enounced will require to be formally stated in its proper place alongside of some other theoretical characteristics, to be now unfolded. 1. They are perceptions. This feature was caught and has been expressed by those who speak of them as perceptions, apperceptions, senses, apprehensions, and who represent them as seeing, looking, regarding, contemplating. 2. They look at objects. Hence they have been represented as comprising knowledge, cognition, and discernment. It is of the greater moment to bring out this characteristic, from the circumstance that they have often been too much dissociated from objects. In reading some of the exaggerated accounts of them, the impression is apt to be left that they are formed by the native power of the mind, independent of things altogether; and even in more guarded statements the presentation of objects is spoken of as merely the occasion on which they spring up. In opposition to all this, I maintain that they are perceptions of objects, of objects themselves or something in objects. Sometimes the objects are external to the mind, as when I intuitively look on body as extended or on space as having no limits. In other cases the objects are within the mind, as when I look on self, and discover that it has being and personality, or on a certain representation in the mind, say of a benevolent action, which I discern to be good. Or the intuition may manifest itself in the form of judgments or comparisons; but even in such it is a perception of objects as having points of relation. It is the very nature of the regulative principles of the mind that they lead us to look at objects, and to discover what is in them. 3. They look at objects as singulars. In this respect they are analogous to the senses of consciousness, and have often been characterized as senses and as consciousnesses. This peculiarity has already been explained in a general way. 4. They are immediate. That is, our minds, in intuition, gaze directly on the object. Hence they have been called feelings,language which may be allowed if meant merely to express that they are analogous to feeling or touch as it feels or handles an 1 This view is examined infra, Part III. Book 1. Chap. ii. sect. vi. Supplementary. object, but which is of a most misleading character if intended to signify that they are of the nature of emotions. Under this aspect they have been called “visions,” “inspirations,” “revelations.” Hence too the special name Intuitions applied to them, to denote that they see the object as it were face to face, and with nothing coming between to aid the view on the one hand, or obstruct it on the other. This character it is which affords what I have described as the primary test, that is, self-evidence. In the case of many objects, we cannot look on them directly. Thus we who live in the nineteenth century cannot be spectators of the events which happened in the first century; when dwelling in this country, we cannot gaze on the Himalayas, or Andes; we can contemplate such objects only indirectly, and through something else as a medium. But in every intuition we look at once on the corresponding object; it is thus we are conscious immediately of self in action; thus that we gaze on body as occupying space; thus that we regard space as unbounded; thus that we regard a certain disposition as good or as evil. But to prevent misapprehension it is necessary here to offer an explanation. When I say that the object is present, I do not mean by this that the object must be a bodily one, or one external to the mind. The object may quite as frequently be a mental as a material one. The object may even be spoken of in a loose and inaccurate sense, as an absent one. Thus I may pronounce of an event which happened far away in India, that it must have had a cause, and of a deed of self-sacrifice, done a thousand years ago, that it must have been good. But then it is not, properly speaking, to the distant event that the intuition looks, but to the representation of it in the mind. It is only mediately, through the representation, that the intuition can refer to the actual occurrence, and this on the supposition that the representation is correct; and if the representation be erroneous, or even mutilated, or imperfect, it cannot be legitimately applied to the event. Correctly speaking, the object is always present when the intuition gazes on it; it is either a bodily object immediately before the mind, or it is a presentation or representation within the mind itself. 5. There is a conviction of necessity attached to every one of them. Hence they have been described as irresistible, unavoidable, compelling belief, and not admitting of doubt or dispute. We have already had this character under our notice, and it may yet come before us in its applications, and in regard to the supposed diversity in the necessity as attached to different convictions, and it is not needful to enter more minutely into its nature in this general survey. It should be carefully noticed that the necessity attaches itself directly only to our individual perceptions. The general formula carries with it no such conviction till it is shown that it has been correctly formed. There may be legitimate doubts and disputes as to many proposed philosophic maxims, as to whether they are or are not correct. Still, as will be shown, the necessity being in the singulars, goes up into the universals on the condition of the universal being properly formed. 6. They are original and independent. Hence they have been called first, primary, or primitive truths, and been described as origins, ἀρχαί, or original principles, seeds, roots, and starting points, and characterized as underived, independent, self-sufficient. The mind spontaneously starts with such, it sets out from them, and in doing so, feels that it has need of no probation or foreign support of any kind. A large body of our convictions, even of the surest, are derived; they are dependent on something else. Thus we are dependent for our historical information on the testimony of our fellow-men; for our belief in the great mysteries opened in the Bible, on the testimony of God; for our conviction of the propositions in the Sixth Book of Euclid, on the prefixed axioms, and on the propositions in the other five books, and generally for the last conclusion of a chain of reasoning, on all the links which have preceded. But in intuition, or, as it may be called, intuitive reason, our conviction hangs on nothing else. That the whole, orange or earth, is equal to the sum of its several parts, is a truth which depends on no other. There may be many asseverations to which we do not give our assent till evidence of some kind is furnished. There may be true propositions from which we withhold our concurrence till they are proven. Very possibly there may be inhabitants on that other side of the moon which no human eye has seen, but I wait for evidence before I give a decision one way or another. It seems very certain that there have been volcanoes in the moon, but men did not give their credence till traces of eruptive formations were discovered by the telescope. But there are propositions which do not require proof, even as they do not admit of proof, and yet our conviction of them, to say the least of it, is as strong as of the truths most firmly established by probation. There are some apprehensions, some propositions, in regard to which the mind sees that it needs mediate proof in order to convince it that they imply a reality or a truth; but there are others, in which it sees that they have in themselves all that is needful to gain our assent. It is not because of any defect in the veracity of intuitive truths, that they do not admit of probation; it is rather because of the fulness and strength of their veracity. It is, in a sense, owing to a deficiency in certain truths, or rather, a deficiency in our minds with respect to them, that they require something to lean on. Thus it is because of some defect or perplexity (to us) in the truth, that mathematicians cannot solve, except approximately, the problem of three bodies attracting each other. It is because of the self-sufficiency of certain truths, such as that the thinking me exists, and that extended bodies exist, and that gratitude is a virtue, it is because our minds are so constituted as to see them at once, that they require no proof; we need no other light in which to see them, they shine in their own light. But let us properly understand and limit the account now given ; when they are said to be independent, it does not mean that they are independent of things: we have before seen that our intuitions are perceptions of or regarding objects. 7. Some of them are catholic,—that is, in all men. have been described as common ideas and notions. Hence they We have seen that as regulative powers they are in all men, without exception. But all of them do not, therefore, come forth in actual energies; many of them in their developed and manifested form are the result of growth, and some of them seem to lie dormant in many minds from the want of proper fostering circumstances. Still there are some of them, such as the intuition of self and the intuition of body in space, which are formed by all men in their individual and concrete form. III. They may be contemplated as Notions or Principles formed by Abstraction and Generalization. Under this aspect they are κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, πρῶται ἔννοιαι, πρῶτα νοήματα, naturæ judicia, a priori notions, definitions, maxims, and axioms. Thus considered they cannot be represented as common or universal in the sense of being in all men. If we look at the hundreds of millions of human beings on the face of the earth, including infants, children, savages, and the unreflecting masses, there is but a very small minority of the family of man who have ever had such notions or maxims before them. Every human being, if he sees an object before him, will refuse to give his assent to the assertion that this object does not exist; but how few beyond the limited circle of professed metaphysicians have ever had consciously before them the principle that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. Millions of men, women, and children are every hour acting on the intuition of cause and effect—are taking food, for example, in the belief that it will nourish them, though they never have had the principle consciously before them, and know not so much as that there is a principle of causation. But under this view, 1. The General Maxim is necessary, on the condition of the generalization out of the individual convictions being properly formed. It is to be constantly kept in mind, that the necessity attaches in the first instance to the singular conviction looking to its objects. But the necessity being in the individuals, may be made to go up into the general, provided the general has been legitimately drawn from the individuals. With this proviso, a very important one however, the maxim is not only true, it is necessarily true, it cannot be otherwise. If any one were to lay down the principle that "everything must have a cause," he would not be announcing a necessary truth; for while there is a necessary conviction in every exercise of mind regarding causation, he has not seized it properly, nor expressed it correctly. But if the maxim that everything which begins to be must have a cause" be, as I maintain it is, the proper generalization of the peculiarity of the in |