be intelligent beings in other worlds who accord no such assent, just as we can conceive beings in the other parts of the universe who have no craving for meat or drink. But while not inclined to use catholicity as a primary test, I think it may come in at times as an auxiliary one. For what is in all men, may most probably come from what is not only native, but necessary; and must also in all probability be self-evident, or at least follow very directly from what is self-evident. Catholicity, when conjoined with necessity, may determine very readily and precisely whether a conviction is intuitive. Important purposes are served by the combination of these two tests, that is, necessity and catholicity. By the first we have a personal assurance which can never be shaken, and of which no one can deprive us. Though the whole world were to declare that we do not exist, or that a cruel action is good, we would not give up our own personal conviction in favour of their declaration. By the other principle we have confidence in addressing our fellow-men, for we know that there are grounds of thought common to them and to us, and to these we can appeal in reasoning with them. By the one I am enabled, yea, compelled, to hold by my personality, and maintain my independence; by the other I am made to feel that I am one of a large family, every member of which has the same principles of thought and belief as I myself have. The one gives me the argument from private judgment, the other the argument from common or catholic consent. The concurrence of the two should suffice to protect me from scepticism of every kind, whether it relate to the world within or the world without, whether to physical or moral truths. These marks are as clear and as easily applied, and are quite as decisive for testing reason in its primary or intuitive exercise, as the syllogism is in testing reason in its secondary or derivative operation-that is, as inference or reasoning. SECT. II.-DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF INTUITIONS AND THEIR THEORETI CAL CHARACTERS. Hitherto we have been approaching our subject by a somewhat winding path, catching glimpses of the position of the building, and some of its principal turrets. We may now walk up directly to it, and take a survey of its general form, and ascertain the mode of entering it, with the view of afterwards exploring its apartments one by one. It will be found to present three sides, sides of one fabric, but each with its peculiarities. The intuitions may be considered first as laws, rules, principles, regulating the original action and the primitive perceptions of the mind. Or secondly, they may be regarded as individual perceptions, or convictions manifesting themselves in consciousness. Or thirdly, they may be contemplated as abstract notions, or general rules elaborated out of the individual exercises. We cannot have a distinct or adequate view of our intuitions unless we carefully distinguish these the one from the other. The whole of the confusion, and the greater part of the errors, which have appeared in the discussions about innate ideas and a priori principles, have sprung from neglecting these distinctions, or from not carrying them out consistently. In each of these sides the intuitions present distinct characters, and many affirmations may be properly made of the original principles of the mind under one of these aspects, which would by no means hold good of the others. I. They may be contemplated as LAWS, RULES, OR PRINCIPLES GUIDING THE MIND. Hence the soul has been represented as TÓNOS ɛtor and the "repository of principles," and they themselves called "natural laws," "fundamental laws of thought," "forms," and "regulative principles." Under this aspect 1. They are native. Hence they have been designated natural, innate, counate, connatural, implanted, constitutional. All these phrases point to the circumstance that they are not acquired by practice, nor the result of experience, but are in the mind naturally, as constituents of its very being, and involved in its higher 1 Plato had spoken of the soul as voηròs rózо5 (Rep. vii. 517). Aristotle (De Anim. iii. 4) adopts the view, but modifies it, saying that it is right, provided it be limited to the noetic power, and the forms be represented as not in readiness for action, but in capacity (a profound Aristotelian distinction). Kai ev dǹ οἱ λέγοντες τὴν ψυχὴν, εἶναι τόπον εἰδῶν, πλήν ὅτι οὔτε ὅλη αλλ' ή νοητική, οὔτε ἐντελεχεια ἀλλὰ δυνάμει τὰ εἴδη. Charnock, the Puritan, speaks of the "mind, the repository of principles" (Knowledge of God, Part VI. ). exercises. In this respect they are analogous to universal gravitation and chemical affinity, which are not produced in bodies as they operate, but are in the very nature of bodies, and the springs of their action. It is thus-that is, by an original property of his being that man is led to look on body as occupying space, on any given effect as having a cause, and on certain actions as being morally good or evil. 2. They are tendencies. In this respect they are like all natural powers, which are not acts, but tendencies to act. The intuitions operate on the appropriate objects being presented to call them forth; they fail only when there has been nothing suitable to evoke them. Hence they give a bent, a direction, a predisposition to the mind. Hence they have been called anticipations (poλ15), aptitudes, and habitudes. 3. They are regulative. They rule the mind in its original and primitive energies, both of thought and belief. They lead the mind, for example on discovering a quality, to connect it with substance; on contemplating time, to declare that it cannot have had a beginning; and on having a vicious action brought before it, to decide that it is deserving of punishment. This characteristic is brought before us by the phrases so often applied to them,— forms, laws, rules, canons, and principles. They lead and guide the deeper mental action, just as the chemical and vital properties conduct and control the composition of bodies and the organization of plants. It is to be carefully noticed that, as regulative principles, they are not dependent, in themselves or in their action, on our observation of them-indeed they must be guiding the mind before we can observe them; still less are they dependent on the will of the possessor, which has merely an indirect control over I The phrase regulative has been used by Kant in Kritik der reine Vernunft transcen. Doc. der Urtheilskraft, Chap. iii., where he speaks of certain principles as being constitutive and others regulative. The distinction proceeds on certain Kantian views, and cannot be admitted by any natural realist. Sir W. Hamilton has adopted the phrase regulative (Metaphysics, Lect. 38), and agrees so far with Kant that he reckons many of the regulative principles of the mind, such as those about space and time and cause, as guaranteeing no objective reality. The phrase is a good one, but in adopting it care must be taken to dissociate it from all the peculiarities of the Kantian and Hamiltonian philosophy. The regulative principles guide the mind so as that it discovers what is in things, whereas, according to Kant, they guarantee nothing as to things. them, and this only by bringing before the cognitive or representative powers of the mind the objects which evoke them. That is, they are in every all men as formalized prinsee forthwith, they come Some of them are perhaps t 4. They are catholic or common. human mind. Not that they are in ciples; under this aspect, as we shall before the minds of comparatively few. not even manifested in all minds; certainly some of them are not manifested, in their higher forms, in the souls of all. In infants some of them have not yet made their appearance, and among persons low in the scale of intelligence they do not come out in their loftier exercises,—just as the plant does not all at once come into full flower, just as in unfavorable circumstances it may never come into seed at all. Still the capacity is there, needing only favorable circumstances-that is, the appropriate objects pressed on the attention-to foster it into developed forms. Under this aspect the epithets common, catholic, have been applied to them; they have been represented as the universal attributes of humanity, and as belonging to man as man. But it is to be specially noticed that in this whole general view of them they are not before consciousness as principles. They do indeed come out into consciousness, not, however, as laws, but as individual convictions. This negative characteristic has been often referred to when they have been spoken of as latent, occult, hiding themselves, as roots covered up in the substance of the soul, as foundations beneath the ground, as faculties requiring to be developed, and as evoked into exercise only on the occasion of experience. II. They may be contemplated as CONVICTIONS MANIFESTED IN CONSCIOUSNESS. Hence they are called especially intuitions, spontaneous or natural convictions, innate ideas, and primitive beliefs and judgments. It is only under this aspect that we can directly apply to them the tests of intuition specified in last section.' Under what restriction they apply to our intuitions as regulative or as generalized principles may be afterwards pointed out. We have already in our survey gathered what are some of the characteristics of these our conscious convictions; still, what we before enounced will require to be formally stated in its proper place alongside of some other theoretical characteristics, to be now unfolded. 1. They are perceptions. This feature was caught and has been expressed by those who speak of them as perceptions, apperceptions, senses, apprehensions, and who represent them as seeing, looking, regarding, contemplating. 2. They look at objects. Hence they have been represented as comprising knowledge, cognition, and discernment. It is of the greater moment to bring out this characteristic, from the circumstance that they have often been too much dissociated from objects. In reading some of the exaggerated accounts of them, the impression is apt to be left that they are formed by the native power of the mind, independent of things altogether; and even in more guarded statements the presentation of objects is spoken of as merely the occasion on which they spring up. In opposition to all this, I maintain that they are perceptions of objects, of objects themselves or something in objects. Sometimes the objects are external to the mind, as when I intuitively look on body as extended or on space as having no limits. In other cases the objects are within the mind, as when I look on self, and discover that it has being and personality, or on a certain representation in the mind, say of a benevolent action, which I discern to be good. Or the intuition may manifest itself in the form of judgments or comparisons; but even in such it is a perception of objects as having points of relation. It is the very nature of the regulative principles of the mind that they lead us to look at objects, and to discover what is in them. 3. They look at objects as singulars. In this respect they are analogous to the senses of consciousness, and have often been characterized as senses and as consciousnesses. This peculiarity has already been explained in a general way. 4. They are immediate. That is, our minds, in intuition, gaze directly on the object. Hence they have been called feelings,language which may be allowed if meant merely to express that they are analogous to feeling or touch as it feels or handles an 1 This view is examined infra, Part II. Book 1. Chap. ii. sect. vi. Supplementary. |