borne in upon the mind by a blind natural impulse. But what we perceive by an original intuition is a reality, is a truth; we know it to be so, we judge it to be so. And it is a reality, a truth, whether others know and acknowledge it or no. It is a truth, not merely to me or you, but to all men; not only to all men, but to all intelligence capable of discovering truths of that particular nature. That two straight lines cannot enclose a space is a truth everywhere, in the planet Mars as well as in the planet Earth. That ingratitude is morally evil must hold good in all other worlds as well as in this world of ours, where sin so much abounds.

4. It is wrong to represent all our intuitive convictions as being formed within us from our birth. The account given of them by some would leave the impression that they must all appear in infancy. This is commonly the view taken by those who throw ridicule upon them. What can be so preposterous, they say, as to suppose that babies are meditating on the infinite from the time they escape from the womb, and distinguishing between good and evil before they know the right hand from the left? The account. which has been given in these chapters of our original convictions shows that they may not all make their appearance from our earliest years. They are formed, we have seen, on the contemplation of objects presenting themselves from without or from within. Some of these objects press themselves on the notice, I believe, from the very first action of the soul, and the intuitions directed to these are exercised with the earliest employments of intelligence. served 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, laboured 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 appearance. (See infra, Chap. iii.) 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 wheresoever it be; the truth of it is no private thing, nor relative to that particular mind only, but is ἀλngės naloλinór, ‘a catholic and universal 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" (Immutable Morality, Book iv. Chap. v.).

From the very dawn of existence the infant must envisage self, and body acting on self. But there are other convictions which cannot be formed till a later date, because the objects to which they relate cannot be presented till the intelligence is advanced. Thus I believe that the conviction of moral good and evil arises on the presentation of voluntary actions done by intelligent beings, and the mind must have made progress before it can form such a notion, and look into it to see what is involved in it. The intuition in regard to the infinite is called forth only when we contemplate such objects as space and time, or God, and the comprehension of these implies a considerable maturity of intelligence. We thus see that though all our intuitive convictions are native, yet some of them are the result of growth. Some of them do not appear in infancy; some of them appear in children, and among persons low in the scale of understanding, such as savages, only in a very low and rudimentary form. All of them are capable of growing with the growth of our intelligence, and even with the growth of our voluntary and emotional nature. Some of them are at one and the same time natural, and the issue of a long development, like the flower and the fruit, which are in the plant from its embryo, but may not be actually formed till there has been a stalk and branches and leaves and buds.

SECT. IV.—CERTAIN PRACTICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

From the theoretical characters there flow some others of a more practical nature.

1. All men who have had their attention addressed to the objects, are in fact led by these spontaneous convictions, and this, whatever be their professed speculative opinions. This follows from the circumstance that they are self-evident, and that men, all men, must give their assent to them. The regulative principles being essential parts of man’s nature, we find all human beings under their influence. Being irresistible, no man can deliver himself from them. They are ever operating spontaneously, and that whether men do or do not acknowledge them reflexly. In this respect the philosopher and the peasant, the dogmatist and the sceptic are as one. The metaphysician who has detected and

formalized the rule, is in no better position than the mechanic who acts on the principle without knowing that there is a principle. The sceptic who denies the principle is all the while convinced of the individual truth when it is pressed upon his notice, quite as implicitly as the philosopher who is strenuously defending it.

2. These self-evident truths cannot be set aside by any other truth, real or pretended. They could be overthrown only by some truth higher in itself, or carrying with it greater weight. But there is no such truth, there can be no such truth. There are indeed coördinate principles,—all self-evident truths are in respect of veracity of equal rank,—but not even on the supposition that the one contradicts the other, could we set aside either. The result in which such a contradiction should land us, would not be an arbitrary selection of one or other, but absolute scepticism, always along with implicit spontaneous faith in both. I shall have occasion to show that we are not landed in any such lamentable issue, and that all attempts to prove that intuitive truths contradict each other have lamentably failed.

It follows that when an apparent contradiction arises between what seems a self-evident truth and any other supposed truth, we are to examine the evidence which we have for both. It is thus that the mathematician acts when his demonstrations seem to be contradictory. He does not allow himself to imagine that truth can be inconsistent; he goes over the processes to find what error he has himself committed. If one fundamental principle seems to be inconsistent with another fundamental principle, we are to examine whether both are certainly primary, and can be shown to be so by the proper tests, and in particular whether they have been accurately generalized and expressed. In all such cases it will be found either that one at least of the principles is not intuitively certain—indeed neither of them may be so; or, as is more common, we may not have properly stated the primitive principle, and the seeming inconsistency lies not in the principles themselves, but in our expression of them.

Or again, the apparent contradiction may lie between a primitive principle and a derivative one. In such a case it is certain

51 that if what seems a primitive principle be truly so, and if we have put it in the proper form, it can never be displaced or overthrown by any secondary one. For if we follow that derivative principle to its foundation, we shall find that it cannot be resting on any truth more authoritative than the fundamental one which it is now being employed to undermine, while in the derivation of it, a number of doubtful elements may have entered which must render it by more or fewer degrees less certain than the intuitive truth against which it is set. In all such cases we must examine the supposed first principle, to see that it is a first principle, and that it is properly inducted, and review the derivative principle in order to determine the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. By such a sifting process the seeming contradiction will in all probability disappear; but if it still continue, we are of course shut up to the alternative of adhering to the fundamental truth, and laying aside the derivative one as being inferior in authority and certainty.

CHAPTER II.

METHOD OF EMPLOYING INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES.

SECT I.—THE SPONTANEOUS AND REFLEX USE OF INTUITIVE PRIN

CIPLES.

From the account which has been given of the Intuitions, 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 individual actings, discover the rule of their operation, and then proceed to use them in deduction and in speculation. The former of these may be called the Spontaneous Action, and the latter the Reflex Application of the Intuitions. In their spontaneous exercise they are regulating 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 careful reflex observation and generalization. In order to their spontaneous perception it is not requisite that their nature should be determined, they act best when we look simply at the object and take no introspection of them. But to justify the application of them in philosophy, it is essential that their exact nature, and precise law and rule, be carefully determined. It is all-important, in treating of our intuitions, to draw such a distinction, for much that may be affirmed of them under one of these aspects cannot be affirmed of them in the other.1

"La raison se développe de deux manières, spontanéité et réflexion."--"La raison débute par une synthèse riche et féconde, mais 0buere : vient après l'analyse qui éclaircit tout en divisant tout, et qui aspire elle-même à une synthèse supèrieure, aussi compréhensive que la première et plus lumineuse. La spontanéité donne la vérité; la réflexion produit la science; l'une fournit une base