The main elements which he employs are sensations and associations of sensation. But he works up sensations into convictions of mind and body, of space and time, of personality and personal identity, of infinity and obligation to do good, which are not contained in the nature of sensations, and which could be imparted to them only by a new power superinduced, which power would require to have a place allotted to it in his system, and its laws enunciated, and its significance estimated. Again, it will be shown that Mr. Mill has made an unwarrantable use and application of the laws of association. These are the laws of the succession of our ideas, and nothing more. Give us two ideas, and place these two ideas together in the mind, and association will tend to bring them up once more in union. But it is not the office of association to give us the ideas which must first be furnished to it. We shall see that Mr. Mill is for ever giving to association a power, which does not belong to it, of generating new ideas by an operation in which we see sensations go in, and a lofty idea coming out, solely by the idea being surreptitiously introduced, without any person being expected to notice it. The process carried on by this whole school of analysts is like that of the alchemists, who, when they put earth into the retort, never could get anything but earth, and could get gold only by introducing some substance containing gold: The philosopher's stone of this modern psychology is of the same character as that employed in medieval physics. If we put in only sensations, as some do, we have never any

thing but sensations, and a "dirt philosophy," as it has been called, is the product. If we get gold (as certainly Mr. Mill does at times), it is because it has been quietly introduced by the person who triumphantly

exhibits it.

III. Tests may be furnished to try intuitive truths. From the days of Aristotle down to the present time, it has been asserted that there are first truths, the support of other truths, while they themselves require no support. Profound thinkers have systematically or incidentally been striving to give us the marks of such truths. Amidst considerable difference of nomenclature and confusion of thought and statement (such as we might expect in the first efforts to catch and express the exact truth in so difficult an investigation), there has been all along a wonderfully large amount of agreement in the criteria fixed on. These have been such as selfevidence, necessity, and universality. Some have fixed on one, and some on another of these, as their favourite testing principle, and have overlooked the others. Some have employed two, overlooking the third. But these three are, in fact, the tests which, in a loose or more stringent form, have been announced or applied by the great body of deep and earnest thinkers. It could be shown that Aristotle had at least glimpses of all of them. In modern times, Locke formally propounded the selfevidence, referring incidentally from time to time to the necessity and universality. Reid was in the way of referring, not always in a very clear or satisfactory

way, to all the three. Leibnitz brought out prominently the necessity; and Kant, followed by Sir W. Hamilton, conjoined necessity and universality-all three overlooking the self-evidence, in consequence of their keeping away very much from realities, and dwelling among mental forms.1 We shall find Mr. Mill employing all of them, without, however, fully apprehending their character or seeing their significance.

As we proceed, we shall gather these tests into heads, and establish their validity, and give them their proper expression. We shall show that association of ideas, which is supposed to work such wonders, cannot give these characters to any apprehension or proposition. No experiential or derived truth can stand any one, or at least the whole of these tests. A general truth discovered by a gathered experience, as that night succeeds day, cannot be said to be self-evident. Nor can it be represented as having any necessity in thought, for we can easily apprehend it to be otherwise. Nor can it be described as universal, for the time may come when, in consequence of a change of mundane arrangements, the day or the night may cease.

Following out these principles, I mean, in discussing the questions started by Mr. Mill, to proceed in the following method:

(1.) I allow him to try his power of analysis, according to his psychological method, on all alleged fundamental truth, without reserving any exception. This is what

1 These tests will be considered, infra, Chap. xii. A historical and critical review of them will be found in The Intuitions of the Mind, Part I. B. ii. c. 3.

Sir W. Hamilton would not have done, as he regarded consciousness as deciding the whole question at once, and authoritatively and conclusively. I hold that consciousness has a most important part to act. It has to disclose to us what are the ideas and convictions in the mind when it begins to reflect, and what is the precise nature of the elements into which we would resolve them. But I admit that in the mature man all is not intuitive that is spontaneous and apparently instantaneous. And so I freely permit Mr. Mill to attempt to decompose any idea into simpler composites. But as he does so, I claim the right to sit by and watch him, lest he unconsciously change the elements in the process; and at the close I carefully inquire whether he has explained all the characteristics of the idea and conviction.

(2.) When he fails, as I believe it will be found that he does fail, in regard to certain mental principles, then I hold that these principles which the acute intellect of Mr. Mill cannot decompose may be regarded as elementary, at least provisionally so; that is, till some abler man (which is not likely to happen) makes the attempt and succeeds.

(3.) I bring the alleged first truths to the test of selfevidence, necessity, and universality, and when they can stand these criteria, I pronounce them conclusively to be original and primary and fundamental.

D

CHAPTER III.

MR. MILL'S ADMISSIONS.

THE common impression regarding Mr. Mill's philosophy is that it needs no intuitive principles; that the author of it does not presuppose or allow that there is anything innate in the mind. Some of his admirers give him credit for weaving a rich fabric without any material except sensations, and with no machinery except experience. Mr. Mill's cavils against those who support fundamental truth, and the manner in which he expounds his own system, are fitted to leave this impression. He begins the construction of his theory with sensations; he goes on to fashion them into various forms by association of sensations; he allows among the series of sensations a memory of the past, an expectation of the future, and a power of observing coexistences and successions, resemblances and differences between sensations; and he makes the mind as it advances receive powerful aid from the artificial instrumentality of language. These seem, at least to a cursory observer, to constitute the matter and the agency by which he ingeniously constructs the ideas, many of