sense.

inward consciousness. It may mean mere personal experience, or it may contain the whole gathered experience of mankind. It has been employed to stand for the experience of sense, and it has been so enlarged as to conspire all that we can know or feel by any or all of our cognitive powers, such as consciousness and conscience. In this section I use it to express all that comes into consciousness; for, properly speaking, there is no experience till the fact is perceived within. Taken in this sense it would be nearer the truth, that is, would embrace a larger portion of truth, were we to say that our knowledge and ideas are drawn from the experience of consciousness, rather than from the experience of We cannot reproduce things in idea, we cannot generalize any conglomerate of facts till they have been in consciousness, into which, however, they must have come by a cognitive power, which is therefore the true source of knowledge. When I limit the phrase "experience" to a particular class of apprehended facts, I will give notice by an epithet or explanatory clause. If it be needful to fix steadily in how wide a sense we use "experience," it is still more essential to determine under what particular aspect we view intuition, when we would consider its relations to experience. We have seen, in an earlier part of this treatise (Part 1. Book п. Chap. i. sect. 2), that Intuition may be contemplated under three general aspects, as a body of regulative principles, as spontaneous convictions, and as generalized maxims. Under each of these, Experience stands in a different relation to Intuition.

I. Let us consider the relation of Experience to Intuition, considered as a body of Regulative Principles. In this sense intuition, being native and original, is prior to experience of every kind, personal or general. So far from depending on what we have passed through, our intuitions are a powerful means of prompting to the acquisition of experience; for, being in the mind as natural inclinations and aptitudes, they are ever instigating to action. All of them seek for objects, and are gratified when the proper objects are presented. Just as the eye was given us to see, and light is felt to be pleasant to the eyes, so the cognitive powers were given us in order to lead to the acquisition of knowledge,

and they are pleased when knowledge is furnished. Our belief as to the boundlessness of space is ever alluring us to explore it in earth and sea, and in the deep expanse of heaven; and our belief in time without beginning and without end is ever tempting us to go back through all the years which human history opens to us, and beyond these, through all the ages which geology discloses, and to look forward, as far as human foresight and Bible prophecy may enable us, into the dim events of the future. Thus, too, our minds delight to discover substances acting according to their properties, and plants and animals developing according to the life that is in them, to find species and genera in the whole organic kingdoms, to trace mathematical relations corresponding to our higher intellectual cravings among all the objects presenting themselves on the earth and in the starry heavens, and to rise from near effects to remote causes in space and time. Nor is it to be omitted that our moral convictions prompt us to look for, and when we have found Him, to look up to a Moral Governor of the universe, and to anticipate of Him that He will be ready to support the innocent sufferer, and to punish the wicked. It should be added, that in experience we are ever finding a gratifying exemplification of our native tendencies, and a satisfying corroboration of our intuitive expectations. We expect a cause to turn up for this mysterious occurrence; we may be disappointed at first, but in due time it appears. We anticipate that this secret deed of villany will be detected and exposed; and so we are amazed for a season when we hear of the perpetrator flattered by the world, and seemingly favoured in the providence of God; but our moral convictions are vindicated when the wicked man is at last caught in the net which had all along been weaving for him, and all his illgotten spoils are made to add to the weight of his ignominy, and to embitter his disgrace.

II. Let us consider the relation of Experience to our Intuitive Convictions as these are manifested in Consciousness. We have now a more complicated series of circumstances to look at and to weigh. Under this head we cannot speak of intuition and experience as being opposed; every conviction, be it of sense or con

sciousness, of the understanding or of conscience, is an experience. It is in itself an experience, and it is an experience which can be generalized.

ness.

So far, all is clear enough. The difficulty and the confusion arise when we contemplate the relation of experience to the forthcoming of the regulative principle into action, and into consciousThere is a sense in which experience is required in order to such manifestation. Thus, in some cases, the mental intuition is called forth by an external stimulus; it is thus that our knowledge of body is evoked by an action of the bodily senses. It is to be observed, however, in regard to all such cases, that it is scarcely correct to represent the intuition as depending on experience; it depends, no doubt, on an outward stimulus as an essential part of the concause, but the action can scarcely be called experience, for there is nothing in consciousness till the intuition is in energy. The proper statement is that there must be the concurrence of an outward action, in order to the rise of the inward conviction. Again, it is a fact that all our intuitions relate, directly or indirectly, to objects which have become known by sensation and reflection, in the sense explained in the two preceding sections. But in estimating this circumstance, it is to be remembered that sensation and reflection are themselves intuitions, and comprise very deep convictions. Once more, there are cases in which the intuition is called into exercise by the representations or apprehensions that have risen up in the mind. This is the case with all our primitive beliefs, judgments, and moral convictions; they all depend on previous cognitions, and our judgments may further depend on beliefs. Thus it is when we contemplate an object as extended, and an event as happening in time, that our intuitive convictions as to space and time spring up; it is when we consider two straight lines, that we proclaim that they cannot enclose a space Thus it is when we look to objects grouped into classes, that we declare that whatever is predicated of the class may be predicated of all the members of the class. Thus it is when we look to certain voluntary acts of intelligent beings, that we regard them as good or evil, rewardable or punishable. In regard then to all intellectual beliefs and judgments, and to all moral cogni

tions, beliefs, and judgments, there must always be an experience on which they proceed. But, in making this statement, let it be observed first, that the experience may not be one of sense. Thus, our moral convictions proceed, not on an outward sensation, but on a voluntary action being presented to the moral power. It is to be further taken into account that the beliefs and judgments may often proceed on an experience which is itself intuitive. I proceed upon an intuitive conviction regarding time when I declare it to be infinite, and on an intuitive knowledge of extension, when I affirm that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It thus appears, in regard to our spontaneous convictions, that there is no proper opposition between experience and intuition; that we must beware of making sweeping declarations in the idea that they will apply to all instances; that in most cases there is a complex cooperation of the two; and that we must consider each class of cases separately, in order to determine what is the precise nature of the relation.

III. Let us consider the relation of Experience to Intuitive Maxims which are Generalized Intuitions. In order to reach these experience, the experience of individual convictions, is always necessary, is indeed an indispensable condition. The maxim is just the generalization of the experiences. These, however, are not observed facts, but judgments, which do indeed look at objects, but are in themselves intuitive, that is, are pronounced on the bare contemplation of the objects.

And so we must ever distinguish between two sorts of general laws. One kind is obtained from facts external or internal, one or both, which may have fallen under our notice, no matter how, through our own experience or through that of others also. It is thus that we reach the law that monocotyledonous plants have parallel-veined leaves; that the positive poles of a magnet repel each other; and that ideas which have at any time coëxisted in the mind tend to recall each other. But we can reach a higher order of general truths. Discovering by bare contemplation that these two parallel lines, however prolonged, cannot approach nearer each other, and that we would pronounce the same decision as to

any other set of parallel lines, we declare of parallel lines generally, that they will never meet. Looking at a given individual sin, the conscience proclaims that it merits condemnation; and as it would do the same as to every other violation of the moral law, we reach the general maxim that all sin is of evil desert.

For laws so different in their nature and in the manner of their being reached, it is desirable to have a difference of appellation or nomenclature. The one class may be described as obtained from observed facts, the other, as derived from primitive judgments. The one may be called INDUCTIVE LAWS, the other INTUITIVE MAXIMS or AXIOMS. The one may be designated as OBSERVATIONAL, the

other as NECESSARY TRUTH.

The one kind of laws may or may not hold good beyond the limits of experience. We may be able to say of some of them, as of the law of universal gravitation, that they are wide as the cosmos open to human observation; but we are not entitled to affirm dogmatically that they do, or that they must pervade all space. It is a general rule that the leaves of monocotyledons have parallel veins; but the arum and some other plants proceeding from one seed-lobe have netted venation. There may be worlds in which substances obey very different magnetic laws from those to which they are subject in our earth. It is quite possible that, in other parts of the universe, there may be intelligent creatures whose ideas follow an order of succession very different from those of human beings. But it is true over all our earth, and must be true in all other worlds as well as in this, that cruelty is a sin. Present to the mind a phenomenon, that is, a new object or occurrence, and it insists that it must have had a cause, and this whether it be within or beyond the range of our experience.

Considered under this aspect, the opposition is not between experience and intuition, but between a GATHERED EXPERIENCE and GENERALIZED INTUITIONS.

SECT. V.-ON THE NECESSITY ATTACHED TO OUR PRIMARY

CONVICTIONS.

We have seen throughout the whole of this treatise that a conviction of necessity attaches to all our original cognitions,