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thus, and not on any a priori grounds, did they argue that there could not be antipodes, as persons so situated would fall away into a lower space. As a narrow experience had created the difficulty, so it could remove it by giving us a view of the earth as a mass of matter, causing human beings to adhere to it over its whole. surface. And such a case does not in the least tend to prove, that truths which are seen to be truths at once, and without a gathered experience, could ever be set aside by a further experience: that a conscious intelligent being could be made to regard himself as nonexisting; that he could believe himself as having been in existence before he existed; or that he could be led to allow that two straight lines might enclose a space in the constellation Orion.

It is in the highest degree expedient, at the stage to which mental science has come, that the word 'conceive,' and its derivatives, should be abandoned altogether in such a connexion; as being fitted to confuse our ideas and mislead our judgments. The greatest and wisest philosophers have not appealed to the possibility or impossibility of conception as tests of truth or falsehood, but have pointed to other and clearer and more decisive criteria.1

1 The printing of this work had proceeded thus far, when I observed that Mr. M., in 6th edition of Logic, just published, has been obliged, in defending himself against Mr. Spencer, to notice that conceive' might signify to have an idea' or 'to have a belief' (i. 303). But he himself continues to take advantage of the ambiguity, which is greater than he

yet sees. I have been labouring for years to make metaphysicians perceive the ambiguity.

CHAPTER XII.

SELF-EVIDENCE AND NECESSITY THE TESTS OF INTUITION.

MR. Mill freely admits the existence and the veracity of intuitive perceptions. But he has not inquired into their nature, their mode of operation, their laws, their tests, or their limits. What he has failed to do must be undertaken by others; and in the process it will be seen that intuition has quite as important a place in the mind as sensation, association, or any of Mr. Mill's favourite principles, and that it must be embraced and have a distinct place allotted to it in a sufficient theory of our mental operations.

Our intuitions are all of the nature of perceptions, in which we look on objects known or apprehended: on separate objects, or on objects compared with one another. Sometimes the objects are present, and we look on them directly, by the senses and self-consciousness. In other cases they are not present, but still we have an apprehension of them, and our convictions, whether beliefs or judgments, proceed upon this apprehension. A very different account has often been given of them. According to Locke, the mind in intuition looks at

ideas, and not at things. According to the theory elaborated by Kant, and so far adopted by Hamilton, it is possessed of a priori forms, which it imposes on objects. Such views are altogether indefensible, and have in fact hindered the ready reception of the true doctrine. Making our intuitions mere ideas or forms in the mind, they have very much separated them from realities. The intuitions I stand up for are all intuitions of things. In opposition to M. Comte and his school in all its branches, I hold that man is so constituted as to know somewhat of things, and the relations of things. What we know of things, with their relations, on the bare inspection or contemplation of them, constitutes the body of intuitive truth, and the capacity to discover it is called intuition. Taken in this sense, the exercise of intuition is not opposed to experience, but is in fact an experience: only it is not a gathered experience; it is a singular experience at the basis of all collected experiences.

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Our intuitive perceptions are all, in the first instance, individual or singular. Thus, by the external senses, we observe an extended and coloured surface before us, or by the internal consciousness we experience ourselves in a certain state of thought and feeling. Our very intuitive judgments or comparisons are singular. finding that a particular rod, A, is of the same length. as another rod, B, and that B is of the same length as a third rod, C, we at once declare that A is equal to C. But we can generalize these intuitive judgments, and then they become maxims or axioms. We see that what is true of the rods A, B, C, would also be of the

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rods D, E, F, or of any other objects found equal to one another, and we feel ourselves entitled to declare that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another.' As the generalization is the result, not of an intuitive, but a discursive process, it is possible that error may creep into it, that the generalized expression of our original perceptions may be mutilated or exaggerated. But on the supposition that the generalization has been properly conducted, the maxim is as certain as the individual perception is allowed to be.

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By standing up for this distinction between what we may call our spontaneous and our generalized intuitions, we can answer an objection urged against the existence of necessary truth by Mr. Mill. "The very fact that the question is disputed, disproves the alleged impossibility. Those against whom it is needful to defend the belief which is affirmed to be necessary, are un"mistakable examples that it is not necessary" (p. 150). But what is the dispute? It is commonly not as to the belief, but simply as to whether it is intuitive, which, as Mr. Mill knows and asserts, is not to be settled by intuition. Take only one example: the sums of equals are equals; there is no dispute as to the truth of this. What Mr. Mill's school objects to is, that it should be represented as intuitive. But again, what the upholders of necessary truth maintain is, not that every man must hold speculatively by intuitive truth, that is, hold by it in the generalized form given it by philosophers; but that all believe in, and spontaneously act upon, their individual primitive perceptions. It is quite possible for Mr. Mill

to maintain that the law of cause and effect is not necessary or universal, and that there may be a phenomenon without a cause in the Dog-star; but meanwhile it will be found that on any given occurrence presenting itself, he will look for something as producing it.

If we look carefully into the nature of the intuitive perceptions of the mind, they will be found to be of three kinds. Some of them are of the nature of Primitive Cognitions: the object is now present, and we look upon it. It is thus we are conscious of self as existing in a particular state. This being self-evident, we cannot be made to regard ourselves as non-existent, and not in that particular state. In other exercises our intuitions are of the nature of Primitive Beliefs: the object is not present, but we contemplate it, and discover that it is of such a nature. It is thus that we believe of space, that it does not cease when our eye is no longer able to follow it this appears from the very nature of space; and having such a conviction, we cannot be made to believe that space, at the point at which it ceases to be invisible, should come to a termination. Again, some of our intuitions are of the nature of Primitive Judgments, in which by bare inspection we discover relations between things apprehended. Thus we are told first of one man that he died at the age of fifty, and then of another man that he died at the age of fifty, and we at once declare that the two men died at the same age; and this being evident from the contemplation of the things, we cannot be made to decide otherwise.

The truth reached by intuition in these its three

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