INTUITION.

FROM "THE INDEX," TOLEDO, OHIO.

[1878.]

IN N the last number of The Index which has reached my eye (June 7), there is an editorial summary of the contrasts to Free Religion; and among the contrasts is placed Intuitionalism. Since I account myself a Free Religionist, while I also profess to be an Intuitionalist, I beg to explain wherein I think the writer to misunderstand Intuition.

First, I would protest against accepting Theodore Parker as a trustworthy expounder of the doctrine. He was a man of high moral sensitiveness, commanding will, noble aspiration, wide and rapid in his survey of men and books, bold and warm, eminent in unselfishness and self-sacrifice; but far from accurate either in logic or in history. He made the wonderful assertion that mankind at large has intuition of a Future State, blind to the fact that this is false of the ancient Hebrews and of the modern Buddhists, to say nothing of our irreligious multitudes. Like Mazzini and the deist Lord Herbert of Cherbury, he regarded God and Immortality as alike truths of intuition; but I know few Theists who can herein follow him. The vast majority of men regard a Future State as precisely the darkest of all dogmas, -"The Great Enigma." One part glorifies Christianity because it reveals this otherwise unattainable doctrine; another part holds spirit rapping" to admiration for the same reason. The misapplication of a principle by one who exalts it, is no disproof of the principle.

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I was an intuitionalist in Geometry before I became an intuitionalist in Morals and Religion. It is to me a clear first principle that no science can exist except on the basis of intuition; and as Geometry is the received type of the most perfect science, I hope it will not displease the readers of The Index if I enter a little into this, avoiding technicality as far as possible. The common treatises of Geometry, following Euclid, put forth in

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the outset certain axioms, or propositions to be received without proof; i.e., to be received upon mere reading of them, or to be believed upon looking at them,-which, in Latin phrase, is, by INTUITION. Thus intuition confronts us on the threshold of the science. Of the current axioms, some are verbal and belong to all quantitative science; yet two, quite necessary, are purely geometrical: some persons would make three, but the following two suffice: 1. Between any two points in space one path exists shorter than any other; 2. Two straight lines in the same plane perpendicular to a third are everywhere mutually equi-distant. From the first we can prove the primary properties of a plane; from the second the primary properties of parallel straight lines. Many attempts have been made to get rid of these axioms, but the reasoner has had at last to propose some other axiom as a substitute. But if any should now succeed in this attempt, the fact would remain, that prior reasoners who rested on mere intuition, held as complete a conviction of truth as any of us, and a just conviction too.

Next, in the science of Mechanics we begin by laying down certain laws concerning equilibrium and motion, and concerning the transference of forces from one point of application to another. For all of these but one, mere intuition suffices to bring conviction; yet appeal may be made, and is made, to experiment, to furnish material for the proofs by argument called "induction." For the main law of Dynamics intuition does not suffice; yet neither does experiment, if we reason severely: for, the dogma that a ball once set in motion will move for ever, with undiminished velocity, if unimpeded, is not adequately established as absolute truth by the petty experiments which alone we can make,-such as, on a lawn and on a sheet of ice. Such experiments suffice for the presumption of truth. Call it a hypothesis rather than a law; then in the applications of the science abundant verification of the hypothesis is found. But (what must here be pressed) induction itself rests on a basis which is anything but demonstrative. Its basis is one or more provisional assumptions, to be received as were the axioms of Geometry, upon intuition. The late Professor Baden Powell, a very keen searcher into first principles, bases induction on two presumptions, and says that the first is justified by the second. 1. "All phenomena of the kind in question are similar to the few which are actually examined." 2. Nature is uniform in her laws and processes. Now in a book problem of Mechanics or of Heat, where we by hypothesis exclude

diversity, we hardly need the first principle at all; but when we deal with actual Nature, and consider the vagueness of the word "similar," the second presumption by no means "justifies" the first-much less in Chemistry, in Physiology, and in human action, where elements are very numerous, and a complexity easily unsuspected by us is at work. But the second principle, on which Sir John Herschel insists that all modern science rests -the uniformity of Nature-is furnished to us originally by intuition; just as are the axioms in Geometry. No doubt we have much after-verification of the doctrine, in the harmony of each science with itself, and next of each with others; finally in the agreement of results indicated by science with results ascertained by direct inquiry and observation. Not the less is the original doctrine a presumption, a hypothesis, a provisional truth, dictated to us by good sense, by common sense, or, it may be, by uncommon sense, by genius, upon mere intuition. Nor is this all. The "uniformity" of Nature is a very vague phrase, needing different interpretations under different circumstances, and often yielding little more than a suggestion by Analogy. In the actual process of induction we cannot dispense with consideration of chances (as I have explained in the "Fragments of Logic" prefixed to my volume called Miscellanies). If we know no reason for supposing the cases not examined to differ from those examined, we presume similarity: and when we find partial verifications (in fact) of that which was anticipated (by argument), we need to inquire "whether this is too much to attribute to chance." This is decided only by good sense (common or uncommon), which is supreme arbiter; just as on propositions called intuitive. One might even say we decide by intuition whether an induction is sound. Yet, of course, this is an intuition of a mind well versed in special inquiry.

I hold that science is indissolubly wedded to intuition, and that we can never succeed in building Religion into a science if we cast off intuition. I advance nothing paradoxical, but that which we must expect. I do not regard intuition as a faculty, any more than is "good sense" a faculty. Barbarians eminently lack good sense, as is testified by their wild credulity. Wide information, habits of orderly, systematic thought, instrumental aids to accuracy (such as writing affords), public debate, open judicial processes,-all these combine to diffuse general good sense in a community; so that, as the mind of nations becomes cultivated, the sounder is the judgment and the more trustworthy

the sentiment which rests on mere intuition. The basis of morals, however, is the agreement of barbarian with civilized man as to the relative rank of certain springs of action; such as, that gratitude is nobler than self-indulgence, patriotism than love of life, love of knowledge than love of dainty food, public spirit than private avarice. Only the soul from within pronounces a verdict upon such matters. If a man has a taste of his own in morals, as, if he hold a sensual life to be better and more desirable than a life of philanthropy and self-sacrifice,—we cannot argue him down; we can only vote him down by appealing to the intuition of mankind.

The most fundamental proposition of religion known to me is the axiom (justified by intuition) that "the qualities of a created mind cannot be higher, but must be immeasurably lower, than that of its Creator; or, "If there be a Mind ruling in the universe, it contains the noblest powers of the human mind, and vastly more." To impute pre-eminent intelligence and preeminent goodness to the primal source of our being, is the first step into Religion. It is not and cannot be demonstrated, otherwise than by appealing to the axiom which we lay down as intuitive. Of course, as axioms in science are very few, so are the intuitive truths of morals and religion. Geometers have fretted under the axioms, vainly; so likewise do utilitarian moralists and scientific religionists vainly fret against intuitive truths. Such first principles, though very few, are absolutely vital to the sciences.

As to making immortality an intuitive dogma, there are so many objections that it is wonderful (if anything were wonderful in religious opinion) how earnest theists can so treat it. But Coleridge wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity is the sole foundation of all reasonable philosophy; so with him the doctrine of the Trinity was intuitive! Let every man, for his own guidance, give as much weight as he pleases to his private thoughts, to his conscientious convictions, his auguries of what is coming, his theological philosophy; but no one can propose his "intuitive truths" as a basis for the belief of others—that is, as a basis for science. He must show, either that mankind in enormous preponderance believes them, so that they are matters of human intuition, not merely personal; or else, that in some proportion to men's growth in intellect, wisdom, nobleness of moral character, they tend to believe them. If Theodore Parker had been satisfied to alledge this tendency, he would have a claim

for immortality as a presumption; still, as I think, by no means as a dogma which may be simply announced as truth. Immortality has always been with me (ever since I ceased to receive the doctrine on Scriptural authority) only the final result of a chain of argument which, however I might succeed in shortening it, had several loopholes of error; nor have I ever entirely overcome an underlying suspicion that there may be an inherent contradiction (such as a German school maintains that there is) in the idea that the same individual who dies can revive. Hence, practically, I am here at a vast distance from Theodore Parker, who was able to preach the doctrine as a fact, and make it fundamental in religion. He was certainly wrong in asserting for it the rank of a truth intuitive to mankind.

But the question whether we can appeal to human intuition for a decision on this particular matter is one of detail. I desire only to bring out clearly the true doctrine of intuitive truths, or "propositions to which we assent by mere dwelling of the mind upon them."