The intuitions of the mind inductively investigated / by James McCosh.

  • James McCosh
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The intuitions of the mind inductively investigated / by James McCosh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pronounce decisions in which it is involved. But in the formation of the general maxim, there is a process of logical thought involved for which the intuition is not responsible. It is only in the form of convictions regarding individuals presenting themselves that our intuitions manifest themselves in aU men,—in children and savages for instance. The boy decides that the ball which he holds in his hand cannot be at the same time in the hand of some other boy who may pretend to have it; but he has not, meanwhile, con- sciously before him the formula that it is impossible for the same body to be in two places at the same time. The individual convic- tion is in all men when the objects are pressed on their attention ; the general maxim is the result of thought, and especially of abstraction and generalization. By drawing this distinction we are able to maintain that intuitions are native and in all minds, and yet save ourselves from the absurdity in which so many metaphysicians land themselves when they speak of children or infants as employed in contemplating the ego and the non-ego, personality, externality, subject and object. The particular conviction is formed by all in a concrete form when the appropriate objects present themselves ; but the abstract formula is fashioned by those addicted to reflection, and is not even understood except by those whose minds are matured and cultivated. SECT. V.—THE INDIVIDUAL INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS CAN BE GENE- RALIZED INTO MAXIMS, AND THESE ARE ENTITLED TO BE REPRE- SENTED AS PHILOSOPHIC PRINCIPLES. The native principles in the soul are analogous to the physical laws operating in external nature. Both act at all times, on the necessary conditions being supplied. Like the physiological pro- cesses of respiration and the circulation of the blood, the intuitions do not depend for their operation on any voluntary determination of the human mind, and they act whether we observe them or no ; indeed they often act best when we are taking no notice of them. We cannot command their exercise on the one hand, nor prohibit it on the other. A greater or less number of them are working in the soul at every waking moment of our existence. It is always to
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