the defenders of fundamental truth fall into such ambiguity of phraseology, and apply their test so unsatisfactorily, there is some excuse for those who criticise and oppose them when they take advantage of their mistakes.

I say "some excuse," for I cannot allow that this is an entire justification of Mr. Mill when he uses the word, as I shall show he does, in so many different senses; and when, in criticising Hamilton and Whewell, he employs it in a way they would not have allowed. Mr. Mill is aware that, when Sir William Hamilton is wishing to bring out his full meaning, he uses such phrases as "think," and "construe in thought:" and Dr. Whewell, while he also uses the word "think," is careful to represent Conceptions as modifications of Fundamental Ideas, which he enumerates and classifies. Mr. Mill always employs the phrase in a vague manner, and often in more than one signification. He must use it in the sense of "image" or "picture" when he says, "We cannot conceive a line without breadth; we can form no mental picture of such a line." (Logic, B. II. c. v. § 1.) This is all true, but it is also true that we can form an abstract notion of such a line. He states that Dr. Whewell's idea of necessary truth is "a proposition, the negation of which is not only false, but inconceivable." But then, in criticising this test, he uses the word in quite a different sense: "When we have often seen and thought two things together, and have never in one instance

Π.

either seen or thought of them separate, there is, by the primary law of association, an increasing difficulty, which in the end becomes insuperable, of conceiving the two things apart." (Ib., § 6.) It is clear that while Dr. Whewell uses the phrases as applica ble to a proposition declared to be true, Mr. Mil. employs it in the sense of mental pictures joined by association. This is one other instance of an amphiboly, which we have noticed before, and which will require to be noticed again in examining Mr. Mill's attempt to explain necessity of thought by association of ideas.

He tells us, "The history of science teems with inconceivabilities which have been conquered, and supposed necessary truths, which have first ceased to be thought necessary, then to be thought true, and have finally come to be deemed impossible." (p. 150.) And then he gives us once more his famous case of persons not being able to conceive of antipodes, being "merely the effect of a strong association." But let us understand precisely in what sense our forefathers had a difficulty in conceiving the existence of antipodes. It is evident that they could have little difficulty in imagining to themselves a round globe with persons with their feet adhering to it all around. Their difficulty lay in deciding it to be true; and the difficulty was increased by the very vividness of the picture of men, as they would have said, with their feet upward and their head downward. It is clear

that Mr. Mill, when he applies it to such a case, must be using the word in the sense of "judge " and "believe." But let us understand on what ground our ancestors felt a difficulty in yielding their judgment and belief. Not because of any supposed intuition or necessary truth,—I am not aware that they ever appealed to such; not even because of a strong association: but because the alleged fact seemed contrary to a law of nature established by observation. A gathered experience seemed to show that there was an absolute up and down, and that heavy bodies tended downwards, and thus, and not on any à priori grounds, did they argue that there could not be antipodes, as persons so situated would fall away into a lower space. As a narrow experience had created the difficulty, so it could remove it by giving us a view of the earth as a mass of matter, causing human beings to adhere to it over its whole surface. And such a case does not in the least tend to prove, that truths which are seen to be truths at once, and without a gathered experience, could ever be set aside by a further experience: that a conscious intelligent being could be made to regard himself as non-exist ing; that he could believe himself as having been in existence before he existed; or that he could be led to allow that two straight lines might enclose a space in the constellation Orion.

It is in the highest degree expedient, at the stage to which mental science has come, that the word

conceive,' and its derivatives, should be abandoned altogether in such a connection; as being fitted to confuse our ideas and mislead our judgments. The greatest and wisest philosophers have not appealed to the possibility or impossibility of conception as tests of truth or falsehood, but have pointed to other and clearer and more decisive criteria.1

1 The printing of this work had proceeded thus far, when I observed that Mr. M., in 6th edition of Logic, just published, has been obliged, in defending himself against Mr. Spencer, to notice that "conceive" might signify "to have an idea" or " to have a be

lief" (i. 303.) But he himself continues to take advantage of the ambiguity, which is greater than he yet sees. I have been laboring for years to make metaphysicians perceive the ambiguity.

CHAPTER XII.

SELF-EVIDENCE AND NECESSITY THE TESTS OF INTUITION.

R. MILL freely admits the existence and the

MR.

veracity of intuitive perceptions. But he has not inquired into their nature, their mode of operation, their laws, their tests, or their limits. What he has failed to do must be undertaken by others; and in the process it will be seen that intuition has quite as important a place in the mind as sensation, assbciation, or any of Mr. Mill's favorite principles, and that it must be embraced and have a distinct place allotted to it in a sufficient theory of our mental operations.

Our intuitions are all of the nature of perceptions, in which we look on objects known or apprehended: on separate objects, or on objects compared with one another. Sometimes the objects are present, and we look on them directly, by the senses and self-consciousness. In other cases they are not present, but still we have an apprehension of them, and our convictions, whether beliefs or judgments, proceed upon this apprehension. A very different account has often been given of them. According to Locke, the