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here uses the term under consideration with reference to the Intelligence exclusively. His meaning is, that ideas a priori are the condition and ground of all other mental perceptions and affirmations. In conformity with this statement, he first attempts to show that the ideas of time and space are the necessary condition of all affirmations of Sense and Consciousness pertaining to the qualities of all substances subjective and objective. When, for example, a certain effect is produced upon the Sensibility by some unknown cause a cause, as his theory affirms, existing nowhere and in no time-the ideas of time and space are developed, while the effect is postulated as the quality of some cause external to the mind, and existing in time and space. This mental act postulating a subjective effect as the quality of some external cause, is what he calls perception. But for these ideas, no such perception could have taken place.

He then goes on to show (and here, as we shall see, he is correct), that other a priori ideas are the condition of all Understanding-conceptions and affirmations of the Judg

ment.

Such are the principles of these schools. In their fundamental affirmations, both are alike wrong. This I will now attempt to show.

Principles of Locke tested with reference to Necessary Ideas. We e begin with Empiricism-the proposition that all our knowledge, all ideas now in the mind, come from experience, from sensation and reflection. Take as an example the idea of space. Here I lay down this proposition as self-evident, that that which cannot give the essential fundamental characteristics of an idea, cannot give the idea itself. Now the fundamental characteristics of the idea of space, are infinity and necessity. The Reason apprehends space as infinite, and not only affirms that it is—that is, that it exists, but that it must be. On the other hand, everything of which we are conscious and which we perceive, is finite, and as we have seen in the former Chapters, is also contingent. Nor can these faculties reach beyond the finite. But the idea of the infinite is in the Mind, because the idea of space is there, which is infinite. The idea of space, then, cannot come from Sensation or Reflection. But suppose that Sensation or Reflection, or both together, could give space as infinite. They could merely affirm that it is, not that it must be. The

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system of Locke, and of the entire sensual school, falls to the ground, when tried upon the idea of space. The same fact might with equal distinctness be shown to be true with respect to all ideas which lie beyond the limits of the contingent. Thus far and no farther can Empiricism go. Necessary, universal, absolute, and eternal truths, can never be derived from experience, for the obvious reason that they are not the objects of experience. They lie entirely beyond the limits of Sense, and Consciousness or Reflection, which constitute the sole ground and source of experience.

Principles of Locke fail in respect to Understanding-concep

tions.

But Empiricism not only fails entirely, when tried upon all necessary truths, but also upon all the phenomena of the Understanding. Every notion existing in the Understanding is composed, as we have seen, of two classes of elements, the phenomenal and the rational, the contingent and the necessary. These elements are given by faculties entirely distinct the one from the other. The phenomenal-are given by Sense and Consciousness. The rational by the Reason. The first elements only are given by experience. The last lie beyond the bound of experience. Example: Sense perceives the quality of some external substance. No notion can be formed till the idea of substance is developed, by conceiving of this quality as belonging to some substance. So of all the notions of the Understanding. As they all embrace elements necessary as well as contingent, and as the latter only are derived from experience, all such notions include elements which were never given by experience.

Error of Kant.

The fundamental error of Kant, understanding the proposition, that necessary ideas are the condition and ground of all experience, as he employs it-that is, in its universal form, as including all intellectual affirmations--has been made sufficiently manifest in preceding Chapters. The intuitions of Sense and Consciousness, instead of being conditioned on the prior existence, in the mind, of the ideas of time and space, are themselves the necessary chronological antecedents of these ideas. Using then the term experience as pertaining to the intuitions of these faculties, the proposition of Kant is demonstrably false. All necessary ideas sustain

to the contingent the relation of logical, while the latter sustain to the former the relation of chronological antecedents. It is the height of absurdity to represent the logical antecedent as the condition and ground of the existence of the chronological.

Position of Kant true in respect to Understanding-conceptions and Affirmations of the Judgment.

If we admit that contingent intuitions are the chronological antecedents of necessary ones, still it may be asked, is there not an important sense in which the proposition, that ideas a priori are the condition and ground of all experience, is true? It is strictly true, I remark, if the term experience be used with reference, not to the phenomena of Sense and Consciousness, but as it is sometimes used, with reference to the Understanding and Judgment. There is a wide difference between merely perceiving and understanding an object. An object is perceived when it is presented to the mind as an object of Sense. It is understood when, and only when, such questions as these have been resolved in respect to it, to wit: When and where does it exist? what are its qualities, its nature, substance, quantity, and relations? But the resolution of these questions necessarily pre-supposes the existence of the ideas of time, space, substance, quantity, quality, and relation, in the mind. Using the term experience in the sense of understanding objects, how perfectly manifest is the fact, that necessary ideas are not derived from experience, but are themselves, together with the perceptions above referred to, the condition and ground of experience.. Some object must first be perceived-not understood, but perceived before necessary ideas can be developed in the mind. Perception and Consciousness, then, in the sense now explained, are the chronological antecedents of all necessary ideas, and these again are both the logical and chronological condition and ground of experience—that is, of understanding objects. But Perception and Consciousness do not give necessary ideas, only in this sense: when any object or phenomenon is perceived by Sense or Consciousness, the Reason, on occasion of such perceptions, enters into immediate and spontaneous exercise, and apprehends the ideas of space, time, substance, cause, quantity, quality, relation, &c. These ideas are not derived from, but merely occasioned by such perceptions. These ideas thus developed,

then become the laws of thought, under the influence and guidance of which all our knowledge of objects is derived-that is, all our experience, using the term in the sense of understanding objects.

Now if we understand the word experience as mere Sense and Consciousness, then, I repeat, it is the chronological condition or ground of all ideas in the mind. In this sense of the term Locke is, no doubt, right in the affirmation, that all our knowledge is derived from experience. But this is evidently not the sense in which the term was understood by him. But if experience be understood, as designating the notions (contingent and relative) formed in the mind, of objects of Sense and Consciousness, then I affirm that such notions, instead of being either the logical or chronological antecedents of necessary ideas, are themselves both the logical and chronological CONSEQUENTS of such ideas.

TRUE EXPLANATION.

Intuitions.

The question in respect to the origin of our knowledge, together with its progress from its commencement to its development in its present form, now admits of a ready explanation. Knowledge, in all instance, commences (certain conditions being fulfilled) with the intuitions of Sense and Consciousness. Reason then intervenes, and affirms the logical antecedents of each empirical intuition, as it is given.

Notions.

The next class of phenomena that appears is Understanding-conceptions, in which the intuitions referred to are combined into notions of particular things. At first all such notions are concrete and particular. The elements of the abstract, the general, and the universal exist, but they exist only in the concrete.

The Judgment.

The Judgment now intervenes, and under the influence of the ideas of resemblance and difference, separates the elements of the abstract, general, and universal, from the concrete and particular. Then notions, abstract and general, and ideas of Reason in their abstract and universal form, appear on the theatre of Consciousness. A new action of

the Judgment now takes place-an action in which the particular is subsumed under the abstract, the general, and the universal.

Associating Principle and the Imagination.

In the midst of all this movement, the associating principle is perpetually active, and over all the great deep of thought thus set in motion, the Imagination then hovers, and blends the endlessly diversified elements of mental conception, feeling, and action, into forms more perfectly harmonizing with the ideas of the just, the good, the beautiful, the sublime.

Scientific Movement.

The last movement of Mind is the scientific movementa movement in which the properties and relations of the varied objects of thought are systematically evolved in the light of fundamental ideas and principles of Reason. Such is the origin of knowledge. Such, too, is the movement of Mind from the beginning, as it rolls on towards its final consummation in pure and universal science. In beauty, grandeur, and sublimity, nothing can be compared with the movement of Mind. All that is external and visible but feebly reflects it.

MANNER IN WHICH THE GENERAL, ABSTRACT, AND UNIVERSAL ARE ELIMINATED FROM THE CONCRETE AND PARTICULAR.

But one additional topic, connected with the present subject, requires elucidation, to wit: The manner in which notions, general and abstract, and ideas and principles, universal and necessary, are eliminated from notions and judgments, concrete and particular.

General Notions.

In answering this inquiry, I begin with general notions. We will take for example and illustration, the notion desig-. nated by the word mountain. It is admitted, that in the first development of the Intelligence, there was no such general notion in the mind. The Intelligence began not with the general notion, but with the conception of some particular mountain which had before been an object of perception. How then is the general eliminated from the particular? Another

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