PHY. I am convinced that in the end this will be acknowledged as the true philosophy, and will set aside the Sceptical Philosophy, which denies the reality of things, and the Agnostic Philosophy, which affirms (as the only thing it knows) that we cannot know things, and the Idealistic Philosophy, which adds to things out of the stores of the mind, with the view of improving them. In a crude, uncritical shape, this was the first philosophy; and when duly constructed, with the help of the necessary "rejections and exclusions," it will be the final philosophy. It will be found, as we advance, that Metaphysical Philosophy has two offices to discharge: one to consider our Intuitions, and the other the things at which intuition looks.

III.

Our Intuitions look to Single Objects, and not to abstract or general notions. A very different account is often given, if not formally, at least implicitly, of intuition or of intuitive reason, by those who believe in it. Man is represented as gazing immediately on the true, the beautiful, the good, meaning in the abstract or in the general. It is admitted that there must be some. sort of experience, some individual object presented as the occasion; but the mind, being thus roused into activity, is represented as contemplating, by direct vision, such things as space and time, substance and quality, cause and effect, the infinite and moral good. I hope to be able to 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 a 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.

IV.

We can Generalize our Intuitions, and thus form Philosophic Principles. It is not necessary, in order to the action of our Intuitions, that we should study their nature as metaphysicians do. Like the physiological processes of the body, say in breathing and digestion, they act best when we take no notice of them. An officious intermeddling with them may tend rather to disturb their action. But the physiologist in constructing his science has carefully to observe the action of our frame when we are looking at objects, or when we breathe. So the metaphysician has carefully to watch the actions of our various intuitions, in order to discover their nature and their laws.

The native principles of the mind act, as physical laws do, at all times, and whether we observe them or not. The laws of the material world are discovered by the observation and generalization of their individual opera tions. It is in much the same way that we find out the laws of our original and native convictions. I boldly

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affirm that it is as impossible to determine these as it is to ascertain the laws of the external universe, by a priori cogitation or logical inference. As they cannot be elaborated by speculation on the one hand, so they do not, on the other, as regulative principles, fall under the immediate notice of consciousness; all that we are conscious of are the individual exercises. But examining carefully the nature of the acts, we generalize them, and thus find the precise law of the principle, and embody it in a verbal expression.

The principle thus discovered is a philosophic 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 laws reached by experience, such as the laws of gravitation or chemical affinity. These latter are the mere generalizations of our experience, which are necessarily limited; they hold merely to the extent of our experience, and as experience cannot reach all possible cases we can never say that there may not be exceptions. Laws of the former kind are of a higher and deeper nature; they are generalizations of intuitive convictions, carrying necessity and consequent universality in their nature. They are truths of our original nature, having the sanction of Him who hath given us our constitution and graven them there with his own finger. These general maxims constitute metaphysics. All proposed metaphysical philosophy should aim at being the expression of our intuitions in the form of general laws. We shall see that the generalizations may be inaccurately made, and almost all the numerous errors of the common metaphysics proceed from this cause; they are to be corrected by properly drawing the law out of the individual operations. When this is done, we have metaphysical philosophy.

The term "Philosophy" has not had a very distinct meaning for the last two or three ages. It should always be carefully distinguished from Science, which generalizes the scattered operations of nature into laws. Perhaps it may most appropriately be defined as the inquiry into the first principles of things, and then the philosopher will be one who conducts the inquiry. The adjective "philosophical" may be applied to all branches which inquire into the first principles of the department discussed. Metaphysical Philosophy, or simply Metaphysics, has a clear and distinct province allowed when it is understood as being a search for the fundamental principles of our mental operations.

V.

Induction, by which is meant a Gathered and Systematic Observation, has a place in Metaphysics. This will seem to many an extraordinary position. It will be regarded by them as stripping philosophy of its crown and sceptre which place it above all the ordinary sciences. It seems to make our deeper thinking to have no other foundation than human observation, which must necessarily be limited. Now, I wish it to be understood that I do not propose to rest fundamental truths upon our taking notice of them. These exist whether we observe them or not. My eye does not create that mountain as it looks upon it. The mountain stands there on its own foundation, and all that my eye does is to discover it. So it is with primitive truth: it rests on its own basis; it has its authority within itself; all that our observation has to do is to discern it, and find out what is its nature.

If we would find what intuition is, we must carefully inspect it; not, indeed, by the external senses, which cannot perceive it, but by the internal sense, that is self-consciousness. Not only so, but we must seek in a scientific manner to find out the objects which it looks at and makes known to us. In short, we have to con

struct the science of metaphysics by a process of inductive observation suited to the nature of the mental phenomena which are observed. Without such a careful inspection our metaphysics would certainly fall into error, being sometimes extravagant, at other times defective, and at all times confused. But as we proceed by internal observation, we shall discover truths which go down deeper and rise higher than those of physics. As we advance, we shall see that there is a fundamental difference between the generalizations of our intuitive convictions and those of the ordinary facts of experience.