CHAPTER VI. ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF INTUITION. I. THEY are spoken of as Instincts. By instinct animals perform acts of the meaning of which they are ignorant. Some of them lay up food in summer for nourishment in winter, of which they can have only an imperfect idea. Our intuitive perceptions are sometimes supposed to be much of the same character. And no doubt they are so, inasmuch as both are native and original. But they differ in a most essential point. Instincts are blind, not perceiving the signification of the acts which they perform. On the other hand, intuitions are cognitive, furnishing the deepest, the most certain, and properly understood, the clearest of all our knowledge. II. They are regarded as of the nature of Loose Beliefs which we have no decisive evidence to support, very much like the persuasion we are apt to cherish that the planets are inhabited. Under this view they would be a weakness rather than a strength in our constitution. It is true that the mind is capable, as we shall see, of entertaining primitive beliefs; but of these we shall show that we have tests which are clear and certain, which make them entirely different from fondled fancies. Our intuitions, whether cognitions or beliefs, have the strongest of all evidence in their behalf. The evidence is in the objects, which we perceive as we gaze : upon them it is thus that we know body as extended and mind as thinking, and believe that we cannot move from one place to another without passing through all the intermediate points. III. We are not to regard the mind as possessing a power of Reason looking directly on general Principles and Axioms. No doubt God could have so fashioned us as 'to enable us to do this. Had he so chosen he could have made us capable of perceiving directly the law of gravitation, and other powers in nature, but he has seen fit instead to give us the power of observing the individual operations, say the fall of an apple, and thence to rise to the discovery of the law. So in metaphysics we have only the power of individual intuition, and it is by induction of the single operations that we rise to the discovery of the necessary truth. IV. It is important at this early stage to announce that I mean to prove as we advance that our intuitions are not of the nature of Forms imposed on things by the mind. This is the view taken by that powerful thinker Immanuel Kant, who for the last century has so powerfully swayed philosophic thought, not only in Germany, but wherever in Europe or America there are reflecting minds. When we look on external objects we view them as in space and occupying space, which space is supposed to be superinduced upon them by the mind. In opposition I hold that we are so constituted as to behold things as they are: we behold bodies in space, both the bodies and the space being realities (a). (a) An age ago it was of all things the most important to point out the errors of Locke. Throughout this treatise I am opposing his view that all truth is gained by a gathered experience. In this age it is more important to point out the errors of Kant. In both cases there should be an acknowledgment of the great truths which these two profound thinkers have established. Kant errs, I., in proceeding in the Critical instead of the Inductive method. He errs, II., in holding that we know merely Phenomena in the sense of Appearances and not Things. He errs, III., in maintaining that the mind knows things, not as they are, but under Forms which we impose upon them. ས· It is of special importance in the present day to show that it is wrong to represent 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 man might not be truth to other intelligent beings. This account might be correct if the intuitive convictions were mere creatures of the mind, or borne in upon it by a blind natural impulse. But I have been laboring to show that our intuitions are intuitions or cognitions of things. They must be the same in all beings who know the things. In this view truth is immutable and eternal. It is a truth whether I perceive it or not, whether other intelligences perceive it or not. It is a truth to me because I am so constituted as to know things. It is a truth not merely to me or to you, but to all men: not only to all men, but to all intelligences capable of knowing the things. That two straight lines cannot inclose a space is a truth at all times and in all places, in the planet Mars as well as in the planet Earth. That ingratitude is morally evil must hold true in all other worlds as in this world of ours, where sin so much abounds. It is thus that we meet those who, like Herbert Spencer, assuming that our intuitions are developed, argue that their authority is thereby undermined. We show that however produced, they are intuitions of things. This is shown at the close of this volume. CHAPTER VII. LEGITIMATE USE OF FIRST PRINCIPLES. I. THE grand aim of Metaphysics should be to construct a science of First Principles, that is, principles prior to experience, by the method of induction with self-consciousness as the agent of observation. In conducting this work it should first seek out these principles from amidst the other operations of the mind, separate them from these, and then determine precisely their modes of operation, and their laws. Throughout it should show what is the right application of these principles, and thus determine the use of Metaphysics. There is only one rule as to the spontaneous employment of first principles, and this is to determine to have no other end in view than to discover the truth, and then we are sure that the intuitions will act aright. But there may be anxious questions as to their reflex use in philosophic investigation. II. When we employ them we should show by a careful inspection and the appropriate tests that they are first truths. Unless we do so we may be tempted to use the limited laws of experience as if they were necessary and universal truths. One man will say, I am sure the earth does not move; I feel it to be stable. Another will tell you that he is not so silly as to believe in antipodes in which people stand with their heads downwards. A |