered, and re
membered as being past. Already, then, there is the
idea of time always in the concrete, we remember
something as having been under our consciousness in the
past. By abstraction we can then think of the time as
different from the event remembered in time ; and by
introspection we can ascertain the nature of the attached
convictions. Many of these are of the nature of faiths
142 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
going far beyond what is, or ever can be, immediately
known.
Space and time mingle with all our perceptions. Yet
after all we can say little about them ; all that we can
do as metaphysicians is to analyze and express our orig
inal convictions. It belongs to the mathematician to
evolve deductively what is involved in certain of them.
In unfolding the necessary convictions we may make the
following affirmations :
II.
Time and Space have a reality independent of the
Percipient Mind, and out of the percipient mind. The
intelligence does not create them, it discovers them, and
it discovers them as having an existence independent of
the mind contemplating them, as having this existence
whether the mind contemplates them or no, and an
existence out of and beyond the mind as it thinks of
them. He who denies this, is in the very act setting
aside one of the clearest of native principles, and has
left himself no standpoint from which to repel any pro
posal, suggested to himself or offered by another, to set
aside any other conviction, or all other convictions. If
some one affirm that space has no objective existence,
he leaves it competent for any other coming after him
to maintain that the objects perceived in space have no
reality. He who allows that time may have no reality
except in the contemplative mind, will find himself
greatly troubled to answer the sceptic when he insists
that the events in time are quite as unreal as the time is
in which they are perceived as having occurred. There
is only one sure and consistent mode of avoiding these
troublesome and dangerous consequences, and that is by
standing up for the veracity of all our fundamental per-
SPACE AND TIME. 143
ceptions, and, among others, of our convictions regarding
the reality of space and time.
According to Kant, space and time are the forms
given by the mind to the phenomena which are presented
through the senses, and are not to be considered as hav
ing anything more than a subjective existence. It is one
of the most fatal heresies that is, dogmas opposed to
the revelations of consciousness ever introduced into
philosophy, and it lies at the basis of all the aberrations
in the school of speculation which followed. For those
who were taught that the mind could create the space
and time, soon learned to suppose that the mind could
also create the objects and events cognized as in space
and time, till the whole external universe became ideal,
and all reality was supposed to lie in a series of con
nected mental forms. He who would arrest the stream
must seek to stop it at the place whence it flowed out ;
otherwise all his efforts will be ineffectual.
III.
Space and Time are Continuous, that is, they extend
out, flow on, without break, separation, or interruption.
In this respect they are different from matter or body,
which may be broken into parts, and the parts separated
from each other. But there can be no gaps in space, no
cessation in time. There are, and can be, no variations
in the one or other. We do speak of times changing,
but we mean the circumstances in time. We say tempora
mutantur, but the changes are in the events, which
mutantur in illis.
This is one of several circumstances which has made
space and time to be classed together. Yet while they
may be grouped under one head, they are not identical,
and they have their points of difference. In particular,
144 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
space has three dimensions, length, breadth, and
depth; that is, we may contemplate it as extending
along any given line, as spreading out in a surface, or as
going out in all directions. Time again has only succes
sion, present, priority and posteriority. We often apply
to time language derived from space, and we represent
time as a line, and speak of it as being only in one direc
tion. But it is to be remembered that such language is
used metaphorically, and has no literal meaning as ap
plied to time. Still it points to a truth, and specifies a
difference between space and time. But in regard to
their extension or flow, both are continuous, and spread
out or run on without a possible division.
But it will be urged, that the question is often dis
cussed as to whether space and time are infinitely divis
ible, and that certain mathematicians maintain that they
have demonstrated the infinite divisibility of space. In
looking at this question, it is desirable first of all to have
it settled in what sense extension is capable of division.
We cannot divide space in the sense in which we divide
matter. In dividing body we separate one part of it
from another, so as to leave a space between. We can
thus divide an apple, and keep one part of it in our
hand, and lay the other on the table. But we cannot
thus separate or isolate space apart from space. In the
sense of separation, we cannot with propriety speak of
the infinite divisibility of space, for it is not divisible at
all, either finitely or infinitely. The same remark holds
good of time. The mind declares that the separation of
space from space, or of time from time, is impossible in
the nature of things. 1
There may, however, be relations discovered both in
1 This view is developed with great acuteness in Gillespie s Neces
sary Existence of Deity (Exam. Antith. Refut. Part HI.).
SPACE AND TIME. 145
space and time. We can conceive of less or more of
extension, and of proportions between the less and the
more ; the one may be twice or ten times as much as the
other. All this we are allowed, nay necessitated, to
think. The science which treats of quantity, that is,
mathematics, has specially to do with these relations.
There may be little or no impropriety in calling these
proportions parts, provided we do not misunderstand the
language we employ, or understand it as implying that
between two spaces there can be an interval in which
there is no space. What is meant by the infinite divi
sion of space seems to be, that, fixing our thoughts on
any given section or proportion of space, say the thou
sandth part of an inch, we are at liberty to conceive of
the half of it, and again of the half of the quotient, and
so on indefinitely as far as may serve our purpose or we
may choose. Some of these subjects will be resumed
when we come to consider those primitive judgments
which relate to quantity.
But before leaving the subject immediately before us,
it is of importance to have it noticed that our convictions
say nothing whatever on (what is a very different mat
ter from the divisibility of space, though the two have
often been confounded) the infinite divisibility of matter.
This latter is a question which can be settled by nothing
but experience ; experience at this present stage of
science says nothing whatever on the subject, and I sus
pect will never be able to settle it on one side or other.
There might be limits to man s capacity of dividing
body which would not be limits to other beings, and
whether there could be any limits to a Being of Infinite
Power is a question which it transcends our faculties to
answer, and which therefore we should not attempt to
answer.
146 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
IV.
Space and Time have and can have no Limits. Nor is
this a mere negative proposition, as some have declared
it to be; it is a positive affirmation that to whatever
point we go, in. reality or in imagination, there must
be a space and time beyond. Nor is it, as it has been
represented, an impotency of mind. It is not a mere
incapacity to conceive that when we go a certain
length back or forward in time, or out into space, there
time and space should cease. It is a conviction of a
positive kind, that beyond these points, or beyond any
other space conceivable, there must still be time and
space. This, as will be shown more fully forthwith, is a
truth self-evident, necessary, universal. If we were car
ried out to the utmost point to which the furthest-seeing
telescope can reach, or beyond this as far as imagination
can range, we should confidently stretch forth our hand
into an outer region, believing that there must be space
into which it might enter, and that if it were hindered
it must be by body occupying space.
There is more than this embraced in our native con
viction. We are constrained to believe as to the space
and time which we know in part, and which we are con
strained to regard as beyond our power of imagination,
that they are such that no addition could be made to
them. This is a further and a most important element
in our conviction. We intuitively know space and time :
with this we start. Looking to the space and time which
we thus know, we are constrained to regard them as ever
going beyond our image of them. But we do more : we
are convinced that they are such in their very nature
that no further space and time could be added to them.
Join these elements together, and, so far as I can discover
SPACE AND TIME. 147
by reflection on the operations of my own mind, we have
the conception and belief which the mind of man is able
to attain as to the infinity of space and time.
V.
But we are already in the heart of the subject of the
Infinite, to which a separate chapter must be allotted.
In this chapter we have yet to take up difficulties which
press on us when we contemplate space and time. We
may have occasion to show, at a later part of this work,
that our very cognitions often land us in mysteries, that
is, in propositions to which we must assent, but which
have bearings which we cannot comprehend. To a still
greater extent is it of the nature of faith ever to be going
out into darkness. For the truths believed in may not
be fully comprehended in themselves, and their relations
may be altogether beyond our ken. It should be frankly
acknowledged that we are landed in mysteries which the
human intellect cannot explicate, whenever we inquire
beyond the narrow limits within which our convictions
restrain us. But it is of all courses the most foolish and
suicidal to urge the difficulties connected with space and
time as a reason for setting aside our intuitive convictions
respecting them, say in regard to their reality. Doubt
less we are landed in some perplexities by allowing that
they are real, but we are landed in more hopeless diffi
culties and in far more serious consequences when we
deny their reality ; and there is this important difference
between the cases, that in the one the difficulties arise
from the nature of the subject, whereas in the other they
are created by our own unwarranted affirmations and
speculations.
But what are space and time is the question that will
be pressed on us. To this I reply, that it is true of
148 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
them, as of the objects of every other intuitive convic
tion, that we cannot explain them except by referring to
our original perception. All that has been attempted in
this chapter is to bring out clearly what is involved in
the intuition.
But it will be asked, Are they substances, are they
modes, or are they relations? To this I reply, that
these questions relate not so much to the nature of space
or time as the classification of them, and that they are
not to be classified with substances, modes, or relations.
We cannot call them substances, for we do not know that
they have power or action. Nor can we call them modes,
for we have no intuitive knowledge of any substance in
which they inhere. And they are certainly more than
relations of one thing to another, for we know no two or
more things which by their relation could yield space and
time. They are not, then, to be arranged with such cog
nitions as these. They seem indeed to be entitled to be
put in a class by themselves, and resemble substances,
modes, relations, only in that they are existences, entities,
realities.
Certain mystical divines and philosophers are accus
tomed to speak of space and time as having no reality to
the Divine mind. It follows, I think, that if they have
no reality to the God who knows all truth, they can,
properly speaking, have no reality at all. If our convic
tions testify (as I have endeavored to show) that they
have a reality, it follows, I think, that they have a real
ity to the Divine mind. Again, there are some who talk
of an Eternal Now :
" Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an Eternal Now does ever last."
These lines of Cowley embody, as definitely as can
be done, a view which was countenanced by certain ex-
SPACE AND TIME. 149
pressions of Augustine, and systematized in the scholas
tic ages, and which has ever since been floating in the
statements of divines in speaking of God and Eternity
and Time. But the language has either no meaning, or,
if it has, it lands us in hopeless contradictions.
It would have been very different if divines had con
tented themselves with stating that they do not know
how space and time stand related to the Divine mind.
We are here in the midst of a mystery, which we have
no faculties to clear up. We know that space and time
exist ; we know on sufficient evidence that God exists :
but we have no means of knowing how space and time
stand related to God. There may be truth in the state
ment of Joannes Damascenus, that " God is his own
place, filling all things, and being over all things, and
himself containing all things," but how much truth can
not be determined by the limited inind of man. 1 The
view taken by Sir Isaac Newton " Deus durat semper
et adest ubique, et, existendo semper et ubique, duratio-
nem et spatium constituit" 2 is certainly a grand one,
but I doubt much whether human intelligence is entitled
to affirm dictatorially that it is as true as it is sublime.
It is by placing the subject beyond the human facul
ties that we are able to meet an objection urged with
great logical power by Kant, and usually thought to be
insuperable. 3 If space and time be real and infinite, then
we have two infinites ; and if God be also infinite, our
difficulties are increased. For it is absurd, if not contra
dictory, to suppose that there can be two infinite things,
that God can be infinite while space and time are also
1 O flebs eavTOv r6-rros e 0Tt, T& irdWa ir\rjpwj/, /col iirep rk irdvra &v t Ko2
auros oWxwj rl Trdvra (De Orthod. Fid. I. 13).
2 Scholium at close of Phil. Nat. Prin. Math.
8 Kritik d. r. Vern. Die transcen. JEsthet.
150 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
infinites. Now to this I might, without the possibility of
a positive refutation, urge, firstly, that there may, for
aught we know, be nothing inconsistent in supposing
that there are two things, as space and time, the one un
bounded and the other without beginning or end, and
that there can even be nothing contradictory in suppos
ing that space and time on the one hand, and God on the
other, may have infinite attributes. They could be held
as contradictory only in the supposition that the exist
ence of unbounded space and unending time were, in the
nature of things, inconsistent one with another or with
the existence of an infinite God ; which it may safely be
said can never be proven. As to how they could subsist
together, is a question we are not obliged to answer, for
we must believe many separate truths, each on its evi
dence, without being able to trace a connection, or so
much as to say that there is a how between them. But
I plant myself on far firmer ground when I maintain,
secondly, that while I believe that space and time are in
finite, and that God is infinite, I am not necessarily
obliged to hold that the infinity of space and time is in
dependent of the infinity of God. Who will venture to
affirm that the statement we have quoted from the great
Newton may not be true ? Who will venture to affirm
that space and time, being dependent on God, may not
stand in a relation to God which is altogether indefina
ble and utterly inconceivable by us ? True, we are con
strained to believe that space and time have an existence
independent of us, but we are not compelled to believe
that they have an existence independent of everything
else, and least of all independent of God we must keep
ourselves from falling into the heathen sin of deifying
Chronos. In such a subject, where we have no light
from intuition or from experience to guide us, true wis-
SPACE AND TIME. 151
dom shows itself in refusing to assert or dogmatize, or
even to speculate ; and when it has observed this rule
for itself, it is the better able to rebuke doubt and scepti
cism, when they would bring forth their difficulties from
regions which are beyond the reach of human knowledge.
Lucretius (i. 460) maintained that time has no existence of itself :
" Tempus item per se non est." Very possibly space and time may
have no independent existence. Very possibly there may be no such
thing as unoccupied space, or time without an event. Most proba
bly space and time may not be independent of God. Still they
exist, and exist independent of our contemplation of them.
Dr. Thomas Brown, in an article on Villers, " Philosophic de
Kant," in No. n. (1803) of the Edinburgh Review, dwells on this.
" The truth of space and of the world being to our reasoning scepti
cism the same, we cannot deny space and admit the reality of sensible
objects." D. Stewart, after affirming that the idea of space "is
manifestly accompanied with an irresistible conviction that space is
necessarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible," adds,
" to call this proposition in question is to open a door to universal
scepticism " (Disser. p. 597). In our day we find the greatest oppo
nent of the Dialectic of Hegel who has appeared taking the same
view. " Hiernach sind Raum und Zeit etwas Subjectives und zwar
nach Kant etwas nur Subjectives. Wenn dies folgt, so verfliichtet
sich damit die ganze Weltansicht in Erscheinung, und Erscheinung
ist vom Scheine nicht weit entfernt. Wenn Raum und Zeit nur und
ausschliessend Subjectives sind, so drangt sich allenthalben diese
Zuthat ein. Wie die Luftschicht zwischen dem Auge und dem
Gegenstande, wirft sie auf alles eine fremde Triibung; denn alles
erscheint in Raum und Zeit, die nur aus uns geboren sind. Wir
erkennen nun nichts an sich ; denn die Verstandesbegriffe haben
(nach Kant) nur Anwendung durch diese Formen der Anschauung,
und die Vernunftbegriffe suchen wieder nur eine Einheit fiir die
Verstandeserkenntniss. Wie wollen wir uns von dem Zauberkreise
losen, daer vielmehr unser eigenstes Wesen ist? " (Trendelenburg,
Logische Untersuchungen, b. i. v.) Sir W. Hamilton agrees with
Kant as to the a priori idea of space, and to avoid the difficulties
calls in an a posteriori notion : " We have a twofold cognition of
space : (a) an a priori or native imagination of it in general, as a
necessary condition of the possibility of thought ; and (6) under
152 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
that an a posteriori or adventitious percept of it, in particular as
contingently apprehended in this or that complexus of sensations "
(Reid s Coll. Writ. p. 882). " In this I venture a step beyond Reid
and Stewart, no less than beyond Kant" (p. 126). A simpler and
a more natural account of the relations between a priori and a pos
teriori would bring these two notions to a unity.
It has been asked why the mind gives three dimensions to space and
only one to time. Those who regard space and time as the creation
of the mind may amuse themselves with answering this question.
There is profound sense in the following remarks of Sir J. Herschel,
in his "Review of Whewell" (Essays, p. 202) : "The reason, we
conceive, why we apprehend things without us, is that they are with
out us. We take it for granted that they exist in space because
they do so exist, and because such their existence is a matter of di
rect perception, which can neither be explained in words nor con
travened in imagination ; because, in short, space is a reality" " That
which has parts, proportions, and susceptibilities of exact measure
ment, must be a * thing. "
Leibnitz held space and time to be relations given to objects by
the mind. " Je tenois 1 Espace pour quelque de PUREMENT RELA-
TIF, comme le Temps ; pour un ORDKE DE COEXISTENCE, comme
le Temps est un ORDKE DE SUCCESSIONS " (Op. p. 752. See, also,
pp. 461, 756, 769). He speaks of space and time as being "rapports,"
and as " iddal." Leibnitz thus prepared the way for the more sys
tematic doctrine of Kant. Samuel Clarke argues powerfully that
space and time are realities, but makes them attributes, properties,
or modes, of an eternal substance (see his Letters to Leibnitz). D.
Stewart, with his usual wisdom, says that " space is neither substance,
nor an accident, nor a relation ; " adding, " But it does not follow
from this that it is nothing objective " (Dissert, p. 596).
The difficulty has been started, Are space and time made up of
parts? and if so, are infinite time and space made up of parts? To
this I reply, first and decisively, that we cannot conceive them as
made up of partitions, or separable parts, as an apple or an orange is,
or as the earth is, or the sun is. But then, secondly, we can con
ceive proportions in space and time; and if we take any of these
proportional sections and divide it into two, thought will compel us
to say that the two must make up the whole. In this sense the parts
make up the whole, that is, the sub-sections make up the section. If
the question be extended beyond this, and it be asked, Is infinite
space made up of parts ? I answer that, as we can have no adequate
SPACE AND TIME. 153
notion of infinite space, so we cannot be expected to answer all the
questions which may be put regarding it. It is certain that neither
infinite space nor finite space is made up of separable parts. We can
speak intelligibly of proportions in finite space, and determine their
relations to each other and the whole. I tremble to speak of the
proportions of infinite space, lest I be using language which has or
can have no proper meaning, and the signification attached to which
by me or others might be altogether inapplicable to such a subject.
Still there are propositions which we might intelligibly use. It is
self-evident that any proportion of space must be less than infinite
space, and if infinite space can be conceived as having proportions,
and we could conceive all these proportions, then these proportions
would be equal to the whole. But as we cannot adequately conceive
the whole, so neither can we conceive of the proportions of the
whole. We are in a region dark and pathless and directionless, and
we may as well draw back at once, for nothing is to be gained by
advancing.
" Non igitur respondere curabimus iis, qui quaerunt an si daretur
linea infinita, ejus media pars esset etiam infinita ; vel an numeras
infinitus sit par anve impar ; et talia; quia de iis nulli videntur de-
bere cogitare nisi qui mentein suam infinitam esse arbitrantur " (Des
cartes, Prin. p. i. 26).
CHAPTER III.
THE INFINITE.
THE subject now opening before us is a profound one.
In meditating upon it we feel as we do when we look
into the blue expanse of heaven, or when from a solitary
rock we gaze on a shoreless ocean spread all around us.
The topic has exercised the profoundest minds since
thought began the attempt to solve the problems of the
universe, and has been specially discussed since Christian
theology made men familiar with the idea of an eternal
and omnipresent God. All that I profess to do is to en
deavor to discover by induction what is the mind s idea
and conviction in regard to infinity. A priori cogitation
is not to be tolerated in its proffered determinations of
what our idea of Infinity should be or must be. Logical
dissection and division, instead of aiding, may only lead
us into hopeless difficulties. Lofty generalizations em
bracing all other objects may have no application to an
object which from its very nature must be sui generis.
I.
Two NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS may be established.
The mind can form no adequate apprehension of the
infinite, in the sense of image or phantasm. In saying
so, I do not mean merely that we cannot construct a
mental picture of the infinite as an attribute. Of no
quality can the mind fashion a picture ; it cannot have
a mental representation of transparency, apart from a
transparent substance, and just as little can it picture
THE INFINITE. 155
to itself infinity apart from an infinite duration, or infi
nite extension, or an infinite God. But it is not in this
sense simply that the mind cannot apprehend the infi
nite : it cannot have before it an apprehension of an
infinite object, say of an infinite space, or an infinite
God. For to image a thing in our mind is to give it
an extent and a boundary. When we would imagine
unlimited space, we swell out an immense volume, but
it has after all a boundary, commonly a spherical one.
When we would picture unlimited time, we let out an
immense line behind and before, but the rope is after
all cut at both ends. When we would represent to our
selves almighty power, we call up some given act of God,
say creating or annihilating the universe ; but after all,
the work has a measure, and may be finished. In the
sense of image, then, the mind cannot have any proper
apprehension of infinity as an attribute, or of an infinite
object.
The mind can form no adequate logical notion of an
infinite object. For apprehension may be considered as
an act of the understanding as well as a mere act of the
fantasy. We can conceive, we can think about much,
which we cannot image. We can meditate and reason
about such things as law, government, duty, religion,
while yet we can form no mental picture of them. The
grand question in this discussion is, Can we form an in
tellectual notion of an infinite object, say of an infinite
God ? And I feel constrained to admit and maintain
that human intelligence can form no proper or adequate
conception of an infinite existence. By what process
can it be supposed to construct such a conception ? Cer
tainly not by abstraction, for abstraction separates, takes
away, diminishes. It is just as certain that it cannot
compass this end by generalization, for generalization
156 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
merely groups objects by attributes known, and unless
we have infinity first in the individual we cannot have it
in the general. Nor can we reach it by addition, multi
plication, composition ; these will give the enlarged, but
not the unlimited : a distance of a quintillion of quin-
tillions of years or ages has as distinct a termination as
an ell or an inch. Nor can the understanding attain it
by a process of ratiocination, for, unless the infinite were
in the premise, no canon of reasoning would justify its
having a place in the conclusion. If the intelligence
does not find the infinite in the perception with which it
sets out, it never could fashion it by cutting or carving,
by construction or supraposition.
So much may be allowed to those British philosophers
who have been at pains to show that we can form no
conception of the infinite, or that the notion is at best
negative. But, on the other hand, I am prepared to
maintain that the mind has some positive apprehension
and belief in regard to infinity ; otherwise, why do medi
tative minds find the thought so often pressing itself upon
them ? why has it such a place in our faith in God ? why
is it ever corning up in theology ? And if we have an
idea and conviction, it is surely possible to determine
what they are by a careful observation of what passes
through the mind when it would muse on the eternal,
the omnipresent, the perfect.
II.
Two POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS may be laid down.
(1.) The mind apprehends and believes that there is
and must be something beyond its widest image and con
cept. Let us follow the mind in its attempt to grasp
infinity. I have allowed that we cannot have an idea
of infinite space and time, in the sense of imaging, pic-
THE INFINITE. 157
taring, or representing them. Stretch itself as it may,
the imaging power of the mind can never go beyond an
expansion with a boundary, commonly a globe or sphere
of which self is the centre, and duration stretching along
like a line, but with a beginning and an end. In respect,
then, of the mental picture or representation, the appre
hension is merely of the very large or the very long, but
still of the finite, of what might be called the indefinite,
but not the infinite. But any account of our conviction
as to infinity which goes no further leaves out the main,
the peculiar element. The sailor is not led by any na
tive instinct to believe that the ocean has no bottom,
simply because in letting down the sounding-line he has
not reached the ground. When the astronomer has
gauged space as far as his telescope can penetrate, he
finds that there are still stars and clusters of stars, but
he is not necessitated to believe that there must be star
after star on and forever. The geologist in going down
from layer to layer still finds signs of the existence of a
previous earth, but he is not obliged to conclude that
there must have been stratum before stratum from all
eternity. But man is constrained to believe that what
ever be the point of space or time to which his eye or
his thoughts may reach, there must be a space and time
beyond. Whence this belief of the mind, on space and
time being presented to it ? Whence this necessity of
thought or belief ? This is the very phenomenon to be
accounted for ; and yet the British school of metaphysi
cians can scarcely be said to have contemplated it seri
ously or steadfastly, with the view of unfolding the
depth of meaning embraced in it. It implies that to
whatever point of space or time we might go in our per
sons or in our fancy, there would still be a space and
a time beyond. I can easily, in imagination, go out, as
158 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
far as the rim of the earth, or as the moon, or as the sun,
or as the nearest star, or as the farthest star seen by the
eye, or as the remotest star discovered as a speck in a
nebulous cloud of light by the telescope ; but when there,
I must believe that space still goes on, and that if I were
carried ten thousand million times farther there would
still be space. I can represent to myself the instant of
time when man was created, and beyond this the time
when the lion or the worm, or the palm or the lichen,
were created, or when the earth or the angels were
created ; but though this period were multiplied by itself
millions of billions of trillions of times, I not only can
not believe that duration did then begin, I am con
strained to believe that it did not and could not then
commence. This intuitive belief, accompanied as it is
with a stringent necessity of feeling, is the very peculi
arity of the mind s conviction in regard to infinity, as
it is one of the grandest characteristics of human intelli
gence. It should be added that it is a power which ever
impresses man with his powerlessness.
This conviction has the characters and can bear the
tests of intuition. It is self-evident. Indeed, if it did
not shine in its own light, it could never be seen in any
other which we might hold up to it. It can stand the
test of necessity. It is necessary, we must believe it
when our intelligence is directed towards it. We can
not be made to believe otherwise, to believe that there is
a limit to immensity and duration. It is, when properly
understood, universal. The image, it is true, of space
or time, formed by the boy or savage, may be very con
tracted. The widest space of which he has had any ex
perience may be the glorious dome spread over his head
in the sky, and his imagination may be able to go very
little beyond the visible heavens or the distant hills
THE INFINITE. 159
which bound his view ; still he is sure that beyond there
must be something, an " outer infinite," and perhaps he
will be eager to know what is beyond that horizon. His
idea of time, as a positive picture, may extend no further
than the date of the oldest story which his grandfather
has told him ; but he is sure that at that point duration
did not begin, and he may be interested to know what
happened before.
* * Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
I suspect that this is rather a poetical expression of
what passes through the mind of infants ; but it is true
and correct so far as it indicates that there is an imagina
tive tendency which from very early life goes out from
the actual to the ideal. " Let them," says John Howe
in his Living Temple, " therefore reject it if they can.
They will feel it reimposing itself upon them whether
they will or no, and sticking as close to their minds as
their very thinking power itself." But this is not all
that is comprised in the conviction.
(2.) We apprehend and are constrained to believe in
regard to the objects which we look upon as infinite that
they are incapable of augmentation. Here, as in every
apprehension which we have of infinity, the imaging
power of the mind fails and must fail : still we have an
image and an intellectual conception ; say, an image
with a notion of extension, or duration, or Deity. Or
160 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
we represent to ourselves the Divine Being, with certain
attributes, say, as wise or as good, and our belief as
to him and these attributes is, that he cannot be wiser
or better. This aspect may be appropriately designated
as the Perfect. This is the conviction of the Perfect, of
which many profound philosophers make so much, but
not more, as I think, than they are entitled to do ; thougli
they have not, as it appears to me, always given the cor
rect account of the nature and of the genesis of the
notion. We think of God as having all his attributes
such that no addition could be made to them ; and we
call such attributes his perfections. In regard, indeed,
to the moral attributes of Deity, it is this significant
word Perfect, rather than infinite, which expresses the
conviction which we are led to entertain in regard, for
example, to the wisdom, or benevolence, or righteousness
of God.
This, too, seems a native conviction of the mind. It
needs, indeed, a certain matter provided for it, and to
which it may adhere. In a positive state it springs up
late, and grows slowly in all minds to which it is not
externally given by education, out of the Bible or other
wise. Still it is there in the mind as a tendency, placing
before every man some sort of " Idea " in the Platonic
sense ; a model, or beau idSal, which he is ever prompted
to strive after, while he is made to feel that he has not
reached it. It is this impulse, I apprehend, which makes
even the heathens speak of their gods, or at least their
supreme god, as ineffably good and immortal: the actual
conceptions of his excellence and duration may be ex
tremely inadequate, still they will not allow that there
could be any increase made to his attributes ; and, under
fostering circumstances, the conviction will come out in
a more decided form. When the object is brought under
THE INFINITE. 161
our notice, we see that it is perfect, that it must be per
fect, and that it cannot be otherwise. The faith is uni
versal, but the conception takes the form which may be
given it by the education or the intellectual strength and
growth of the individual.
But it will be urged that these two aspects or sides of
infinity are inconsistent. According to the one, infinity
is something to which something can be ever added ;
whereas, according to the other, it is something to which
nothing can be added. But in this, as in every other case
of apparent or alleged contradiction among our original
perceptions, the inconsistency vanishes on a careful
inspection of the precise nature of the convictions.
The infinite is something beyond our image or notion ;
but it is not something beyond the infinite itself. It is
something which admits of no increase, but that some
thing is not the imperfect notion we form, and which we
know to be imperfect. The two are not contradic
tory, but the one is supplementary to the other. They
cannot, however, be represented as the complement the
one of the other ; for, while they make up such an appre
hension as the finite mind of man can form, they do not
make up the infinite itself, which is confessedly far be
yond. The first of these views tends to humble us, as
showing how far our creature impotency is below Creator
Power. The other has rather a tendency to elevate us,
by showing a perfect exemplar, which is indeed far above
us, but to which we may ever look up. The Perfect
shines above us like the sun in the heavens, distant and
unapproachable, dazzling and blinding us as we would
gaze on it, but still our eye ever tends to turn up towards
it, and we feel that it is a blessed thing that there is such
a light, and that we are permitted to walk in it and re
joice in it.
162 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
III.
From this account we see that there is both an idea
and a belief in our apprehension of the infinite. I have
admitted that the image and the notion are not adequate.
Still there is always an idea. Round this, as a body, the
belief gathers, as the atmosphere does round the earth.
First, there must always be an image and a notion of an
existing thing, say space or time ; or, as far more con
ceivable, a living and an intelligent God. The mind
labors to heighten, to deepen, to widen, this idea on
every side. It is after all within limits; but it can in
quire what is beyond. It can do more : it can look out
on what is beyond. It can do yet more : it knows that
there is something beyond, and perceives somewhat of it.
It is sure, for example, that, as far as it has gone in space,
there is a space beyond ; far as it has gone in time, there
is a time beyond; much as it has conceived of God, there
is, after all, more of the Divine perfections. There is
thus a conception of an object ; there is thus, too, a con
ception of this same object being beyond, and still fur
ther. The belief attaches to this conception, and declares
that this thing conceived, this thing conceived as still
beyond, is a reality, and that it is such that it cannot
be increased. My readers must consult their own con
sciousness as to whether the account now given of the
nature and genesis of our conviction is the correct one.
This notion, with its adhering belief, is a mental phe
nomenon which we have a word to express. We can
subject it to logical processes ; it comes in, like all our
perceptions, in the concrete ; it is something, say space,
time, or Deity, we apprehend as infinite ; but we can
abstract the infinite from the object regarded as infinite,
and form the abstract idea of infinity. We can gener-
THE INFINITE. 163
alize it, and use it as a predicate : thus we can talk of
space and time and God as being infinite. We can utter
judgments regarding it, as that the infinite God is in
every given place ; there is no place of which we may
not say, " Surely the Lord is in this place." We can
even reason about it ; thus we can infer that this puny
effort of man, set against the recorded will of God, shall
most certainly be frustrated by his infinite power.
Keeping within the limits prescribed by the nature of
the convictions, man can speak about the infinite and be
intelligible ; he can legitimately employ it in argument,
and he can muse upon it, and find it to be among the
most ennobling and precious of themes.
And yet it is true all the while that the notion is en
gulfed in mystery. It is of all things the most prepos
terous in certain speculators to set out with the idea of
the infinite without a previous induction of its nature,
and thence proceed, consecutively or deductively, to draw
out a body of philosophy or theology. Such men have
lost themselves in attempting to voyage an " unreal, vast,
unbounded deep of horrible confusion ; " and yet they
would seek to pilot others, only to conduct them into
darker gloom and more inextricable straits, and, in the
end, bottomless abysses. The account we have given of
the conception and belief, shows how narrow the limits
within which man can make intelligible assertions ; how
strait the road in which he must walk, if he would not
lose himself in wilderness and in morass. He who passes
these bounds is talking without a meaning ; he who
would start with the notion of the absolute, and thence
construct a system embracing God, the world, and man,
will without fail land himself in helpless and hopeless
contradictions, the necessary consequent and the ap
propriate punishment of his folly and presumption.
164 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
IV.
The question is here started, What is it that we are to
regard as infinite ? And here it is of importance to remind
tne reader that, as a native law or regulative law in the
mind, our intuition as to the infinite is a tendency or apt
itude, and not perception or knowledge. In this respect
it is like our other inborn convictions. Man is endowed
by nature with senses, but the senses do not perceive till
an object is presented. On falling in with a phenome
non we look for a cause, but (as we shall see) it is by
experience, and not by intuition, that we know what the
cause is. We all have a conscience which prepares us
for discerning between good and evil, but it is not till a
voluntary action is presented that we pronounce a de
cision. So with our conviction as to infinity : the innate
law is a tendency to look out beyond the actual, and to
seek for the perfect. In order to the exercise and mani
festation of the disposition, there must be an object made
known and conceived, and on which the conviction may
fasten. What the object is must be determined by an
inductive observation of the exercises.
(1.) We look on infinity as an attribute of an object.
The infinite is not to be viewed as having an independent
being ; it is not to be regarded as a substance or a sepa
rate entity: it is simply the quality of a thing, very pos
sibly the attribute of the attribute of an object. Thus
we apply the phrase to the Divine Being to denote a
perfection of his nature ; we apply it also to all his per
fections, such as his wisdom and goodness, which we
describe as infinite. It is the more necessary to insist
on this view, from the circumstance that metaphysicians
are very much tempted to give an independent being to
abstractions ; and, in particular, some of them write
THE INFINITE. 165
about the infinite in such a way as to make their readers
look upon it as a separate existence. I stand up for the
reality of infinity, but I claim for it a reality simply as
an attribute of some existing object. Let us endeavor to
ascertain what the object is.
(2.) We look on space and time as infinite, and believe
in the possibility of infinite being or substance. We
cannot be made to believe that at any given point space
should cease, or that at any given instant time should
begin, or should come to an end. But let us consider
how much is implied in this. Place and time are looked
upon by us mainly as conditions of the possibility of
the existence of other objects. Wherever there is space
there may be active existence, and in all time there may
be events happening. The infinity of space and time
thus implies the possibility of infinite being to dwell in
them. There is ever felt to be an emptiness about pure
space and time. We know not in fact of a space or time
without a substantial existence in them. I do indeed
maintain, on the ground of ineradicable conviction, that
we must believe them to be independent of ourselves
contemplating them, or of material objects placed in
them. But the mind has a difficulty in conceiving of
them as altogether separate and independent entities. It
is from this cause, I am convinced, that so many philoso
phers represent them as mere relations of things rather
than things, or as forms given to objects by the mind, or
as mere conditions of existence. These are very incor
rect representations ; still the very fact that they have
been advanced is an evidence of the difficulty which the
mind experiences in grasping the realities of empty space
and time, which do look as if they were voids to be filled
up. Independent of us, they scarcely look as if they were
independent of a substantial existence. I am not pre-
166 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
pared to affirm with S. Clarke that they are modes of
substance ; but I have little to say against another state
ment of the same author, that " they are immediate and
necessary consequences of the existence of God, and that
without them his Eternity and Ubiquity would be taken
away ; " or the statement of Newton, that " God consti
tutes time and space." The mind feels as if there were
something wanting, till it learns of ONE to occupy the
vacuum ; but it is met and gratified in every one of its
intellectual and moral intuitions when it is brought to
know Him who inhabiteth eternity and immensity, and
filleth them with living and life-giving fulness.
(8.) Our intuition is satisfied only ~by the contemplation
of an infinite G-od. I am not convinced that our intui
tive convictions as to infinity, of themselves, and apart
from auxiliary considerations, guarantee the existence of
infinite substance. I am sure they give 110 sanction to
the doctrine held by so many of the ancient Greek phi
losophers, that material substance is eternal ; we can
easily conceive and believe matter to have been brought
into existence at some point in time by a power adequate
to produce it. It does not appear to me that we are con
strained by our convictions on this special subject, taken
apart from all other evidence, to believe in the existence
of an eternal or omnipresent God. Herein I have al
ways thought that the argument a priori or intuitive in
behalf of the Divine existence fails. There is a link
wanting which shows that the proof is not apodictic or
demonstrative ; that it is not founded on truths which
are self-evident throughout, as is, for example, the propo
sition that the opposite angles made by the intersection
of two straight lines are equal. We have and can have
no such demonstrative evidence of other truths to which
the mind cleaves most resolutely ; as, for example, that
THE INFINITE. 167
we ever had a sister, or brother, or friend, or that we
ever sat under the shelter of a father s wisdom, or were
refreshed by the dews of a mother s tenderness. There
is need of other considerations, and particularly of an
experiental element, in the form of certain obvious facts,
to prove the existence of a being dwelling in infinite
time and space, and possessed of infinite power and good
ness. I may have occasion to show that when the patent
facts and native convictions are brought together, the
certainty is of the very highest order short of demonstra
tion, which it falls beneath only so far as not absolutely
to preclude the possibility of doubt when the fool is
determined to say in his heart, " There is no God." It
would be premature to bring forward in detailed array
these combined considerations at this stage of our in
quiries, and to show how the order and adaptation in
nature are evidence of a designing and planning mind ;
how the evident effects in nature evoke the intuition
which demands that there be a cause ; how our convic
tions of moral obligation imply a law, the embodiment of
the nature of a lawgiver ; and how all these unite to
establish the existence of a living being, intelligent and
holy. When this being is made known to us by these
or by other means, our conviction as to infinity fastens
on it as its appropriate object, and we believe that He
who made all things, and who is thus powerful, thus
benevolent, thus holy, is and must be the Infinite, the
Perfect.
The nature of man s conviction in regard to infinity is
fitted to impress us, at one and the same time, with the
strength and the weakness of human intelligence, which
is powerful in that it can apprehend so much, but feeble
in that it can apprehend no more. The idea entertained
is felt to be inadequate, but this is one of its excellences,
168 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
that it is felt to be inadequate ; for it would indeed be
lamentably deficient if it did not acknowledge of itself that
it falls infinitely beneath the magnitude of the object.
The rnind is led by an inward tendency to stretch its
ideas wider and wider, but is made to know at the most
extreme point which it has reached that there is some
thing further on. It is thus impelled to be ever striving
after something which it has not yet reached, and to
look beyond the limits of time into eternity beyond, in
which there is the prospect of a noble occupation in be
holding, through ages which can come to no end and a
space which has no bounds, the manifestations of a might
and an excellence of which we can never know all, but
of which we may ever know more. It is an idea which
would ever allure us up towards a God of infinite perfec
tion, and yet make us feel, more and more impressively
the higher we ascend, that we are, after all, infinitely
beneath him. Man s capacity to form such an idea is a
proof that he was formed by an infinite God, and in the
image of an infinite God ; his incapacity, in spite of all
his efforts to form a higher idea, is fitted to show us how
wide the space and how impassable the gulf which sepa
rates man as finite from God the infinite.
They are in error who conclude that they cannot know
an infinite God, but they are equally in error who sup
pose that they can reach a perfect knowledge of him.
There is a sense in which he may be described as the
unknown God, for no human intellect can come to know
all the attributes of God, or even know ail about any
one of his perfections ; but there is a sense in which he
is emphatically the known God, inasmuch as he has
been pleased to manifest and reveal himself, and every
human being is required to attain a clear and positive,
though at the same time a necessarily inadequate, knowl-
THE INFINITE. 169
edge of him. It is true, on the one hand, that the in
visible things of God from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood from the things which are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead; but it is
equally true, on the other, that we cannot by search
ing find out God, that we cannot find out the Almighty
unto perfection. The wide finite, with its horizon ever
widening as we ascend, should call forth our admiration,
our adoration, and our love ; the wider infinite, which
is round about, and into which we can only gaze as we
often gaze into the deep sky, should impress us with a
feeling of awe in reference to Him who fills it all, and
a feeling of humility in reference to ourselves who can
know so little.
He who dwells in infinity is at once a God who reveals
and a God who conceals himself. We can know, but
we can know only in part. The knowledge which we
can attain is the clearest, and yet the obscurest, of all
our knowledge. A child, a savage, can acquire a certain
acquaintance with him, while neither sage nor angel can
rise to a full comprehension of him. God may be truly
described as the Being of whom we know the most, inas
much as his works are ever pressing themselves upon
our attention, and we behold more of his ways than of
the ways of any other ; and yet he is the Being of whom
we know the least, inasmuch as we know comparatively
less of his whole nature than we do of ourselves or of
our fellow-men, or of any object falling under our senses.
They who know the least of him have in this the most
valuable of all knowledge ; they who know the most,
know but little after all of his glorious perfections.
Let us prize what knowledge we have, but feel mean
while that our knowledge is comparative ignorance.
They who know little of him may feel as if they know
170 PKIMITIVE BELIEFS.
much ; they who know much will always feel that they
know little. The most limited knowledge of him should
be felt to be precious, but this mainly as an encourage
ment to seek knowledge higher and yet higher, without
limit and without end. They who in earth or heaven
know the most, know that they know little after all ; but
they know that they may know more and more of him
throughout eternal ages.
Hobbes, following out his theory that all our ideas are derived
from sensation, reaches the conclusion : "Whatever we imagine is
finite. There is therefore no idea or conception which can arise
from this word infinite. The human mind cannot comprehend the
idea (image) of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness,
infinite force, infinite time, or infinite power. When we say that
anything is infinite, we only mean by this that we are not able to
conceive the bounds or limits of that thing, or to conceive any other
thing except our own impotence. Therefore the name of God is not
employed that we may conceive of him, for he is incomprehensible,
and his greatness and power inconceivable, but that we may honor
him " (Leviathan, in.). " When we say that anything is infinite we
do not intend any quality in the thing itself, but a want of power in our
own minds ; as if we should say that we know not whether it has limits
or where. Nor can it be reverently said of God that we have an idea
of him in our minds; for an idea is our conception, and there is no
conception of anything but what is finite " (De Cive, xv.). This doc
trine was at once observed to have an atheistical tendency, and John
Francis Buddasus remarks : " What Hobbes affirms is therefore most
false, that the word infinite only signifies that we cannot conceive
the limits of what is so called. For he erroneously passes over what
is positive in the idea of an infinite being, and allows only what is
negative ; and the positive idea he explains thus : * For, first of all,
we conceive a certain supreme idea of perfection ; then we confess
that this perfection is so great that we cannot reach its bounds or
limits " (Theses de Atheismo et Superstitione, v., quoted in Harrison s
Notes to Cudworth s Intellectual System, Vol. n. p. 593).
Locke was prevented, by the defects of his theory and his antipa
thy to innate ideas, from developing all that is in our conviction of
infinity. Yet, while he maintains that our idea of the infinite is
negative, he admits " that it has something of positive in all those
THE INFINITE.
171
things we apply to it, inasmuch as the mind comprehends so much
of the object " (Essay, n. xvii. 15). He even admits, though rather
incidentally, that the mind has a necessary conviction as to the ex-
istence of an infinite. Thus, speaking of space, he says the mind
"must necessarily conclude it, by the very Nature and Idea of each
part of it, to be actually infinite " (4). Again: I think it unavoid
able, for every considering rational creature that will but examine
his own or any other existence, to have the notion of an eternal
wise Bein<r who had no beginning ; and such an Idea of infinite dura
tion I am sure I have " (17). It is to be regretted that Locke never
unfolded all that is contained in these necessary "and " unavoid
able " mental processes.
Hamilton says our notion of infinity is an "impotency," say an
impotency to conceive that space and time should have bounds.
am endeavoring to show in these paragraphs that there is more than
this. Hamilton maintains that a conception of the infinite is impos
sible, because of certain laws or conditions of human intelligence.
In particular, Dr. Mansel maintains that it is one condition of con
sciousness that we distinguish between one object and another, ^and
a second that we perceive the relation between subject and object,
both of which imply limitation and relation. These laws will be
examined (infra, p. 187, foot-note). Hamilton admits that we have
a belief in the infinite : " The sphere of our belief is much more
extensive than the sphere of our knowledge, and therefore, when I
deny that the infinite can by us be known, I am far from denying
that by us it is, must, and ought to be believed. This T have indeed
anxiously evinced both by reason and authority " (Metaph. Vol. n.
App. p. 530). But if this faith be beyond consciousness, his view is
liable to all the objections which he urges so powerfully against the
theory of Schelling, " which founds philosophy on the annihilation
of consciousness " (Discuss. Art. Philos. of Unconditioned). On the
other hand, if this faith be within consciousness, as he evidently
supposes when he says (Metaph. Vol. J. p. 191), " Knowledge and
belief are both contained under consciousness," then the objections
derived from the conditions of consciousness, which he urges against
the knowledge and idea, apply equally to the belief. Besides, must
not a belief in a thing of which we have no conception, be a belief
in Zero ? The mind is shut up, it is supposed, into this belief^ by
the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, which requires
that of two extremes (the absolute and infinite) exclusive of each
other, one must be admitted as necessary. But then both these ex-
172 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
tremes, i. e., the absolute and infinite, are represented as inconceiv
able, and I rather think it would defy Hamilton or any other man to
tell the contradictory of what is inconceivable. Of this I am sure,
that the laws of contradiction and excluded middle, derived from
our conceptions, can be applied only to what we conceive, and can
have no meaning as referring to what we cannot conceive. He main
tains that our conceptions as to the infinite land us in contradictions.
" We are altogether unable to conceive space as bounded, as finite;
that is, as a whole beyond which there is no further space." " On the
other hand, we are equally powerless to realize in thought the pos
sibility of the opposite contradictory. We cannot conceive space
infinite or without bound " (Metaph. Lect. 38). I may be permitted to
quote the criticism I have offered on this alleged contradiction : " The
seeming contradiction here arises from the double sense in which the
word conceive is used. In the second of these counter-proposi
tions, the word is used in the sense of imaging, or representing in
consciousness, as when the mind s eye pictures a fish or a mermaid.
In this signification we cannot have an idea or notion of the infinite.
But the thinking, judging, believing power of the mind is not the
same as the imaging power. The mind can think of the class fish,
or even of the imaginary class mermaid, while it cannot picture the
class. Now, in the first of the opposed propositions, the word con
ceive is taken in the sense of thinking, deciding, being convinced.
We picture space as bounded, but we cannot think, judge, or believe
it to be bounded. When thus explained, all appearance of contra
diction disappears : indeed, all contradictions which the Karitians,
Hegelians, and Hamiltonians are so fond of discovering between
our intuitive convictions will vanish, if we but carefully inquire into
the nature of the convictions. Both propositions, when rightly un
derstood, are true, and there is no contradiction. They stand thus :
* We cannot image space as without bounds; we cannot think
that it has bounds, or believe that it has bounds. The former may
perhaps be a creature impotency ; the latter is most assuredly a
creature potency,. is one of the most elevated and elevating con
victions of which the mind is possessed, and is a conviction of which
it can never be shorn."
It is of something, say of space, or of the attribute of something,
say of the power of God, that we predicate that they are infinite.
This certainly implies that no space can be added to infinite space,
but does not imply that space, because it is infinite, must contain all
existence, must comprise, say wisdom and goodness. It implies that
THE INFINITE. 173
God cannot be more righteous than he is, but does not involve that
his righteousness or even that his being must embrace all being.
Dr. Mansel, in the Limits of Religious Thought, 3d ed. p. 46, quotes
the language of Hegel : " What kind of an Absolute Being is that
which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil in
cluded V " and refers to Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Parker as
holding similar views. I am sure that the mind is not shut up into
any such doctrine by its native convictions. Against such a view the
artillery of Hamilton and Mansel tells with irresistible power.
They have shown most conclusively that such a notion involves in
extricable confusion and hopeless contradictions. I freely abandon
such a conception to them, to tear it to pieces with their remorseless
logic. But I decidedly demur to the statement of Dr. Mansel, " that
which is conceived as absolute and infinite must be conceived as con
taining within itself the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possi
ble modes of being." I have nothing here to say as to the absolute,
but I do affirm that we have a conception as to the infinite, the per
fect I do not say of the infinite, the perfect which does not
imply this consequence, and that we can both think and speak of
infinity without falling into contradictions. I hold it to be quite
possible to muse and reason about the attribute " infinite," as it is
in fact conceived and believed in by the mind, without falling into
the difficulties in which the German supporters of the absolute have
involved themselves ; and that we can think of God and write
about God as infinite, without being compelled by any logical ne
cessity to look upon him as embracing all existence, or to reckon it
impossible or inconceivable that he should create a world and liv
ing agents different from himself. We cannot conceive that God s
power should be increased, but we can conceive it exercised in
creating beings possessed of power. We cannot conceive his good
ness to be enlarged, but we can, without a contradicfion, conceive
him creating other beings also good. Nor are we by this conception
shut up to the conclusion that the creature-power or creature-excel
lence might be added to the divine power and goodness, and thus
make it greater. To all quibbles proceeding in this line, I say that
for aught I know it may not be possible they should be added, or that,
if added, they should increase the divine perfections ; and no reply
could be given, drawn either from intuition or experience, the only
lights to which I can allow an appeal. Nor will I venture to affirm
how much truth there is in the following statement of Howe (Living
Temple, Part I. Chap, iv.) : " This necessarily is such to which
174 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS.
nothing can be added, so as that it should be really greater or better
or more perfect than it was before." But then it is said, could you
not add the finite, and " is there, therefore, nothing more of existent
being than there was before this production?" It is answered,
" Nothing more than virtually was before ; for when we suppose an
infinite being, and afterwards a finite, this finite is not to be looked
upon as emerging or springing up of itself out of nothing ; or pro
ceeding from some third thing as its cause, but as produced by that
infinite, or springing out of that which it could not do but as being
before virtually contained in it. For the infinite produces nothing
which it could not produce, and what it could produce was before
hand contained in it as in the power of its cause."
I had noticed both these aspects of infinity before I discovered
that I had been anticipated by Aristotle in Phys. Aus. in. 6. He
describes the infinite as that which has always something beyond:
ov yap ov /MjSei/ tfo>, oAA ov oei TI e eVrt, TOVTO &ireip6v fffnv. But then
the complete, the entire, is that which has nothing beyond : ov S
fA-rjSev e|o>, TOUT effrl rcteiov Kal oXov. 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 o\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 (Meih. 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. whole 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 efficacy 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
im potency which makes us lay hold of the Creator s
power.
BOOK III.
PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THEIR GENERAL NATURE, AND A CLASSIFICATION
OP 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 Reproductive
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. 183
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 difficulties 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, u 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.
V.
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
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, n. 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 : " Alles, 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. ofRelig.
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 differences
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, n. xxviii.).
Hume mentions Resemblance, Identity, Space and Time, Quantity,
Degree, 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; (IL) 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
identity, 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 every 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 there 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
44 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 affirms 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. 195
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 (Op.
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. n. 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.
(6) 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 Parts. 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 Power. 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 before 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 Real, 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, and 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.
III.
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,
therefore, 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 nature, 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 be 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.
Relations 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 JUDGMENTS.
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 ?
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."
V.
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 remainders are 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.
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.
I.
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 nlways 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 minds can fol-
212 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS.
low a train of reasoning, we are sure that they 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 ; but it con
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 : u 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 sioh 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 HI. 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, are 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 " (Essay 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 oiler
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 Eyo. 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.
III.
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.
L
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 nil 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.
II.
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,
Singing 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 nature 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 Se ov, 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 they
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, abave 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 moral 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 which 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. n. 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 " V 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 morality,
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.
ERROR 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 every 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 cognizant of the
heart of a good man, and could see the springs that move
him to benevolence and self-sacrifice, I should 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 OUB 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 equally 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 case 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
IL
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.
PEIMITIVB TKUTH INVOLVED IN WILL.
I.
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 power,
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, moral 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 office 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 nature. The mind
has undoubtedly a power of freewill. But consciousness,
which is always 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^chpose, 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 choice 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 prompts 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 I 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 MOKAL 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 even 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 a,n
ethicnl 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 affirm 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 tie
enjoyment of health and prosperity. Bmt 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
afflicted 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 wrong 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 !
PART 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. //.era TO. 4>ucriK:a, to intimate that these
books were to follow the physical treatises. 1 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,
1 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 understanding the phrase to denote the supranatural.
METAPHYSICS. 245
of the Ionian school, they directed their attention to the
dicta of inward reason. Going far below what they rep
resented as the illusions 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 (TO 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
the 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 (ova-ia) 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 (jyv ova-Lav KOL TO TL rjv eTi/at) ; (2.) The Material
(TYJV vXrjv KCU TO VTroKet/xeVov) ; (3.) The Efficient (o#ev 17
rrj<s KIVTJO-CWS) ; (4.) The Final (TO ov li/c/cev KCU TO
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. 3
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 Metaph., B. i. c. iii. sec. 1, compared with B. in. c. i., and B. v.
c. i. sect. 3.
2 De Augmentis, iii. 4.
8 Prin. Phil. 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 three 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 of
God, Freedom, and Immortality. 1
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 summarily. The multitudes
who set value on nothing but what can be counted in
1 See Methodenlehre, in Kr. d. r. Vern.
a 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 TRUTH AND EVOLUTION.
THROUGHOUT 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 the 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.
III.
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 related 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 " (Psych. 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 corne 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 required 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 the 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 with 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 may 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 the 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 not put a lower estimate on
his patrimony because the father earned it for him by
much toil and privation.
254 INTUITIVE PBINCIPLES 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 ivhich 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 arid 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 OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS.
WHAT is Science ( ETT^T^) ? 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
tematized. In this sense we speak of astronomy, geol
ogy > lgi c > 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,
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 Aoyos). 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.
THIRDLY. 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 MS 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 intellects, quod non prius
fuerit in sensu, 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. 1 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. Thirdly,
there is a denial, or at least oversight, of the mind s deep
1 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 distinguished 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 spring
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 suo-o-ested 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, n. vn. 9) ; and
of " relation " as " not contained in the real existence of things, but
extraneous and superinduced " (n. xxv. 8).
Confinincr 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-
ino- 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 sufficient 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
oughly 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 own 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
physical 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 moral convictions as well as his
intellectual cognitions. Thus, he can clothe the hero of
a romance 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 the 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 there 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 t or with other
truths which the reason sanctions.
CHAPTER III.
EELATION OF INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE.
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 what 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.
i
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
shown that all the laws 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 ns 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 PRIORI, 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 our experience.
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 OTJR PRIMARY
CONVICTIONS.
I.
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 says, 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 affirm 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 judgment
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 phrase
" 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.
III.
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 with 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
supra, 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 arid 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 Reflection, i. 168). It has become an
accepted distinction among a certain class of metaphysicians and
divines all over Europe and the English-speaking people of the great
American continent. These parties commonly illustrate their views
in some such 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 the 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 that 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.
n.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN " A PRIORI " AND " A POSTERIORI "
PRINCIPLES. Prior to the time of David Hume, the phrase " &
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 " a 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, k priori comprehends or knows
them" (Immut. Mor. HI. iii. 2). Since the publication of Hume s
philosophic works, and more especially since the Kritik of Pure
Reason came to have such an extensive influence, " a 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 h 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 a priori convictions.
Closely allied to the question of a priori truth is the question, Can
there be an a 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 a 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 a
priori science, for science employs general principles, and there are
no such principles known a priori. But there are sciences the
ground principles of which are not the generalizations of a gathered
experience, but of the necessary decisions of the mind, and these
sciences may be called a 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.
in.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN FORM AND MATTER. This phrase
ology was introduced by Aristotle, who represented everything as
having in itself both matter (U AT;) and form (efSos). 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 a priori element,
and the matter to the a 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.
IV.
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 will be impossible, in
common discourse, to deprive 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 bus-
290 GNOSIOLOGY.
band implies the 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 u 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. Proceeding 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 AND CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF IDEAS. Sir W.
Hamilton quotes a saying of Patricius, " Cognitio omnis a mente
prirnam 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 k 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 u 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.
VI.
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-
bion 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 III.
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. 1 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
1 See the opening of the Parmenides of Plato.
294 ONTOLOGY.
the One and of the 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. 295
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 arid 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 t-he 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. The 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 reality 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 damaging 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 winch 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.
THERE are associations in the mind joined with our
primitive intellectual and moral exercises. The mirth 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
802 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. 303
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 fYir as music gives us more plea
sure than wire vibrations, so far as a Swiss valley,
guarded by Mont 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. 305
nature fitted I believe intended to produce and foster
it. It is meant that sensations should 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 themselves, 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 theosophies, 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, affirming 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. There 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 has 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, ajl
and alike ideal. I have already discussed scepticism dis
guised as idealism ; I am now to offer a few remarks on
an avowed scepticism.
II.
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.
thorough 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 ail 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 truth, (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 us
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 affirmations 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 othfer 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 Berkeleyan 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. It 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 which are inconsistent with
that judgment or belief to which it would appeal. (6)
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.
not 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).
VII.
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 legitimate^ 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, he 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 here 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 threatens 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.)
(b) 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 falsehood 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 why. Not
only so ; if the truth urged as evidence is not self-evident, I may ask
the why 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, Metaph. i. Minor, ir., where he
supports his doctrine by very subtle reasoning. The principle has
been sanctioned by most profound thinkers ; see Clarke, Demons, of
Being and Attr ib. of God, n., 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 sufficiently 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 underived 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 Beino- from whom all conditions are removed, and whose
O
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 (Kritik d. r. Fern. 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
gpace. 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 : the 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 contradictory. 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 underivetf 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 in
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, by 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 which 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 : Irenaeus is trans
lated, " Invisibilis quidem poterat eis ipse (Deus) propter eminen-
tiam : io;notus autem nequaquam propter providentiam " (Contra
Omnes Hceret. ii. 6). Tertullian says : " Deus ignotus esse non
328 ONTOLOGY.
debuijt" (Adv. Marcionem, iii. 3). Iu 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 " (EpisL 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 Hansel. 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 decided 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 " (Logic, 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 their existence is taken for granted in the common language,
from which I cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such
powers or properties 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.
Hamilton, " All that we know is therefore phenomenal, phenomenal
of the unknown " (i. iii. 7).
330 ONTOLOGY.
I 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 Brown. 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 world existed. But how can Mr. Mill, 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 build 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 " (in. 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, n. 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
difficulty in conceiving the antipodes, because it seemed contrary, 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 a 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 laetamur 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 of the Unconditioned is a philosophy 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. Philos.
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. Nor 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 thought to erect an
altar " to the unknown and unknowable God ; " and as to this un
known he thinks it right "to refrain from assigning to it any at
tributes whatever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as
they must be from our own natures, are not elevations but degrada
tions " (p. 109). Looking to the interests both of philosophy and
religion, it is of great moment to lay an arrest on this style of
thought, quite as important as it was to stay in last age the now
exploded Philosophy of the Absolute. I meet it by maintaining as
the proper postulate, sanctioned by consciousness, that the mind be-
334 ONTOLOGY.
gins with a knowledge of things, partial no doubt, but still correct
so far as it goes. From this primitive knowledge and adherino- be
liefs it reaches further knowledge. In particular, the real effects in
nature carry us up to a real cause. The evidences of design argue
an adequate cause in an intelligent designer, and the nature of the
moral power in man and of the moral government of the world is
proof of the existence of a Moral Governor. " The invisible things
of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under
stood (j oovneva) by the things that are made, even his eternal power
and Godhead." Should it come to be thought that religion has only
the sphere of the " unknown and unknowable," I am sure it would
disappear from our world as a living power. When the apostle beheld
the altar with the inscription, " To the Unknown God," he hastened
to proclaim a Known God: Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
him declare I unto you. God that made the world," etc.
Mr. Spencer, in his Psychology, insists that we seek an Ultimate
Datum or Postulate. He finds such a Postulate in Belief. He does
not very distinctly explain what is involved in belief. He says
(p. 14) that " belief is the recognition of existence." If he had left
out the re as implying something prior brought back, and said cog
nition, his statement would have been correct. Again, he says,
" Every logical act of the intellect is a predication, is an assertion
that something is, and this is what we call belief." I do not admit
that all cognition is predication (see supra, p. 182), but taking his
explanation, I ask my readers to consider how much is implied in
this predication that something is, in this cognition of existence ; and
the postulate, if it is not unmeaning, or if its meaning is not suicidal,
must postulate all that is in it, must postulate existence and some
thing existing. I maintain, further, that a something can be known
as existing only so far as we know it to be something, that is, know
something of it, that is, know some quality of it. Setting out with
something, I hold that all the consequences logically drawn also im
ply existence, and something existing with some quality. By such a
process we find ourselves reaching further knowledge and other reali
ties. Mr. Spencer, quite in the spirit of the German speculatists,
will admit only one ultimate postulate; what he calls belief. On the
ground on which he calls in the one, I think, he is bound to admit
others, what I call beliefs and judgments, intellectual and moral.
By these, and by ordinary observation, we rise to a God who is not
an unknown God.
He says (p. 28): " Not only is the invariable existence of a belief
THE NESCIENCE THEORY. 335
our sole warrant for every truth of immediate consciousness, and for
every primary generalization of the truths of immediate conscious
ness, every axiom, but it is our sole warrant for every demonstra
tion." There is surely some confusion of statement here. I will
not insist on the circumstance that generalization must imply a dis
cursive process. I remark upon the principle that invariable ex
istence is the warrant of the truths of immediate consciousness. I
should rather say, that the belief invariably exists, since we have in
sense-perception and self-consciousness the object before us, and we
perceive it. According to Mr. Spencer (p. 27), " In the proposition
I am, no one who utters it can find any proof but the invariable
existence of the belief in it." I should rather say, that the belief is
so invariable since all men have invariably the object self under their
view. Mr. Spencer lays down the further principle (p. 26), " The
inconceivability of its negation is the test by which we ascertain
whether a given belief invariably exists or not ; " and then in the
application he uses the word " conceiving " (with its derivatives) in
all its various meanings, as imaging, apprehending in a notion, know
ing, believing, judging. He says acutely, in criticising Hume (p. 49),
" For what is contained in the concept, an impression? Translate
the word into thought, and there are manifestly involved a thing im
pressing and a thing impressed. It is impossible to attach any idea
to the word save by the help of these two other ideas." Now, I ask
him to translate in the same manner his own language, and it will
imply a thing cognizing, and an existing thing cognized. Negation
may no doubt be used as a test, but it is a secondary one, throwing
us back on the primary one of self-evidence; and the negation used
as a test must not be of conception, but the impossibility of not know
ing when the primitive conviction is a cognition, of not believing
when it is a belief, and of not judging in a particular way when it is
a comparison. Such tests carry us on from primary knowledge to
further knowledge, embracing the existence of God.
It does not concern us in this treatise to examine Mr. Spencer s
ambitious attempt to explain the formation of the present state of the
cosmos, by means of an unknown Infinite necessitated by thought,
and certain forces. It could easily be shown that there are tremendous
chasms in the process which he has unfolded. The forces which he
is obliged to postulate may so far account for certain physical phe
nomena, such as the size, shape, and movements of the planets. But
they give no explanation of sensation, or emotion, or consciousness,
or belief, or intuition, or judgment, or the sense of beauty, or reason-
336 ONTOLOGY.
ing, or desire, or volition. Great as are the author s intellectual
powers, he has attempted a task far beyond them, I believe beyond
human capacity, certainly far beyond it at the present stage of sci
ence. The attempt by this giant mind to reach an unapproachable
height, by heaping Ossa on Pelion, must turn out a lamentable
failure. This in regard to his theory as a whole ; but his bold gen
eralizations are always suggestive, and some of them may in the end
be established as the profoundest laws of the knowable universe.
BOOK IV.
METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
CHAPTER I.
METAPHYSICS IN THE COMMON AFFAIRS OF LIFE.
/
THE act of breathing does not make us physiologists.
Nor does the use of First Principles make us metaphysi
cians. Just as we all use physiological, so do we also
employ metaphysical principles without being conscious
of it. Our primitive cognitions, beliefs, and judgments
are involved in what we think and do from day to day
and from hour to hour, almost from minute to minute of
our waking existence.
We assume that we are in space and move in it.
We act on the principle that the shortest distance be
tween two points is a straight line. The farmer does
not attempt to close in a field by two straight lines.
We carry with us a conviction of our personality. We
trust, our memories and believe in the continuity of time
and can find no limit to it. We proceed on the being
and identity of objects, especially our personal identity.
We are constantly separating parts and combining them
into wholes. We delight to discover resemblances and
to view things in classes. We are ever comparing the
sizes of objects and observing their proportions. We de
light to notice the activities of things, and we perceive
that they influence us and have power over each other.
Whenever we will to take a step in walking or to utter
338 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
a sound, we are employing the principle of cause and
effect.
Our consciences are constantly guiding and guarding
us, in doing this honest and declining this base transac
tion. When we talk, or when we write, there is a con
straint constantly laid upon us by the principle that we
should speak the truth. In our money transactions we
are bound by the fixed principle of honesty. On seeing
a human being in distress, the royal law of love requires
that we hasten to relieve him. Our moral nature, follow
ing the law of love regulated by law, insists on our con
stantly showing kindness to our families, our friends,
and neighbors.
All this does not show that we are metaphysicians,
but it proves that we are constantly exercising qualities
which the metaphysician should observe.
CHAPTER II.
THE METAPHYSICS OF PHYSICS.
WE have heard of the man in the French play who
was amazed to find that he had been speaking prose all
his life without knowing it. I believe that in like man
ner physicists are constantly using metaphysics without
having the least suspicion of it ; many of them would
indignantly repel the charge, if brought against them.
The physical sciences must ever be conducted in the
method of induction, with sense and artificial instruments
as the agents of observations. But it has often been re
marked that all scientific investigation, indeed all inquiry,
if pursued sufficiently far down, conducts into mystery,
often into insoluble problems. It will be found that
these are the underlying regulative principles which the
metaphysician should seek, if not to explain, at least to
express. It is not the special business of the physical
sciences to inquire into the nature or guarantee of ulti
mate truths. This work it leaves very properly to meta
physicians, who should be prepared to announce laws of
intuition on which the physicist might rest, when he
finds himself sinking too far down. They might be
more profitably employed in such a work, which lies
exclusively in their own province, than in pursuing wild
speculative ends, which can never be attained by human
reason.
The powers in nature are so distributed and arranged
that they issue in order, in respect of such qualities as
space, time, quantity, and energy. To these mathema
tics can be successfully applied, and they come in with
340 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
all their axioms and demonstrations, which are seen to
be true at once, as will be shown in a later chapter.
Thus both in statics and dynamics, in certain depart
ments of mechanics, astronomy, optics, and therrnotics,
we come down in the last resort to truths which are
beneath physics, and within metaphysics.
Most, if not all, of our intuitive convictions, have a
place in the foundation of the deeper physical sciences.
Thus the conviction as to the identity of being leads us
to chase the substance through the various forms it may
assume, and constrains those who are most opposed to
hypotheses to speak of ultimate atoms or molecules.
The intuition of whole and parts constrains us to look
on the abstract as implying the concrete, and prompts
us to seek for all the parts which make up the whole.
Our intuition as to classes insists that the species make
up the genus. Our primitive perceptions as to space
make the physicist certain, when he sees a body now in
one place, and then in another, that it must have passed
through the whole intermediate space. They should
prevent him from giving his adherence to the theory that
matter consists merely of points of force ; the points
cannot, properly speaking, be unextended, and there
must always be a space between them. Our belief as to
time assures us that there can be no break in its flow,
and that when we fall in with the same object at two
different times, it must have existed the whole interven
ing period. Our intuitive cognitions of number, quan
tity, and proportion guide and control us more or less
formally in all departments of natural philosophy. Our
conviction as to substance and property prompts the phy
sicist, when he discovers a new object, to inquire after its
properties, and on perceiving the action of such agencies
as magnetism, electricity, and galvanism, to declare that
THE METAPHYSICS OF PHYSICS. 341
they must be either separate substances (not prob
able), or properties of substances. Causation appears in
nearly every department of science.
There are sciences which have special primitive truths
underlying them. Thus chemistry involves throughout
our conviction as to substance and property. There is
a class of sciences which proceeds on resemblances and
deals with things in classes. They have been called the
" Classificatory Sciences " by Whewell, and embrace
botany, zoology, and mineralogy so far as it is not a
branch of chemistry, and geology so far as it deals with
organisms. In all these the mind is guided and guarded
by our cognitions in regard to the relations of indi
viduals and classes. Power, force, energy, causation op
erate in almost all physical sciences, in electric, magnetic,
and galvanic action, which all imply power ; in geology,
as it treats of the forces which have brought the earth s
surface to its present state ; in physiology which looks
at the powers which work in the organism. It is the
reigning determinant in mechanics and in the old nat
ural philosophy now called physics.
The physical investigator, engrossed with external
facts, and seeking to throw light upon them, will seldom
so much as notice these underlying principles, which are
unconsciously guiding him, and only on rare occasions
will he make a formal appeal to them. Still there will
be times when those most prejudiced against metaphysics
of every kind will be tempted or compelled to fall back
upon them, when diving down into the depths of a deep
subject, or when hard pressed by an opponent. It often
happens that when they do so, their expression of the
principle is awkward and blundering ; and I think they
have reason to complain of the metaphysician that he
has been wasting his ingenuity in unprofitable and un-
342 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
attainable pursuits, and has done so little to aid physical
investigation in a line in which he might have lent it
effective and profitable aid.
It has been shown by Dr. Whewell, in his work on the Philosophy
of the Inductive Sciences, more particularly in his History of Scientific
Ideas, that each kind of science has its special fundamental idea at its
basis, and he classifies the sciences according to the ideas which reg
ulate them. The phrase ** ideas " does not seem a good one to ex
press the intuitive convictions of the mind, either in their sponta
neous exercises or formal enunciations, and I think he is altogether
wrong in supposing that these ideas "superinduce" on the facts
something not in the facts. But he has in that work developed
truths, which physical investigators were almost universally over
looking.
CHAPTER III.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MATHEMATICS.
MATHEMATICS is not a metaphysical science. But
it proceeds by definitions and axioms in both of which
metaphysics are involved (a).
I look upon definitions, or rather the things defined,
as constituting, properly speaking, the foundation of
mathematics. They seem to me to be formalized primi
tive cognitions or beliefs in regard to quantity, to which
some add position ; and they specially bear upon exten
sion and number. In their formation there is involved
a process of abstraction from material objects presenting
themselves. A point is defined " position without magni
tude." There is no such point ; there can be no such point.
A line is "length without breadth;" there was never
such a line drawn by pen or diamond point. But the
mind in analysis is sharper than steel or diamond. It
can contemplate position without taking extension into
view. It can reason about the length of a line without
regarding the breadth. In all definitions there is abstrac
tion, but I must forever protest against the idea that an
abstraction is necessarily unreal. If the concrete is real
the attribute or part of it is also real. The position of
the point is a reality, and so also is the length of a line ;
they are not independent realities, and capable of exist
ing alone and apart, but still they are realities, and when
the mind contemplates them separately, it contemplates
realities. So far as it reasons about them accurately,
according to the laws of thought, the conclusions arrived
344 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
at will also be real, the reality being of the same nature
with that of the premise. Thus, whatever conclusions
are reached in regard to lines, circles, or ellipses will
apply to all objects having length, or a circular, or ellip
tic form. We find, in fact, that the conclusions of math
ematics do hold true of all bodies in earth or sky, so far
as we find them occupying space or having numerical
relations.
Looking not just at the definitions, but at the things
defined under the clear and distinct aspects in which
they are set before it by abstraction, the mind discov
ers relations and can draw deductions. It finds that A
is equal to B, and B to C, and it at once concludes that
A is equal to C. In doing this it proceeds on a princi
ple, and this when generalized becomes the axiom that
" things which are equal to the same thing are equal to
one another." The reasoning in such cases appears clear,
anterior to the general principle being announced, and
when the principle is expressed it does not seem to add
to the force of the ratiocination. It does not in fact add
to the cogency of the argument ; it is merely the expres
sion of the general principle on which it proceeds. Still
it serves many important scientific purposes. Locke and
Stewart, who do not set high value on axioms, admit that
it is of great importance to have the general truth ex
pressed formally in an axiom. It allows the reflective
mind to dwell on the general law regulating the spon
taneous conviction ; by its clearness it enables us to test
the ratiocination, and it shows what those must be pre
pared to disprove who would dispute or deny the con
clusion.
If this view be correct, the abstracted cognitions or
beliefs which constitute the definitions form the proper
foundation of mathematical demonstration, while the
THE METAPHYSICS OF MATHEMATICS. 345
axioms being the generalizations of our primitive judg
ments, on looking at the things defined, are the links
which bind together the parts of the superstructure
added (5).
The question is keenly agitated as to axioms whether
they are or are not the generalizations of experience. It
will be found here, as in so many other questions which
have passed before us, that there is truth on both sides,
and error on both sides, and confusion in the whole con
troversy, which is to be cleared by an exact account of the
mental operation involved informing the judgment. The
mathematical axiom is not a mere generalization of an
outward or a gathered experience. It is not by trying two
straight rods, ten, twenty, or a thousand times, that we
arrive at the general proposition that two straight lines
cannot enclose a space, and thence conclude as to two
given lines presented anywhere to us that it is impossible
they should enclose a space. It is certainly not by placing
two rods parallel to each other, and lengthening them
more and more, and then measuring their distance to see
if they are approaching, that we reach the axiom that
two parallel lines will never meet, and thence be con
vinced as to any given set of like lines that they will never
come nearer each other. Place before us two new sub
stances, and we cannot tell beforehand whether they will
or will not chemically combine ; but on the bare contem
plation of two straight lines, we declare they cannot con
tain a space ; and of two parallel lines, that they can
never meet (<?).
In mathematical truth, the mind, upon the objects
being presented to its contemplation, at once and in
tuitively pronounces the judgment. It conceives two
straight lines, and decides that they cannot be made to
enclose a space. But it would pronounce the same de-
346 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
cision as to any other, as to every other pair of straight
lines, and thus reaches the maxim that what is true of
these two lines is true of all. There is thus generaliza
tion in the formation of the axiom, but it is a generaliz
ation of the individual intuitive judgments of the mind.
Hence arises the distinction between the axioms of math
ematics and the general laws reached by observation.
If we have properly generalized the individual convic
tion, the necessity that is in the individual goes up into
the general, which embraces all the individuals, and the
axiom is necessarily true, and true to all beings. But
we can never be sure that there may not somewhere be
an exception to experiential laws. We are sure that
two straight lines cannot enclose a space in any planet,
or star, or world, that ever existed or shall exist ; but
it is quite possible that there may be horned animals
which are not ruminant, or white crows in some of the
planets ; and that there may come a time when the sun
shall no longer give heat or light.
In the case of our intuitive convictions regarding
space, number, and quantity, the simplicity of the objects
makes it easy for us to seize the principle, and to put it
in proper formulae, which can scarcely fail to be accu
rately made. Hence these convictions came to be ex
pressed in general forms in what were then called
Common Notions at a very early age of the history of
intellectual culture. The disputes among mathemati
cians in regard to axioms relate not to their certainty
and universality, but to the forms in which they ought
to be put, and as to whether what some regard as first
truths may not be demonstrated from prior truths. Such,
for instance, is the dispute as to how the axioms and
demonstrations as to parallel lines should be best con
structed. But in regard to our convictions of extension,
THE METAPHYSICS OF MATHEMATICS. 347
number, and quantity, it is not difficult to gather the
regulating principle out of the individual judgments. It
is different with other of our original convictions, such
as those which relate to cause and effect; the greater
complexity of the objects renders it more difficult to seize
on the principle involved, and there is greater room
for dispute as to any given formula whether it is an
exact expression of the facts. We see the reason why
we cannot have demonstration in such sciences as physics
and ethics ; it is because of the concreteness and com
plexity of the objects. The problem of " three bodies "
has been found a difficult one ; how much more perplex-
ing must be one in which there are a considerable num
ber and variety of concrete things to be considered.
(a) It has been shown by Kant that the axioms of geometry
are synthetic and not analytic judgments. Thus, in the axiom,
" Two straight lines cannot enclose a space," the predication that
"they cannot enclose a space," is not contained in the bare notion
of " two straight lines." Starting with axioms which involve more
than analytic judgments, we are reaching throughout the demonstra
tion more than identical truth. The propositions in the Books of
Euclid are all evolved out of the definitions and axioms, but are not
identical with them, or with one another (Kritik, p. 145). Dr. Man-
sel (Proleg. Log. 2d ed. p. 103) maintains that such axioms as^that
" Things which are equal to the same are equal to each other " are
analytic. But does not this confound equality with identity ? D.
Stewart remarks (Elem. Vol. n. Chap, ii.) that most of the writers
who have maintained that all mathematical evidence resolves ulti
mately into the perception of identity " have imposed on themselves
by using the words identity and equality as literally synonymous and
convertible terms. This does not seem to be at all consistent, either
in point of expression or fact, with sound logic." Certain modern
logicians have fallen into a still greater confusion, when they make
the relation between subject and predicate merely one of identity or
of equality. The proposition "Man is mortal" is not interpreted
fully when it is said "Man is identical with some mortal," or that
All men = some mortals." By all means let logicians use symbols,
348 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
but let them devise symbols of their own, and not turn to a new
use the symbols of mathematics, which have a meaning, and a well-
defined one, simply as applied to quantity, and should not be made
to signify the relations of extension and comprehension in logical
propositions.
(6) There is truth, then, in a statement of D. Stewart: "The
doctrine which I have been attempting to establish, so far from de
grading axioms from that rank which Dr. Reid would assign them,
tends to identify them still more than he has done, with the exercise
of our reasoning powers ; inasmuch as, instead of comparing them
with the data, on the accuracy of which that of our conclusion neces
sarily depends, it considers them as the vincula which give coherence
to all the particular links of the chain ; or (to vary the metaphor)
as component elements, without which the faculty of reasoning is in
conceivable and impossible n (Elem. Vol. n. Chap. i.).
If this view be correct, we see how inadequate is the representa
tion of those who, like D. Stewart and Mr. J. S. Mill, represent
mathematical definitions as merely hypothetical, and represent the
whole consistency and necessity as being between a supposition and
the consequences drawn from it. This is to overlook the concrete
cognitions or beliefs from which the definition is derived. It is like
wise to overlook the fact that these refer to objects, and the further
fact that the abstractions from the concretes also imply a reality.
This theory also fails to account for the circumstance that the con
clusions reached in mathematics admit of an application to the set
tlement of so many questions in astronomy, and in other departments
of natural philosophy. Thus, what was demonstrated of the conic
sections by Apollonius is found true in the orbits of the planets
and comets, as revealed by modern discovery. All this can at once
be explained if we suppose that the mind starts with cognitions and
beliefs, that it abstracts from these, and discovers relations among
the things thus abstracted : the reality that was in the original con
viction goes on to the farthest conclusion.
(c) Mr. Mill maintains (Logic, n. v. 4, 5) that the proposition,
"Two straight lines cannot enclose a space," is a generalization
from observation, "an induction from the evidence of the senses."
That observation is needed I have shown in this treatise ; but there
is intuition in the observation. That there is generalization in the
general maxim 1 have also shown ; but it is not a gathering of out
ward instances. Observation can of itself tell us that these two
lines before us do not enclose a space, and that any other couplets of
THE METAPHYSICS OF MATHEMATICS. 349
lines examined by us, twenty, or a hundred, or a thousand, do not
enclose a space ; but experience can say no more without passing
beyond its province. An intellectual generalization of such experi
ence might allow us to affirm that very probably no two lines enclose
a space on the earth, but could never entitle us to maintain that two
lines could not enclose a space in the constellation Orion. Mr. Mill,
in order to account for the necessity which attaches to such convic
tions, refers to the circumstance that geometrical forms admit of
being distinctly painted in the imagination, so that we have " mental
pictures of all possible combinations of lines and angles." We
might ask him what he makes of algebraic and analytic demonstra
tions of every kind, where there is no such power of imagination
and yet the same necessity. But without dwelling on this I would
have it remarked, that in the very theory which he devises to show
that the whole is a process of experience, he is appealing to what no
experience can ever compass, " to all possible combinations of lines
and angles." Intuitive thought, proceeding on intuitive perceptions
of space, may announce laws of the "possible combinations" of geo
metrical figures ; but this cannot be done by observation, by sense, or
imagination. Supposing, he says, that two straight lines, after diverg
ing ,could again converge, " we can transport ourselves thither in
imagination, and can frame a mental image of the appearance which
one or both of the lines must present at that point, which we may rely
on as being precisely similar to the reality." Most freely do I admit
all this. We may "rely " on it, but surely it is not experience, nor
imagination, but thought looking at things which tells us what must
be at that point, and that it is a " reality." The very line of re
mark which he is pursuing might have shown him that the discovery
of necessary spatial and quantitative relations is a judgment in
which the mind looks upon objects intuitively known, and now pre
sented, or more frequently represented to the mind.
CHAPTER IV.
THE METAPHYSICS OF FORMAL LOGIC.
METAPHYSICS and Logic are to be carefully distin
guished. The former deals with First Principles, of
which it seeks to give an account. The latter treats of
the laws of Discursive Thought, in which we proceed
from something given or allowed to something derived
from it by thinking. The two, though separate, have
points of connection. There are primitive truths at the
basis of secondary or discursive processes. It is part of
the office of Metaphysics to unfold and express these.
Logic deals with the Notion, the Proposition, and
Reasoning. Each of these involves principles which are
perceived to be true on the bare contemplation of the
notions. Thus the Abstract implies the Concrete, and
the Universal implies Singulars. Logic should take up
these principles, explain, and apply them.
Logic deals with the Proposition, which may be Affir
mative or Negative, Universal or Particular. In the
logical use of the proposition there are involved the laws
of Identity, of Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, as
explained under the primitive judgment of Identity.
Reasoning may be in Extension or Comprehension.
Each of these has its fundamental laws. The regulative
principle of reasoning in Extension is the Dictum of
Aristotle, " Whatever is true of a class is true of each
member of the class." The regulating principle of rea
soning in Comprehension is attributive, " All that is in an
attribute is in the thing that contains the attribute," or
THE METAPHYSICS OF FORMAL LOGIC. 351
as Leibnitz expresses it, " Nota notae est nota rei ipsius."
All these are self-evident. The metaphysician should
supply these to the logician, who takes up and applies
them to the various forms of reasoning, Categorical,
Hypothetical, and Disjunctive. In doing this a science
has been constructed which I regard as the most perfect,
next to geometry.
CHAPTER V.
METAPHYSICS OF ETHICS.
THIS is the title of a work by Kant, who is much more
realistic in his moral than in his speculative philosophy,
and thereby has reached a larger amount of truth.
Ethics is in every respect an analogous science to
Logic. The difference lies in the difference of the mat
ters with which they deal, the one aiming to find the
laws of discursive truth, the other the nature of moral
good ; the one seeking to attain its end by generalizing
the operations of thought, the other by generalizing
the exercises of the motive and moral powers of man.
Ethics, like Logics, is in a sense an d priori science ; it
finds and it employs principles which are valid, inde
pendent of our experience. In another sense, it is d pos
teriori, inasmuch as these principles and their laws can
be discovered by us only through observation of their in
dividual manifestations ; and thus far it is dependent on
an inductive psychology. We must begin with inquir
ing, Quid est ? and then we find that the thing reached
relates to the Quid oportet ? It is the special office of
ethics to ascertain what is involved in the oportet, and
apply its formulae to the conduct of responsible beings.
Ethics is not to be regarded as a branch of metaphys
ics, nor should metaphysics profess to be able to construct
ethics. But metaphysics should supply to ethics some of
its fundamental principles. These should be accepted,
clearly enunciated, and applied in ethics, but the special
discussion of them should be left to the more fundamen-
METAPHYSICS OF ETHICS. 353
tal science. I have endeavored to give a summary of the
primary truths with which ethics should start. (Pp. 210-
243.) They relate to moral good or virtue, which is the
royal law of love, to its obligation, its relation to God
and law, to its desert and relation to happiness, and its
voluntary character.
But a science of ethics, in order to serve useful pur
pose, cannot be constructed from the mere native convic
tions of the mind. We do obtain a few most important
general principles from this source exclusively, and
these underlie the whole science, and bear up every part
of it. But in order to serve the ends intended by it,
ethics must settle what are the duties of different classes
of persons, according to the relation in which they stand to
each other, such as rulers and subjects, parents and chil
dren, masters and servants, and society in general ; and
what the path which individuals should follow in certain
circumstances, it may be, very difficult and perplex
ing. In consequence of the affairs of human life being
very complicated, demonstration can be carried but a
very little way in ethics. In order to be able to enun
ciate general principles for our guidance, or to promul
gate useful precepts, the ethical inquirer must condescend
to come down from his d priori heights to the level in
which mankind live and walk and work. Even in the
most practical departments of ethical science, the grand
fundamental laws of our moral constitution must ever be
the guiding principles, but we have to consider their ap
plication to an almost infinite variety of earthly posi
tions and human character.
Of all the sciences, ethics is that which comes into
closest relationship with Christianity and the Word of
God. The reason is obvious. It deals with the law and
the very character of God ; it deals with man as under
354 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
law, and with man as having broken the law. It thus pre
pares us, if it faithfully fulfils its functions, to believe in
a religion which shows us how the sinner can be recon
ciled to God. When the great doctrine of the Atone
ment is embraced, a new and most important element is
introduced into ethics. It should no longer be a science
constructed, on the one hand, for pure beings, nor, on
the other, for persons who must ever be kept at a dis
tance from God. This new reconciling and gracious ele
ment turns Pagan into Christian ethics ; it turns a cold
and legal, into a warm and evangelical obedience.
Locke thought moral philosophy could be made a demonstrative
science founded on intuition, to which he gave an important place as
able to perceive at once the relation of certain ideas (Essay B. iv.
17). I am not aware that any one has attempted thoroughly to carry
out this view. Morality, like truth, has certainly self-evidence or
demonstrative principles as several other sciences have. But these
varied applications to actual life are so complicated that the human
mind (whatever an angelic mind might do) cannot follow them de
ductively.
CHAPTER VI.
THE METAPHYSICS OF THEOLOGY.
THEOLOGY, as a science, is a systematized arrangement
of what we can know about God. Natural theology is
the science of what we know of him from his works in
nature, and Biblical of what is revealed in the Old and
New Testaments.
People have ever shrunk from a theology which is
exclusively or even mainly metaphysical. Yet first prin
ciples have their deep underlying place in systematic
divinity as in every deeper science. Unfortunately they
are often mixed up with observational principles and
practical lessons in a heterogeneous manner. When they
are argumentatively employed or appealed to in theologi
cal discussion, they should be so distinctly enunciated
that all may see what they are, and be in a position to
judge of their validity. Metaphysics may help and not
hinder theology by bringing out to view the fundamen
tal truths involved in the science.
All the primary principles implied in the common
affairs of life may be employed in the exposition of di
vine truth without being very formally expressed. We
may proceed on the allowed existence of bodies, of space
and time, of the laws of quality and quantity, and the
common logical laws, such as that of contradiction, with
out formulating them. But there are several metaphys
ical truths which have a special place in theological dis
cussion, and these should be specially expounded by the
metaphysician for the use of the divine.
356 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
There is our Personality with our Personal Identity.
The conviction attaches itself to us from the beginning
and will go on to the end of our being in this world,
and, if we have proof of our continued existence, in the
world to come. If this does not insure, it makes us
look towards, a personal immortality for which we seek
proof.
This Personality keeps us from flying up into an airy
and unsubstantial pantheism : All is not one, for we
know ourselves to be different from God, as he is differ
ent from us.
There is Potency with Cause and Effect. We dis
cover traces of this world being an effect as an ordered
world made up of many combined materials, a " man
ufactured " article, as Sir John Herschel expresses it.
We see everywhere order in earth and sky, very specially
in plants and animals. There is the wondrous adapta
tion of one thing to another in an arranged system ; and
the order and adaptation being evidently of things
effected, we argue legitimately that there must be a cause
of the whole. Theologians do so argue, and metaphysics
should justify them in so doing. Thus do we rise to an
intelligence above nature : I do not say infinite, but far
beyond our comprehension. Here we have one element
of the theistic argument.
But there are other effects. There are traces without
and within us of a pervading and all-reigning benevo
lence. This requires us to clothe the intelligence which
we have discovered with love.
But we go farther. We have principles within us
which constrain us to invest the intelligent and loving
One who gave them to us with other perfections. We
have personality, and we attribute a like perfection to
THE METAPHYSICS OF THEOLOGY. 357
him who is caring for us. Higher than all we have a
moral nature, approving the good and disapproving the
evil, and this must be a garment of his own which God
has thrown over us.
This is not all. We are led to ascribe to God an attri
bute to which we have nothing similar. We have an
intuition as to infinity, which constrains us to believe
in the reality which it reveals, and the mind is not sat
isfied till we ascribe it to the one living and true God
whom we believe to be great beyond our comprehen
sion, but such that nothing can be added to him or his
perfections.
In some of these steps there is an observational ele
ment, but it is a powerful evidential one, which makes it
possible for the fool to say in his heart that there is no
God, and makes him responsible for his unbelief, which
he could not be if the whole process were apodictic or
demonstrative.
The Jehovah of Scripture comprises in himself in
this respect how superior to the gods of the Gentiles
the high ideas which I have been seeking to unfold in
this work. In Biblical Theology they are arranged and
applied, and this is done most wisely when only such
metaphysical principles are used as are implied in the
common affairs of life and in all the sciences.
We see at the close of our investigation that these
fundamental truths bear up the other truths which we
are required to believe in nature and in religion. We
see, too, that our intuitions, like the works of nature,
carry us up to God, their author. All the roads lead to
the capital. All the streams come to us from the foun
tain. All the members of the body are moved by the
head. If we stop short of this we feel that there is
358 METAPHYSICS IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES.
something wanting, effects without their cause, a road
that conducts nowhere, a stream without a fountain, a
body without a head. But mounting up thither, all our
deeper instincts are satisfied, and we can look thence on
our cosmos, and see that it has a stability and a consis
tency in Him in whom all things consist
INDEX.
Abelard, 138.
Abstract Notion, 197, 198.
Academics, 81.
^Esthetics, 2.
Agnosticism, 7, 309.
Analytic Judgments, 193-195.
Anselm, 82, 138.
Aristotle, 2, 33, 36, 81, 125, 127, 174,
245, 261, 322.
Attention, 233.
Augustine, 82, 137.
Axioms, 13, 28, 206, 276, 283, 345,
349.
Bacon, 26.
Bain, 122, 189.
Being, 67, 89, 92, 101, 118, 161, 293.
Berkeley, 73, 74, 108, 109, 313.
Brown, P., 328.
Brown, T., 53, 73, 151, 215.
Buddaeus, 170.
Buffier, 47, 98, 125.
Calderwood, 139.
Catholicity, 17.
Cheselden Case, 64, 73.
Clark, S., 20, 152, 322.
Coleridge, 285.
Conceive, 278, 282.
Conscience, 217, 222.
Cousin, 54, 290.
Cudworth, 33, 291.
Damascenus, Joannes, 149.
Definitions, Mathematical, 343.
Descartes, 15, 42, 59, 62, 86, 97. (Co-
gito ergo sum), 106, 111, 125, 153,
174.
Desert, 224.
Eleatics, 80, 111, 118, 244, 293.
English Divines, 40, 138.
Epicureans, 39, 81, 82.
Ethics, 2, 217-243, 352-354.
Extension, 69, 85, 121-123.
Externality, 68.
Faith, 130-180, 268-270.
Fathers of the Church, 327.
Ferrier, 74, 320.
Fichte, 25, 97, 138, 215, 313.
Final Cause, 246, 252.
Forms imposed on Objects, 28.
Franz Case, 64, 127.
Gillespie, 144.
Hamilton, 46, 50, 53, 63, 73, 74, 76,
82, 99, 100, 113, 137, 139, 151, 171,
181, 183, 188, 189, 320, 32b.
Hegel, 18, 25, 97, 113, 122.
Heracleitos, 110.
Herbert, 15, 39.
Herschel, 152.
Hobbes, 170.
Howe, 173.
Hume, 59, 89, 102, 173, 289.
Hutcheson, 48.
Huxley, 252.
Idea, 259-262.
Induction, 10, 271, 276.
Innate Ideas, 15.
Instinct, 27, 254.
Intuition, 6, 7, 16, 19, 271-279.
Jacobi, 138.
Kant, 2, 15, 20, 28, 29, 32, 51, 73, 82,
89, 97, 98, 102, 138, 143, 149, 151,
189, 193, 214, 238, 247, 249, 285, 287,
290, 313, 324, 347.
Knowledge, 58, 256, 293.
Knowledge and Faith, 130-140, 181.
360
INDEX.
Knowledge, Presentative and Repre
sentative, 130-140, 256, 265.
Law, 219, 276.
Leibnitz, 18, 46, 87, 102, 152, 174, 195,
246, 321.
Locke, 15, 18, 28, 29, 43, 59, 74, 85,
99, 102, 107, 125, 127, 170, 183, 188,
189, 249, 256-264.
Logic, 2, 350.
Lotze, 56.
Love, 219, 333, 347.
Lucretius, 151.
Mackintosh, 224.
Mansel, 97, 171, 173, 183, 327, 333, 347.
Maxims, 13, 276.
Mental Sciences, 2.
MiU, J. S., 56, 129, 187, 214-216, 225,
226, 328-332, 348.
Miracles, 215, 216.
Morel, 320.
Motive, 237.
Miiller, John, 65, 72, 123, 127.
Necessity, 17, 278-284
Nescience, 309, 332.
Newton, 20, 149.
Nihilism, 309.
Obligation, 221-223, 240.
Perception, 12, 18, 75, 79.
Perfect, The, 159-175.
Personality, 90, 97, 356.
Plato, 33, 34, 111, 245, 256.
Power, 93, 102, 128, 129, 205.
Pre-Socratic Schools, 34, 111, 244.
Protagoras, 33.
Qualities of Matter, Primary and
Secondary, 78, 80, 85-87.
Realism, 6, 29, 185, 275, 296.
Reason, 28, 285, 291.
Reflex Intuition, 14.
Regulative Principles, 12, 18, 272.
Reid, 48, 76, 85, 98, 213, 285.
Relations, 185, 216.
Responsibility, 237.
Scepticism, 7.
Schelling, 18, 25, 97.
Scottish School, 18, 50, 89, 98.
Self or Spirit, 82-99, 104.
Self-Consciousness, 257.
Self-Evidence, 16.
Sensation, 75, 257.
Sensational School, 59, 82.
Senses, Apparent Deception of, 72-85.
Shaftesbury, 47.
Sin, 227-232, 241.
Smith, Adam, 224.
Socrates, 293.
Sophists, 33.
Spencer, H., 30, 56, 74, 249-255, 334-
336.
Spinoza, 25, 106, 111.
Stewart, D., 52, 73, 98, 151, 213, 347,
348.
Stoics, 38, 81, 261.
Synthetic Judgments, 193-195.
Tennyson, 88.
Trendelenburg, 151.
Trinchinetti Case, 64.
Understanding, 285.
Uniformity of Nature, 213-215.
Universals, 200.
Virtue, 219.
Whately, 3.
Whewell, 55, 341, 342.
Wish, 233.
Wolf, 246.
Wordsworth, 159.
THE COMPLETION OF DR. McCOSH S PSYCHOLOGY.
PSYCHOLOGY.
I. The Cognitive Powers. II. The Motive Powers.
By JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LLD, Litt. D.
President of Princeton College ; Author of " Intuitions of the Mind," "Laws
of Discursive Thought," "Emotions," ft Philosophic Series," etc.
Two Vols., 12mo; each, $1.BO.
The second volume, now ready, concludes this work with the
discussion of the motive powers of the mind, including the Con
science, Emotions, and Will. The author has treated the difficult
and, at times, obscure topics which belong to the department of
psychology with characteristic clearness, conciseness, and strong
individuality. In the first volume he treats of sense perception,
illustrating his theme with appropriate cuts, and discussing i
with fullness from the physiological side. A third of the book is
devoted to the reproductive or representative powers, ^m which
such sub] ects as the recalling power, the association of ideas, the
power of composition, etc., are described; while the book con
cludes with a full discussion of the comparative powers.
EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF VOLUME II.
"Having treated of the Cognitive Powers in Vol.1., I am in this to
unfold the characteristics of the Motive Powers, as they are called the
Orective, the Appetent, the Impulsive Powers ; the feelings, the senti
ments, the affections, the heart, as distinguished from the Gnostic, the
cognitive, the intellect, the understanding, the reason, the head.
"These Motive Powers fall under three heads the Emotions, the Con
science, the Will.
" It is not to be understood that these are unconnected with each other,
or with the cognitive; emotions contain an idea which is cognitive. The
Conscience may be regarded as combining characteristics of each of the
two grand classes, being cognitive as discerning good and evil, and motive
as leading to action; the Will has to use the other powers as going on to
action.
utiuu.
" Emotion occupies more room than the other two in this treatise inas
much as its operations are more varied, and as the account usually given
of it (so it appears to me) is more defective."
McCOSH S PSYCHOLOGY.
AUTHORITATIVE ENDORSEMENTS.
"I have read the book with much interest. It is what was to have been ex
pected from foe ability and long experience of the author. The style , clear and
simple ; the matter is well distributed ; it well covers the ground usually taught in
such text-books and I am sure any teacher would find ft a helpful guide fnh"s
classes. The philosophical opinions of the venerable author are well known and are
here lucidly stated The President has long been a successful teacher and knows
how to make a useful text-book. "- L. CaMwell, late President ofl^sarCofSJe.
work
n r^ h P u^ tw mon 1 ths * have been teaching the senior class of this Institu
tion Dr. McCosh s new work on Psychology. I hav? never had a class in Psychology
that became so quickly interested in a text on that subject. The style of the autS
hnlHth - a ? 7 ^T c o. nc ! se and forcible > and at once arrests the attention and
.
a S^fl^JS 8 **%*- ./ 8 a text - b ok ** is a work of rare
W. H. H. Adams, President of Illinois Wesley an University.
"Literature and Philosophy can equally profit by a work which we think we
S sorVer*r ""^ COmplete and ^ road ev * r written * the subject. ?!
" The qualities in the book that led me to introduce it are : 1st That it is bv i
l^nf^fpe^or 2d ty T^Th^ ^ ^ D S Wh P6rhapS in thte de P ar ^ has no
t^ffi P ff f v at he ls a clear and em Phatic realist. 3d. That the style is
f or r ?? CU e f^ n ^ . S h> J hat the b ook was neither too large nor too small
for our purpose. 5th. That the discussion of the subject is fresh, introducing more
books ?h f, hH Wee -f P ^ sl lSy ^d Psychology than is found in the & other
books, thus bringing it abreast of current thought upon the subject." D J
Waller, Jr., Principal of State Normal School, Bloomsburg, Pa.
TITO f \ 2 m P lea ? ed with J^ 6 P lan ail d method of treatment. I have in use _
ffental Science but my class complain of its abstruse style, and if on further exami
nation of Dr. McCosh s I continue to be pleased, as I think I shall I will propose
change to the ^(September 28th). Having examined Dr. McCosh^ Psychology
l^M^^
^-^les Matin, Principal %
^ l find if t adm | rabl y adapted for school work, being conservative in its treat-
ant as well as antagonistic to materialism and scepticism, and clear in its state-
p3i tR - ; he , nc ? ? ( ulte s ltable for yo^g men as a text-book."- Washington Catlett,
Principal of Cape Fear Academy, Wilmington, N. C
V* Application for examination copies and correspondence in regard to terms for
introduction are requested from teachers desiring to select a text -book in
mental science.
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
74) and 745 Broadway, New York.
Realistic Philosophy,
DEFENDED IN A PHILOSOPHIC SERIES
By JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LLD.,
President of Princeton College.
Two Vols., 12mo; each $1.50.
In these two volumes Dr. McCosh has collected his discussions
of the principal philosophic questions of the day, formerly issued
in his Philosophic Series, which, The Independent says, u is not
unlikely to prove in the end the most useful popular service
which Dr. McCosh has rendered to the cause of right thinking
and to sound philosophy of life."
VOL. I. EXPOSITORY.
In this part of the Series the principal philosophic questions of the day
are discussed, including the Tests of Truth, Causation, Development, and
the Character of our World.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. What an American Philosophy should be.
I. CRITERIA OF DIVERSE KINDS OF TRUTH.
II. ENERGY, EFFICIENT AND FINAL CAUSE. An attempt is here made
to clear up the subject of Causation which has become considerably con
fused.
III. DEVELOPMENT, WHAT IT CAN DO AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO.
Development is here presented so as to show that it is not opposed to
religion, and that the conclusions drawn from it by some of its defenders
are not legitimate.
IV. CERTITUDE, PROVIDENCE, AND PRAYER, with an inquiry as to what
is the character of our world, showing that it is neither optimist nor pessi
mist, but going on toward perfection.
VOL. II. HISTORICAL.
In this part the same questions are treated historically. The systems of
the philosophers who have discussed them are stated and examined, and
the truth and error in each of them carefully pointed out.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Realism; its place in the various Philosophies.
I. LOCKE S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, with a notice of BERKELEY. It is
shown that Locke held by a body of truth, and that he has often been
misunderstood ; but that he has not by his experience theory laid a sure
foundation of knowledge.
II. AGNOSTICISM OF HUME AND HUXLEY, with a notice of the SCOTTISH
SCHOOL. It is necessary to examine Hume s Scepticism, but it is best to
do so in the defense of it by Huxley.
III. A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY showing that Kant
has stated and defended most important truths, but has undermined
knowledge, by making the mind begin with appearances and not with
things.
IV. HERBERT SPENCER S PHILOSOPHY as culminating in his Ethics.
Here there will be a careful examination of his physiological utilitarianism.
CRITICAL NOTICES
" Us style is so clear , 7 Specula -
CARLES SCR.BNER^SONS, P
W -^ 74? S ro *fev, A^ Kor/{
P UBLI
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