7

intuition. But when we say a truth is universal, we may mean that it is universally true, that is, admits of no exceptions, and it is in this latter application I use the word "universal." Universality in this sense follows from necessity; the maxim which is necessarily, must be universally, true. It is only in this meaning that the term can be applied to the maxims which express in a general form the law of our intuitive convictions. Such maxims admit of exceptions at no time and in no place. They are true in our own land, but they are true also in other lands; true in our world, they are true in all other worlds; true in all ages of time, they are equally true through all eternity. Hence they have been called expressively unchangeable, imperishable, and eternal truths.

3. They are fundamental. Hence they have been described as radical, as grounds or foundations, and called fundamental laws of thought and belief. They are the truths we come to, when we analyse a discussion into its elements. We may ever set out with them in argument or in speculation, provided we have adequately generalized them. All demonstrated and derived truths will be found, if we pursue them sufficiently far down, to be resting on such fundamental truths. In controversies on profound topics,

That a truth is accepted by common or catholic consent, and that it is without exception, are not the same, though they have often been confounded, under the one epithet "universal." Sir W. Hamilton says (Note A. p. 754, Reid's Collected Writings): "Necessity and universality may be regarded as coincident; for when a belief is necessary, it is, eo ipso, universal; and that a belief is universal is a certain index that it must be necessary (see Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, 1. i. 4).” Hamilton means by universality, universality of belief; which also Leibnitz means in the passage referred to-the language he uses is, "consentement universel." But it is surely conceivable (I do not say actual), that a conviction might be necessary to one man and not to all men; and there are in fact beliefs in man, which are universal, such as that the sun will rise to-morrow, which are not necessary. Kant used "universal" in the sense of "true without exception," and very properly remarks, that the necessity and universality belong inseparably to each other, but that sometimes the one and sometimes the other test admits of the easier or more effective application: "Nothwendigkeit und strenge Allgemeinheit sind also sichere Kennzeichen einer Erkenntniss a priori, und gehören auch unzertrennlich zu einander. Weil es aber im Gebrauche derselben bisweilen leichter ist, die empirische Beschränktheit derselben, als die Zufälligkeit in den Urtheilen, oder es auch mannigmal einleuchtender ist, die unbeschränkte Allgemeinheit. die wir einem Urtheile beilegen, als dio Nothwendigkeit desselben zu zeigen, so ist rathsam, sich gedachter beider Kriterien, deren jedes für sich unfehlbar ist, abgesondert zu bedienen" (Kritik d. r. V. Enleit. Auf. 2. Werke, bd. ii. p. 697: Rosenkranzi.

especially in theology and metaphysics, those who engage in them feel themselves ever coming down to a ground beneath which they cannot get. In searching into the structure of argument, we find, as we follow it from conclusion to premiss, hanging on a premiss which is self-supporting. The sceptic is ever compelling the philosopher to go down to these depths. The dogmatist, in building his structure, is entitled to start with them as assumptions,-he must be the more careful that what he builds on be really the rock. On them other truths may rest, but they themselves rest There may ever be an appeal to them, but there can

on none.

never be an appeal from them.

Now in order to avoid confusion, and the error which springs from confusion, it is essential that we go round these three sides of this shield of truth, that we read what is on each, and carefully distinguish the inscriptions. If any one having occasion to employ intuition neglect to do this, he will ever be liable to affirm of the intuition under one aspect, what is true of it only in another, or to turn the wrong side towards the weapons of the assailant while he keeps the wrong side towards himself. When we are required to speak of them distinctively, our intuitions under the first aspect may be called native laws or regulative principles; under the second aspect, native, spontaneous, or necessary, convictions; under the third aspect, universal truths or formalized maxims.

As Innate or Regulative Principles they are in all men at all ages; but it is wrong to represent them as being before the consciousness, as being immediately under our notice, as capable of being discovered without abstraction or generalization, or observation, or trouble of any kind. It is wrong to speak of them as ideas in the Lockian sense of the term, that is, as apprehensions before consciousness.

As Spontaneous Convictions they are immediately under the eye of consciousness, but there they are not in the form of philosophic principles, nor can we say of every one of them they appear in all men, and from their earliest infancy.

As Universal Truths or General Maxims they are in an especial

sense philosophic principles, but then as such they are known only to comparatively few; they can be appealed to in argument only on the condition that their law has been gathered by induction and carefully expressed, and while there can be no dispute as to the spontaneous convictions, there may be legitimate discussions as to whether they have been properly generalized in the proffered

axiom.1

At the same time these are after all only the diverse aspects of one great general fact, and they have relations all to each and each to all. There is first a mind with its native capacities, each with its rule of action. In due time these come out into action, some of them at an earlier, and some of them at a later date, on the appropriate objects being presented, and the actions are before consciousness. As being before consciousness we can observe them by reflection, and discover the nature of the law which has all along been in the mind, and in its very constitution.

SECT. III.-CERTAIN MISAPPREHENSIONS IN REGARD TO THE CHARAC

TER OF INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS.

Looking on the above as the properties and marks of the intuitive convictions of the mind, we see that a wrong account is often given of them.

1. It is wrong to represent them as unaccountable feelings, as blind instincts, as unreasonable impulses. They have nothing whatever of the nature of those feelings or emotions which raise up excitement within us, and attach us to certain objects, and draw us away from others. Nor should they be put under the same head as the instincts which prompt us to crave for food when we are hungry, or which lead the dog to follow his master. In such cases the parties obey an impulse, which is not accompanied with knowledge or judgment of any kind, whereas in the perceptions of intuition there is always knowledge involved, and this the most certain of all, immediate knowledge, and in many of them there is judgment looking directly on the objects compared. So far from

1 In writing this section I have kept before me throughout Hamilton's famous Note A, and have freely borrowed from it. But Hamilton has not distinguished between these three aspects of common sense.

being unreasonable, they involve a primary exercise of reason superior to all secondary or derivative processes, which ever depend on the primary, and are often inferior in certainty, and can in no circumstances rise higher than the fountain from which they have flowed.

2. It is wrong to represent man, so far as he yields to these convictions, as being under some sort of stern and relentless fatality which compels him to go, without yielding him light of any kind. No doubt they constrain him to acknowledge the existence of certain objects, and the certainty of special truths, but this, not by denying him light, but by affording him the fullest conceivable light, such light that he cannot possibly mistake the object or wander from the path. No doubt he cannot have mediate proof, but it is because he has what the faculties which judge of proof declare to be vastly higher, immediate evidence, or self-evidence. We need no secondary proof, for we have primary, to convince us that two parallel lines can never meet. Our intuitions do not compel us against the reason, but they convince us in the highest exercise of reason, and they lead us not against, but by the assent of our clearest and profoundest intelligence. No man is ever,

even in his most wayward moods, spontaneously tempted to complain because bound to yield to these convictions. When he reflects on their nature he should rejoice because such is his constitution that he is led to follow and obey them.

3. It is wrong to represent these self-evident truths as being truths merely to the individual, or truths merely to man, or beings constituted like man. There are some who speak and write as if what is truth to one man might not be truth to another man; as if what is truth to mankind might not be truth to other intelligent beings.1 This account might be correct if the convictions were

1 It is not easy to determine the precise philosophy of the Sophists, if indeed they had a philosophy. The doctrine of Heraclitus was that all is and is not; that while it does come into being, it forthwith ceases to be. Protagoras, proceeding on this doctrine, declared, Φησί γάρ που πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι,τῶν μὲν ὄντων, ὡς ἔστι, τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν. This Socrates expounds as meaning ὡς οἷα μὲν ἔκαστα ἐμοὶ φαίνεται,τοιαῦτα μév ótiv μoi, oia de doi (Plato, Theatetus, 24: Bekker). Aristotle represents Protagoras as maintaining that τὰ δοκοῦντα πάντα ἐστὶν ἀληθῆ καὶ ta gaivòμɛva (Metaph. Lib. III. Chap. v. Bonitz). Again, Lib. x. Chap. vi., this καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἔφη πάντων χρημάτων εἶναι μέτρον ἄνθρωπον, οὐθὲν ἕτερον λέγων ἢ τὸ δοκοῦν ἐκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ εἶναι παγίως. It will be ob

borne in upon the mind by a blind natural impulse. But what we perceive by an original intuition is a reality, is a truth; we know it to be so, we judge it to be so. And it is a reality, a truth, whether others know and acknowledge it or no. It is a truth, not merely to me or you, but to all men; not only to all men, but to all intelligence capable of discovering truths of that particular nature. That two straight lines cannot enclose a space is a truth everywhere, in the planet Mars as well as in the planet Earth. That ingratitude is morally evil must hold good in all other worlds as well as in this world of ours, where sin so much abounds.

4. It is wrong to represent all our intuitive convictions as being formed within us from our birth. The account given of them by some would leave the impression that they must all appear in infancy. This is commonly the view taken by those who throw ridicule upon them. What can be so preposterous, they say, as to suppose that babies are meditating on the infinite from the time they escape from the womb, and distinguishing between good and evil before they know the right hand from the left? The account which has been given in these chapters of our original convictions shows that they may not all make their appearance from our earliest years. They are formed, we have seen, on the contemplation of objects presenting themselves from without or from within. Some of these objects press themselves on the notice, I believe, from the very first action of the soul, and the intuitions directed to these are exercised with the earliest employments of intelligence. served that in these accounts there is an interpretation put on the language of Protagoras. But there can be no doubt that Plato, and Aristotle too, laboured each in his own way to show, in opposition to these views, that there was a reality and a truth independent of the individual and of appearance. (See infra, Chap. iii.) It is an instructive circumstance that the Sensationalist school have reached in our day the very position of the Sophists, and regard it as impossible to reach independent and necessary truth, if indeed any such truth exists. We might expect that these men would seek to justify the Sophists, and disparage the high arguments of Plato. Cudworth, speaking of the theoretical universal propositions in geometry and metaphysics, has finely remarked that it is true of every one of them whenever it is rightly understood by any particular mind, whatsoever and wheresoever it be; the truth of it is no private thing, nor relative to that particular mind only, but is aλntés naboλinór, 'a catholic and universal truth,' as the Stoics speak, throughout the whole world; nay, it would not fail to be a truth throughout infinite worlds, if there were so many, to all such minds as would rightly understand it" (Immutable Morality, Book Iv. Chap. v.).