Considered under this aspect, the contrast is not between intuition and experience, but between GENERALIZED INTUITIONS and a GATHERED EXPERIENCE. The former are at once the deeper and the higher. They proceed on the nature of things and are immutable as long as the things exist. They are the truths which constitute the foundation of our knowledge and on which our minds fall back in the last resort. From the very earliest date men have been seeking to rear some central and abiding truths which may combine all other truths and act as a defence. But this cannot be done by mere empirical facts in which they have only "brick for stone " and "slime for mortar," and the end is a scattering as at Babel. However, by these eternal truths which we have been considering men may realize the idea of their youth, and build a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE NECESSITY ATTACHED TO OUR PRIMARY

CONVICTIONS.

I.

WE have seen throughout the whole of this treatise that a conviction of necessity attaches to all our original cognitions, beliefs, and judgments, both intellectual and moral. But we may find ourselves in hopeless perplexities, or even in a network of contradictions, unless we determine precisely to what it is that the necessity adheres. The proper account is, that the necessity covers the ground which the conviction occupies, neither less nor more. We may err, either by contracting it within a narrower or stretching it over a wider surface. It follows that if we would determine how far the necessity extends, we must carefully and exactly ascertain what is the nature of the native conviction, and what are the objects at which it looks.

And this requires us to specify with precision what we cannot do in regard to necessary truth. A common account is that we cannot "conceive " the contradictory of such truth. But the word "conceive" is ambiguous, and in itself means nothing more than "image" or "apprehend," that is, have a notion; and certainly we are not entitled to appeal to a mere phantasm or concept as a test of ultimate truth. The exact account is that we cannot be convinced of the opposite of the intuitive conviction. But our intuitive convictions may take the

form of cognitions, or beliefs, or judgments; and, according to the nature of the intuition, that is, according as it is knowledge, or faith, or comparison, is the nature of the necessity attached. Whatever we know intuitively as existing, we cannot be made to know as not existing. Whatever we intuitively believe, we cannot be made not to believe. When we intuitively discover a relation in objects, we cannot be made to judge that there is not a relation. From neglecting these distinctions, which are very obvious when stated, manifold errors have arisen, not only in the application of the test of necessity, but in the general account given of primary truths. When we take them along with us, the test of necessity admits of an application at once easy and certain.

II.

1. Beginning with our Cognitions, the conviction is that the object exists at the time we perceive it, and has the qualities we discover in it. This implies, according to the law of identity (in the form of non-contradiction), that it is not possible that it should not be existing, and that it should not be in possession of these qualities at the time it falls under our notice. But it does not imply that the object has a necessary or an eternal existence. It does not imply that the object must have existed in all other or in any other circumstances. For aught our conviction says, the object in other positions, or with a different set of preexisting causes, might not have existed at all, or might have had a different set of qualities. But while the necessity does not reach further, it always extends as far as the perception; thus it demands that body be regarded by us as extended and as resisting pressure, that self be looked on as capable of such qualities as thought and feeling, and that the properties of

body and mind should not be regarded as produced by our contemplation of them.

2. Coming now to our original Beliefs, it has been shown in regard to them, that while they proceed on our cognitions, they go beyond them, go beyond the now and the present, declaring, for instance, of time and space, that they must transcend our widest phantasms or conceptions of them, and that they are such that no space or time could be added to them. And as far as the conviction goes, so far does the necessity extend.

3. The necessity attached to our Judgments is in like manner exactly coincident with them. These imply objects on which they are pronounced. At the same time, the judgment, with its adhering necessity, has a regard not to the objects directly, but to the relation of the objects. These objects may be real, or they may be imaginary. I may pronounce Chimborazo to be higher than Mont Blanc, but I may also affirm of a mountain 100,000 feet high that it is higher than one 50,000 feet high. As to whether the objects are or are not real, this is a question to be settled by our cognitions and beliefs, original and acquired, and by inferences from them. But it is to be carefully observed, that even when the object is imaginary, the judgment proceeds on a cognition of the elements of the objects. Thus, having known what is the size of a man, we affirm of a giant, who is greater than a common man, that he is greater than a dwarf, who is smaller than ordinary humanity. Still, the necessity in the judgment does not of itself imply the existence of the objects, still less any necessary existence; all that it proclaims is, that the objects might exist out of materials which have fallen under our notice, and that the objects, being so and so, must have such a relation.

In a sense, then, our primitive judgments are hypo

thetical; the objects being so must have a particular connection. There may be, or there may never have been, two exactly parallel lines; what our intuitive judgment declares is, that if there be such, they can never meet. A similar remark may be made of every other class of intuitive comparisons. There may or there may not be a sea in the moon; but if there be, its waters must be extended, and can resist pressure. There may or there may not be inhabitants in the planet Jupiter; but if there be, they must have been created by a power competent to the operation. But it is to be borne in mind, that when the objects exist, the judgments, with their accompanying necessity, apply to them.

And here I am tempted to say a word on a question of nomenclature. Throughout this treatise the phrase “intuition" has been applied to our primitive cognitions and primitive beliefs, as well as our primitive judgments. But as there is a difference between intuition as directed to individual objects and as directed to the comparison of objects, I have sometimes thought, when it is necessary to distinguish them, "Intuitive Perceptions "might be the more appropriate phrase for the one, and “Intuitive Reason" for the other.

4. It holds good also of our Moral Perceptions, that the necessity is as wide as our conviction, but no wider. It implies that the good or evil is a real quality of certain voluntary acts of ours, and this whether we view it or not, and independent of the view we take of it. It involves that certain actions are good or evil, whenever or wherever they are performed, in this land or other lands, in this world or other worlds. Rising beyond cognitions and beliefs, the mind can pronounce moral judgments on certain acts apprehended by it. These judgments do not imply the existence of the objects; but the decision