not enclose a space: this does not authorize us to affirm that they never can enclose a space, otherwise we might argue that, because we had seen a judge and his wig twenty times together, they must therefore be together through all eternity. A hundred times have I seen a spark kindle gunpowder: this does not entitle me to declare that it will do so the thousandth or the millionth time, or wherever the spark and the gunpowder are found. The gathered knowledge and wisdom of man, and his power of prediction, thus imply more than experience, they presuppose faculties to enable him to gather experience, and in some cases involve necessary principles which enable him, and justify him, as he acts on his ability, to rise from a limited experience to an unlimited and necessary law.

But it may be urged that we reach these results by reasoning. I reply that

(6.) A sixth position may be established, that reasoning proceeds on principles which cannot be proved by reasoning, but must be assumed, and assumed as seen intuitively to be true. In all ratiocination there must be something from which we argue. That from which we argue is the premise; in the Aristotelian analysis of argument it is the two premises. But as we go back and back we must at length come to something which cannot be proven. That which cannot be proven must be assumed, but surely not assumed capriciously; if assumed capriciously it can yield no trustworthy results, and if not assumed arbitrarily it must be according to some rule or principle which should be expounded and stated by the metaphysician. How can we reason but from what we know? and in going back we come to truths which we know directly, that is, by intuition, and the law of this intuition should be evolved. It might further be shown that there must be a mental principle involved,—it is the dictum in the Aristotelian account of reasoning,— in the process by which we connect the conclusion with the premises; for were there no such principle the ratiocination would be arbitrary, and it would be vain for any man to endeavour to convince his neighbour, or even to try to keep his own thinking consistent. Such considerations as these show that at the foundation of argument, and at every stage of the superstructure, there are mental

principles involved which are either intuitive or depend on principles which are intuitive.

SECT. II.-THE NATIVE CONVICTIONS OF THE MIND ARE OF THE NATURE OF PERCEPTIONS OR INTUITIONS.

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In some cases there are external objects presented; the mind looks upon them, and the conviction at once spring› up. Thus it is that it knows immediately this particular body, this paper or table, as occupying space. In other cases it is something within the mind that is contemplated; it is self in some particular exercise, say thinking or feeling. In many instances the object presented to the mind has come there as the result of a prior mental process. Thus, having at a former time seen two straight lines, we now, in our thinking moods, image or represent them; and the mind, on the contemplation, proclaims at once that they cannot enclose a space. Or we have occasion to consider a particular voluntary sentiment of a fellow-man, say his cherishing malice against another man, and we proclaim it to be evil, condemnable. In this last instance the act contemplated is not, properly speaking, under our immediate view, for it is in the breast of a neighbour, but it is represented to us in our minds, and looking on this representation the mind pronounces a decision. In every case these convictions seem to be of the nature of perceptions, that is, something is presented to us, and the cognition, belief, or judgment is formed. It is on this account that I have, in the title of this treatise, chosen to call them intuitions. As we advance we shall find other distinctive characters, the expression of which yields other epithets; but the term "intuitions," that is, perceptions formed by looking in upon objects, seems to bring out the original quality of the native convictions of the mind.

SECT. III.-INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS RISE ON THE CONTEMPLATION OF OBJECTS PRESENTED OR REPRESENTED TO THE MIND.

Metaphysicians have often given such an account of them as to leave the impression that the mind creates them independent of

things, or that, at the utmost, experience furnishes merely the occasion, on the occurrence of which the mind fashions them by its own inherent power. I shall take pains to show that the relation between the intuitive powers and corresponding objects is of a much closer and more dependent character than this account would lead us to suppose. In intuition we look into the object, we discover something in it, or belonging to it, or we discover a relation between it and some other object. Were the object taken away the perception would be meaningless, indeed it would altogether cease. Intuition is a perception of an object, and of something in it or pertaining to it. Perception, without something looked into, would be as contradictory as vision without an object seen, or touch without an object felt. In our cognitions we know objects, or qualities of objects, we know self as thinking, or body as extended. In belief we entertain a trust regarding certain objects that they are so and so; of time, for example, that it can come to no end. In judgment we discover certain relations between two or more objects, as that a mode implies a substance. Our intuitive convictions are thus not ideas, notions, judgments, formed apart from objects, but are in fact discoveries of something in objects, or relating to them.'

SECT. IV. THE INTUITIONS OF THE MIND ARE PRIMARILY DIRECTED TO INDIVIDUAL OBJECTS.

I shall have occasion to show, when I come to distinguish and classify the intuitions, that some are of the nature of cognitions and beliefs, while others are of the nature of judgments. But whatever be their distinctive nature, as intuitions they primarily contemplate objects as individuals. If I know, or believe in any thing, it is an existing thing, that is, as singular. If I form an intuitive judgment, that is, make a comparison, it is still in regard to two or more objects considered as singulars; and so far as we pass beyond this, there is always, as I shall endeavour to show, a discursive process involved.

1 Locke laid strong hold of the features specified in this section and the last : see infra, Part 1. Book п. Chap. iii.

A very different account is often given, if not formally, at least implicitly, of intuition or of intuitive reason. 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 activity, 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 mistaken. Our appeal on this subject must be to the consciousness and the memory, and these give a very different account of the process which passes through the mind when it is employed about such objects. Intuitively the mind contemplates a particular body as occupying space and being in space, and it is by a subsequent intellectual process, in which abstraction acts an important 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. The same remark holds good of the intuitive judgments of the mind, that is, when it compares two or more things, and proclaims them at once to agree or disagree. I do not, without a process of discursive thought, pronounce, or even understand, the general maxim that things which are equal to the same things are equal to one another, but on discovering that first one bush and then another bush are of the same height as my staff, I decide that the two bushes are equal to one another.

It will be shown in next section that the mind has the power of generalizing the individual cognitions or judgments of intuition, and in doing so it may arrive at most important truth. It will come out, too, that intuition may fasten on the general proposition and

pronounce decisions in which it is involved. But in the formation of the general maxim, there is a process of logical thought involved for which the intuition is not responsible. It is only in the form of convictions regarding individuals presenting themselves that our intuitions manifest themselves in all men,-in children and savages for instance. The boy decides that the ball which he holds in his hand cannot be at the same time in the hand of some other boy who may pretend to have it; but he has not, meanwhile, consciously before him the formula that it is impossible for the same body to be in two places at the same time. The individual conviction is in all men when the objects are pressed on their attention; the general maxim is the result of thought, and especially of abstraction and generalization. By drawing this distinction we are able to maintain that intuitions are native and in all minds, and yet. save ourselves from the absurdity in which so many metaphysicians land themselves when they speak of children or infants as employed in contemplating the ego and the non-ego, personality, externality, subject and object. The particular conviction is formed by all in a concrete form when the appropriate objects present themselves; but the abstract formula is fashioned by those addicted to reflection, and is not even understood except by those whose minds are matured and cultivated.

SECT. V.-THE INDIVIDUAL INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS CAN BE GENERALIZED INTO MAXIMS, AND THESE ARE ENTITLED TO BE REPRESENTED AS PHILOSOPHIC PRINCIPLES.

The native principles in the soul are analogous to the physical laws operating in external nature. Both act at all times, on the necessary conditions being supplied. Like the physiological processes of respiration and the circulation of the blood, the intuitions. do not depend for their operation on any voluntary determination of the human mind, and they act whether we observe them or no; indeed they often act best when we are taking no notice of them. We cannot command their exercise on the one hand, nor prohibit it on the other. A greater or less number of them are working in the soul at every waking moment of our existence. It is always to