and improper. Therefore, while accepting Locke's doctrine, we think that clearness of statement calls for a threefold division of the perceptive phase of intellect.

The fact that concomitant perception acts only in connection with the other two modes of presentational thought does indeed excuse Locke's division and its general adoption by subsequent writers; yet, in metaphysical philosophy, it is often advantageous and even necessary to distinguish, and to consider separately, things which are inseparably united.

Perception is

tions in the

which it is

3. The convictions of perception, in their relation to not the origin all our other convictions, are primordial. In other of our convic- words, they are the beginnings of all knowledge same sense in and belief. This relation has not at all been so the origin of thoroughly considered as that of the thoughts, or our concep- ideas, of presentation, to our other thoughts, or ideas. We trace this neglect to the fact that the difference between thought and belief has been greatly overlooked and unconsciously belittled by philosophers; so much so that many, if not most, have treated belief as if it were merely either a clearer exercise of thought or a specific combination of ideas.

tions.

Were either of these opinions correct, we would naturally suppose the convictions of perception to be related to our other convictions simply in the same way that the conceptions of perception are related to our other conceptions; in other words, we would hold that all other than presentational convictions are formed from these latter merely by analysis and composition, a doctrine which would not be true.

The want of any tangible distinction between thought and belief, in Locke's writings, necessarily affected them with ambiguity and left them open to serious misunderstanding. Such ambiguity is especially apparent when he says that experience is "the original [or origin] of all knowledge." For knowledge is thought considered, not simply in itself, but as accompanied by certain and well-founded conviction; and while it is true that experience furnishes all the ideal, or conceptual, elements of knowledge, it is not true that it furnishes all the convictional elements of it. The very nature of inferential knowledge is to project itself beyond the range of presentational cognition. Yet Locke certainly intended to teach that experithat is, presentative cognition is the origin of all belief as well as of all thought; and he taught this doctrine without apprehending its duplex nature, and without perceiving that a true account of the origin of our convictions must differ materially from a true account of the origin of our conceptions.

ence

His teaching, however, as to the origin of our convictions is

obscure rather than incorrect. In a very important sense, presentation is the origin of all knowledge and belief. Locke does not say that subsequent convictions are merely the reproduction and elaboration of those which are presentational; but only that "perception is the first step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all the materials of it."

The differ

Locke and
Leibnitz.
The phrase

We cannot, therefore, agree with the great German ence between contemporary and opponent of Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, when he says: "In Locke there are some particulars not ill expounded; but upon the "nisi ipse intellectus" whole he has wandered far from the gate, and has discussed. not understood the nature of the intellect." On the contrary, the same cause of obscurity which affected Locke's doctrine equally affects the refutation of it attempted by Leibnitz in his Nouveaux Essais." In these he teaches that many “ideas and truths are innate" to the mind. By this, he says, we are to understand, not that they have been in conscious possession from birth, nor yet that they have no need of experience as an occasion for their apprehension, but that perception is not at all the origin or source of them, and that they are produced by another and higher power.

66

This teaching of Leibnitz has been accepted by later philosophers, especially by many who claim for man a power of "'intuition 66 or common sense." But it is no necessary part of modern intuitionalism;" and so far as it sets forth a source of ideas other than presentative perception, it is positively wrong. Locke's "Essay" is only negatively wrong in not distinctly recognizing, in certain phases of conviction, an element which is not derived from presentation.

A good view of this whole subject may be obtained from a consideration of that pithy statement in which Leibnitz expresses his dissent from Locke. In modification of the Aristotelian aphorism, "Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu," Leibnitz adds, "nisi ipse intellectus." Here, in justice to both parties, the term "sense" must signify, not sensation, nor even sense-perception, but presentative cognition in general. This use of terms is similar to that according to which consciousness, as a perception connected with feeling, has been called man's internal or spiritual sense. Indeed, Locke speaks expressly of "external and internal sensation." The term "intellect," also, must here signify the mind in its higher, or rational, phase of activity. And as this intellect can contain only two kinds of things, conceptions and convictions, the statement that there is nothing in intellect which has not been previously in perception means that every constituent element of conception and of con

viction is furnished by the presentative faculty. In opposition to which doctrine, and in the phrase "except intellect itself," we are taught that mind has a power of generating thought and conviction altogether different from the power of immediate cognition. Such, at any rate, is a fair statement of the view of Leibnitz as opposed to that of Locke.

So far as the origin of our thoughts or ideas is concerned, we prefer Locke to Leibnitz. At the same time the opinions of these illustrious men might be harmonized, and that, too, without any violent change in either opinion, if the following statements should be accepted as true:

1. It seems clear that powers of thinking and believing are born with, and innate to, the human soul.

2. The faculties of reproduction, analysis, and composition exist in addition to the perceptive faculty.

3. Presentation furnishes the elements of all thought or conception, considered merely as thought and aside from any accompaniment of belief. The sameness of the reproduced elements, however, is not literal, but only such as we ascribe to a repeated activity.

4. The convictions, as well as the conceptions, of the presentational intellect may be recalled, analyzed, and combined.

5. We can and do immediately perceive that necessitudinal connection whereby individual facts may be related to each other as antecedent and consequent, which perception is not inference (both facts being presentatively perceived), yet forms that same construction of thought which inference afterwards employs.

6. This inference, or reasoning, as a power and mode of belief, is something wholly additional to presentational conviction, and is not a derivative or secondary form of the same thing.

7. But at the same time presentation not only furnishes the necessitudinal modes of thought which inference employs, but also is the only ultimate ground of real conviction; for an antecedent must in some way have presentational evidence for its existence, before any consequent of it can be really known to be.

No one of the principles now enumerated can be neglected, or denied, or confounded with another, without leading to a confused or one-sided statement of the truth. The importance and the correctness of them cannot be further shown at present, but will become apparent in connection with future discussions.

The objects

are: 1. Real;

Descartes

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE PERCEPTIVE, OR COGNITIVE, PHASE.

The

1. LEAVING the subjective for the objective relaof perception tions of the perceptive faculty, a threefold doctrine 2. Individual; presents itself for consideration. In the first place, the object of perception is real; in the second, it is quoted and individual; and in the third, it is complex. discussed. "Cogito, ergo statement that the objects of our presentational cognitions are real is the equivalent of another statement more frequently discussed, namely, that our immediate perceptions are reliable or trustworthy. It is plain that presentational thought, in its very nature, asserts the existence of its objects, and that this existence can be gainsaid only by denying the truth or soundness of this assertion.

sum."

Very few speculators have attempted that extreme of scepticism which questions the testimony of consciousness; and those who, like David Hume, have done so, have not been able to produce any real doubt, even in themselves, as to the fact of one's own life and being; yet they have succeeded to some extent in confusing, first themselves and then others, as to the method by which this fact may be philosophically proved. But many have theoretically questioned, and even denied, the testimony of the senses.

This form of scepticism found nourishment in the doctrine of Plato that truth is gained only by contemplating the abstract and the universal, and in that scholastic mode of philosophizing which employed deduction from general principles as the allsufficient method of advancement in knowledge. Besides, the well-known facts that mistakes occasionally occur in connection with sense-cognition, and that dreams and hallucinations are attended with false belief, were cited against the reliability of external perception.

When René Descartes felt himself forced to discard old doctrines and methods, his difficulties with regard to the cognitions of sense led him to seek the foundations of certain knowledge in the perception of spiritual things. Confessing that he greatly doubted almost all things, he yet was sure that he doubted, and that he himself, the doubter, existed. In the first of his "Meditationes de Prima Philosophia," he shows, to his own satisfaction, that all things may be doubted save that we doubt, or rather that we think and have spiritual experience in general.

In his second meditation he claims to have found the To σT of Archimedes, - the fixed point on which to rest the lever of philosophic reasoning for the displacement of all false doctrines, and for the elevation of true conceptions into their rightful places. This was the certainty of the fact that he himself really doubted and thought. His words are: "Nonne ego ipse sum, qui jam dubito fere de omnibus, qui nonnihil tamen intelligo, qui hoc unum verum esse affirmo, nego cætera, cupio plura nosse, nolo decipi, multa vel invitus imaginor, multa etiam tamquam a sensibus venientia animadverto?" and he expresses this irresistible conviction of his own existence as a thinking being in the famous sentence, "Cogito, ergo sum.”

By this formula we are to understand, not that one's existence is either a part or a consequence of one's thought, but only that the certain knowledge of one's thinking involves the knowledge of the existence both of the thought and of the thinker. Descartes expressly says: "Neque etiam qui dicit 'ego cogito, ergo sum sive existo,' existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notam simplici mentis intuitu agnoscit" ("For he who says, 'I think, therefore I am,' does not infer existence syllogistically, but by simple. intuition perceives a thing self-evident"). In other words, Descartes assumed, or posited, certain knowledge of our own inward life and being.

From this circumstance some have supposed that he held consciousness to be the primordial source of conviction. Such, however, is not a fair presentation of his doctrine; for he found the source of the reliability of our internal perceptions, not in the power of the simple and direct cognition of that to which the active life of the soul may be immediately related, but in that clearness and distinctness which he found particularly to characterize certain modes of thought. He does not say, "Conscius sum cogitandi, ergo sum," but only, "Cogito, ergo sum." Thus Descartes came very near hitting the truth, yet missed it altogether, and went off like a comet into the abyss of hypothetical speculation.

"In this first knowledge which I have acquired," says he, "nothing but the clear and distinct perception of that which I assert assured me of its truth; and this could not have so assured me if it were possible that anything which I should conceive with the same clearness and distinctness should be false. Hence it seems to me that I may adopt the general rule that all things that I conceive very clearly and distinctly are true." For the word percipio, in the sentence, "Videor pro regula generali posse statuere, illud omne esse verum, quod valde clare et distincte percipio," means any kind of clear apprehension.