The eagerness with which the new theory has been received by disciples of the Sensist school shows how utterly inadequate the old Associationist view was felt to be, even among the circle of its own advocates. Yet careful examination of the subject has convinced us that the solitary argumentative superiority the new doctrine possesses over its parent is that of removing the question from the region of rational discussion, and situating it where proof and disproof are alike impossible. This, however, is hardly an excellence which the empiricist can consistently admire. The only criterion which he recognizes is that of experience; the first condition of a hypothesis, capability of verification. Now, there is no theory, however wild, that has ever been broached on the subject-not even that of the ante-natal existence of the soul conjured up by the poetic fancy of Plato-which is more utterly beyond the possibility of scientific proof than the new doctrine. If it has to be admitted by positivist psychologists that it is practically impossible to get reliable evidence concerning the earlier mental states of the infant, it can hardly be disputed that the nature and development of the intellectual and emotional faculties of our remote ancestors of pre-human times are completely shut out from our ken.28 Geology and Paleontology may throw light on the anatomic structure of the earlier forms of animal life, but their mental endowments cannot be deduced from their fossil remains. Consequently, any hypothesis put forward as to the character and growth of the notion of space, time, causality, and morality in the alleged transitional species of past ages is as much outside the pale of science, as are the habits and customs of the natives of Sirius. The earlier sensationists, defective though their system was, at all events appealed in great part to a tribunal before which evidence could be tendered, and they at least professed to base their creed upon the facts of human consciousness; but, as Dr. Martineau forcibly urges, "their modern followers take refuge from this strong light in an earlier twilight where nobody can tell exactly what goes If Hobbes, as often happens, gives us a piece of droll psychology, every one who knows himself can tell whether it is true or false, and lay his finger on any distortion

on....

no real validity as applied to things-in-themselves: E. Associationism denies innate ideas in any form, and ascribes the necessity of these special cognitions to the continuous experience of the individual's own life.

28 This is admitted by some writers of the Sensist school. Cf. Croom Robertson, "Axioms," Encycl. Brit. (9th Edit.); also Sully, Sensation and Intuition, pp. 10—13.

it contains. If Darwin describes the inward conflict of an extinct baboon, he paints a fancy picture of what remains for ever without a witness." 29

We

Furthermore, the doctrine of transmitted hereditary experience as applied to necessary truths rests on a profound psychological misinterpretation of their character. It is credible that an instinct, or a tendency towards a particular species of emotion or action can be inherited, but the intuition of necessary truths is something essentially different. We have before pointed out that we do not apprehend the necessity of an axiom from any blind incapacity or negative limitation of thought; on the contrary, it is the translucent self-evidence of the truth itself which extorts assent. may in our present constitution be necessarily pained by extreme cold and heat, we may necessarily relish honey, or enjoy the scent of the rose, yet that these things are necessarily so for all consciousness we do not judge; but, that two things each equal to a third are equal to each other, we not only necessarily affirm, but affirm as necessarily holding in all being, and for all intelligence. Assent to self-evident axioms is, then, not a blind instinct due to habit either inherited or acquired, but a rational apprehension of intelligible relations objectively true.

Again, the hypothesis is exposed to the objection, quod nimis probat nihil probat. If it is true that ancestral experience has been transmitted in this way, we ought to find (a) innate cognitions of large number of other phenomena, and (b) a more perfect knowledge of space and other native endowments in the human infant than in young animals of inferior species. Now as regards (b), although we do not see sufficient evidence for denying to babies an intuitive though vague perception of extension, it would seem to be certainly established that chickens and young pigs apprehend space from the first with an accuracy scarcely attained by the fully developed man. As for (a), if it is true that the peculiar feature of necessity pertaining to these truths is due to the uniform experience of our ancestors, registered and transmitted in nervous tissue, it is not easy to see why such judgments as that "fire burns," "stones fall to the ground, and sink in water," "timber floats," "night follows day," and the like, have not a similar character. These propositions must represent a pretty uniform experience of our ancestors for a long way back in the series, while the number of occasions on which it was cognized that 7+5=3+9, or the number of times when the idea of "trilateral" was com

29 Types of Ethical Theories, Vol. II. p. 340.

pared with that of “triangular" and found to be conjoined in experience, cannot in the pre-mathematical age have been very frequent; yet the former are perceived to be contingent, the latter necessary.

Another difficulty may be urged as to the nature of that experience which generates these mental forms. What is the "environment," the "cosmos," that has been gradually creating these necessities of thought? All forms of sensism logically reduce space and extension to muscular feelings. Such a "" cosmos is, however, obviously of too shadowy a character for the needs of evolutionism. Mr. Spencer, indeed, here postulates an infinite unknowable energy as eternal, but other disciples, such as Mr. Sully, though sympathetic on many points, look upon this assumption as a surviving relic of the vulgar anthropomorphic instinct.30 Anyhow the difficulty remains: do these necessities which get translated into our consciousness condition that objective energy in itself? If so, then we would seem to have got the admission of objective necessary truth which holds for all being, and which reveals itself to the mind.31 If not, what right is there for assuming that the action of this eternal energy was universally uniform throughout all past time? There remains, finally, the insuperable objection that the soul being a spiritual principle, as we will prove hereafter, cannot have been inherited from non-rational animals.

INTUITIONALIST DOCTRINE.-The true view lies between Innatism and Empiricism. Although all knowledge starts from experience, it is false to assert that all axioms are mere formula summing up a gathered experience, whether of the individual or the race, and that our knowledge is limited to the range of such experience. Necessary truths may be either self-evident or deduced from such by demonstration. To the ordinary human mind the theorems of Euclid are examples of the second class. The self-evident necessary truths which comprise the various axioms are discerned by rational or intellectual intuition: that is, by simple consideration of the objects of thought about which they are affirmed. Just as we are capable of perceiving contingent impressions by sense, we have also the power of apprehending the natures of things, and the necessary relations which these involve by the intellect. These intellectual intuitions start from comparison exerted in singular instances, and it is only later on by a deliberately reflex act that the universal truth which 30 Sensation and Intuition, pp. 20-22.

31 Cf. Martineau's Types of Ethical Theories, Vol. II. pp. 356— 358.

these particular cases contain is formally generalized. I do not begin by an intuitive recognition of the abstract universal truth, What is greater than the greater is greater than the less; but, observing A to be greater than B, which I also know to be greater than C, I intuitively recognize as a self-evident necessary truth that A must be greater than C, becoming at the same time implicitly aware of the universal principle exemplified. Afterwards, by a deliberately reflexive act, I elevate this implicit cognition to the rank of the explicit or formally universal truth-every such A must be greater than C. I have thus reached the Axiom without a protracted comparison of a large number of A's with C's. The process is similar in the discovery of the Principles of Contradiction and Causality. Neither is a mere generalization from a multitude of observations, and neither is held in an abstract form by the child. But apprehending by the intellect, in the one case "this thing beginning to exist," and, in the other, "this being or this thing existing," and the universal truths illustrated, there is needed only an easy effort of reflexion upon the notions employed in the singular comparison to intuitively recognize the Axiom. Afterwards in complicated reasonings I may recur to the general rule to justify a particular step about which I am dubious, but the relation is first apprehended in the singular experience.32 Truths of this character are rightly termed transcendental. They are not limited to the field of observed phenomena. They underlie and extend beyond experience, and they constitute a body of knowledge of an entirely distinct order from that comprised in the experiential sciences.

We have now discussed the leading erroneous theories concerning intellectual ideas and axiomatic truths. Moreover, although the exposition of the true doctrine on this second question would from a logical point of view more appropriately follow our treatment of conception in the next chapter, it has, nevertheless, seemed to ús on the whole more convenient to deal at length with the subject here, confining ourselves to a very brief remark there. We will next proceed to that solution of the first question which seems to us to best harmonize with the facts. Our experience shows us that the objects of cognition are of two essentially distinct kinds, the one universal, abstract, or necessary; the other concrete, individual, and contingent. These different elements reveal

32 Cf. Dr. M'Cosh's Intuitions of Mind, Bk. I. Pt. I. c. ii. §§ 3, 4For an admirable exposition of the scholastic doctrine regarding the nature and origin of axiomatic truths, cf. Kleutgen, op. cit. §§ 288-309.

themselves to different faculties, the one intellectual or spiritual, the other sensuous or organic. Still, although the soul is endowed with apprehensive powers of two orders essentially distinct, these are not to be conceived as two entities or members standing apart from each other, and merely accidentally united by a common bond. They are, on the contrary, two properties, two functions, or rather two capabilities of the same substantial principle. The mind is a unity, in fact it is the type for us of every other unity; but nevertheless it is the source of distinct species of activity. The problem, then, to be solved, as apprehended by the most profound and penetrating of Greek minds, and by the acute thinkers of the middle ages, was: How are sensuous and intellectual knowledge related? how do the higher and lower activities reciprocally act on each other? how does the affection of organic sensibility excite the spiritual faculty to thought?

Readings. The literature on the nature and origin of Necessary Truth is abundant. Essays 1, 2, 4, and 5, in Dr. Ward's Philosophy of Theism, Vol. I. are exhaustive. Cf. also Dr. M'Cosh, Exam. of Mill, cc. xi. xii. and Intuitions of Mind, passim; and Mr. Courtney's Metaphysics of Mill, cc. vii. viii.

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