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 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 the intuitions, and in doing so it may arrive at most important truth. It will come out, too, that intuition may fasten on the 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 mean while 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 these 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 one and other 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

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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 be remembered indeed that they are mental and not material laws; but, making allowance for this, they may be regarded as operating very much like the great physical or physiological laws of chemical affinity, or of nervous irritability, or of the reflex nervous system. As they act in an analogous manner, so they may be discovered in much the same way as the laws of the material universe, that is, by the method of induction.

The laws of matter are discovered by the observation and generalization of their individual operations. With the exception of a few metaphysicians of the schools of Schelling or Hegel, no one now maintains that these laws can be discovered by a priori speculation. Nor can they be detected by mere sense,—by eye, or touch, or ear; no man ever yet saw, or touched, or heard, a law of nature. All that falls under the perception of the senses are individual facts, and those generally concrete or complex; that is, the object is presented as exhibiting more than one quality at the same time, or the effect is the result of a variety of causes. In order to reach the law by an observation of the facts, there is need first of all of a judicious analysis, or, as Bacon calls it, the necessary "rejections and exclusions," or the separation and setting aside of the extraneous matter of the mixed phenomenon; that is, the matter which does not belong to the law or agent we are seeking to discover. Having made these appropriate rejections, we now generalize the facts—that is, find out where they agree-and thus arrive at the discovery of the physical law.

It is in much the same way, mutatis mutandis, that we discover the laws of our original and native convictions. I boldly affirm that it is as impossible to determine them as it is to settle the laws of the external universe by a priori cogitation or logical division and dissection. As they cannot be elaborated by speculation on the one hand, so neither do they fall under the immediate cognizance of consciousness on the other. All that comes under the consciousness is individual: it is an object now present; it is the mind in some state or mode. But our modifications of mind at any given moment are always more or less complex; that is, there is more than one property in exercise, though of course combined in the unity of the mind. But, by a sharp analysis, it is always possible to separate the different elements, and fix the attention exclusively on that which alone pertains to the law or property we are seeking to evolve. Examining carefully the nature of the acts which seem to flow from the same principle, we generalize them; and, if we do so accurately, we obtain the exact nature of the principle, and can embody it in a verbal expression.

The principle thus discovered and enunciated is properly a metaphysical one; it is a truth above sense, a truth of mind, a truth of reason. It is different in its origin and authority from the general rules reached by experience, such as the law of gravitation, or the law of chemical affinity, or the law of the distribution of animals over the earth's surface. These latter are the mere generalizations of an experience necessarily limited; they hold good merely in the measure of our experience, and as experience can never reach all possible cases, so the rule can never be absolute; we can never say that there may not be exceptions. Laws of the former kind are of a higher or deeper nature, they are the generalization of convictions carrying necessity with them, and a consequent

universality in their very nature. They are entitled to be regarded as in an especial sense philosophic principles, being the ground to which we come when we follow any system of truth sufficiently far down, and competent to act as a basis on which to erect a superstructure of science. They are truths of our original constitution, having the sanction of Him who hath given us our constitution, and graven them there with His own finger.

It is ever to be borne in mind, however, that the detection and exact expression of these intuitive principles is always a delicate and is often a most difficult operation. Did they fall immediately under the eye of consciousness, the work would be a comparatively easy one; we should only have to look within in order to see them. But all that consciousness can notice are their individual exercises mixed up one with another and with all other actings of the mind. It requires a microscopic eye, and much analytic skill, to detect the various fibres in the complex structure, and to follow each through its various windings and entanglements to its source.