body, ground principles of the sciences of character, sociology, politics and practical sciences, which rest upon fundamental and ultimate axioms.

PRINCIPIA MEDIA.

§ 12. These principles constitute the great mass of what may be denominated working principles-the more familiar generalisations, sufficiently high to furnish proximate explanations of phenomena, but not going back far enough to weary and confuse the mind. First should be mentioned deductions from the class next above; then the immense number of propositions of physics, which create points of departure for practice, as the laws of the composition and resolution of motions and forces, of areas, of the mechanic powers of pneumatics, acoustics, electricity and opties, of crystallisation, of heat and light, of chemical elements and substances, various derivative laws of biology, laws of the classifactory sciences, of ethics, ethology, politics, &c. This division will embrace the most of the empirical laws of nature and the intermediate derivative laws. It includes by far the greatest proportion of the laws of nature. The character of these principles is sufficiently marked by the illustrations given; they are attained both inductively and deductively. Their importance for practical purposes is superior to that of any other class of principles.

PRINCIPIA MINORA.

§ 13. These principles, in the words of Bacon, ‘non multum ab experientia nuda discrepant. Yet there are statements of general facts, above an individual or single observation, and yet not sufficiently general to occupy the rank of mediate principles of a science, which require to be placed in a class superior to nuda experientia and inferior to the other. Deductions from mediate principles occur here, and the lowest generalisations of which any science takes cognisance. Expressions of the distinctive characteristics of species and varieties in the classificatory sciences may be instanced; so also expression of the minor characteristics of the chemical elements.

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CHAPTER LVI.

SYSTEMS.

§ 1. THE last distinctive product of Cognition to which reference will here be made is the System. A system is an organised body of knowledge including notions and judgments, single terms and propositions, definitions and divisions, arguments and principles. Systems, in other words, are the larger aggregates of cognitions, inclusive of many or all of the minor aggregations indicated by the names just given. It is somewhat difficult to fix the constitutive boundaries of these products. The term system may be applied to a narrower or wider range of beings or events, and may be founded on generalisations which are narrower and wider, or on inductions which are more or less profound. They may include a single kingdom of organic or inorganic existences, or may embrace all material things. They may define and arrange these according to the more obvious properties and laws which are open to common observation, or may employ those properties which appear to hasty observation to be very remote, and which are reached only by the most sagacious conjectures and the most skilful experiments. They may include the domain of spirit only, or extend to the kingdoms of both matter and spirit, and arrange the two domains by the properties and laws which can be established as common to the two.'1

§ 2. A line of classification of systems may be followed which is very similar to that adopted in treating of principles. To begin with, systems may be either Empirical or Scientific. The former are the loose, unregulated, unverified, popular associations of knowledge, which have little regard to the principles of scientific classification, and which are adopted to suit temporary convenience or to harmonise with prejudices which have already taken possession of the mind. In them empirical laws, incomplete arguments, doubtful or false judgments, accidental definitions and artificial divisions make up the total. Scientific systems are sciences, and a classification of scientific systems is a classification of the sciences. It is needless to say that it is only with scientific arrangements that science has to do. In so far as there is any co-ordination of

1 Porter, Human Intellect, Part III. Chap. IV.

knowledge, any systematisation, so far is knowledge proceeding to science. Every system, even the most crude and artificial, is hence scientific so far forth as it is system. And in dealing critically with any arrangement, the process is one of scientific ordination. Those classifications which are useless for the purposes of science are discarded, and have no place in a scientific treatise. So that only in a relative sense are systems divisible into the empirical and scientific. The former may be characterised and noted as existing, but in this very process they come to be a portion of and to play a part in a scientific system. Even the empirical systems, by virtue of their being systems at all, are scientific and occupy a rank (though perhaps a low one) among the achievements of science.

§ 3. Systems are divisible into the two general classes of Theoretical and Practical. The former are systems of truths arranged with reference to cognition; the latter, systems arranged with reference to action. Theoretical truths are expressed in the indicative mode; practical in the imperative or in expressions equivalent thereto. The ultimate object of theoretical science is to know, of practical science to do. The one concerns immediately the department of intellect; the other the department of will. Theoretical science is science as apposed to art. The systems of the former have their principles in the form of doctrines or assertions respecting matters of fact; the latter have precepts or rules. 'The relation in which rules of art stand to doctrines of science may be thus characterised. The art proposes to itself an end to be attained, defines the end, and hands it over to the science. The science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and, having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to art with a theorem of the combination of circumstances by which it could be produced. Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and, according as any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable or not. The only one of the premisses, therefore, which art supplies, is the original major premiss, which asserts that the attainment of the given end is desirable. Science then lends to art the propositions (obtained by a series of inductions or of deductions) that the performance of certain actions will attain the end. From these premisses art concludes that the performance of these actions is desirable, and, finding it also practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept. . . . Art, in general, consists of the truths of

science arranged in the most convenient order for practice instead of the order which is most convenient for thought. Science groups and arranges its truths so as to enable us to take in at one view as much as is possible of the general order of the universe. Art, though it must assume the same general laws, follows them only into such of their detailed consequences as have led to the formation of rules of conduct; and brings together from parts of the field of science most remote from one another the truths relating to the production of the different and heterogeneous conditions necessary to each effect which the exigencies of practical life required to be produced.'1

§ 4. Systems may also be classified with regard to their generality; they may also be classified variously, according to the matter of which they are composed, and according to the form in which that matter is arranged. Inasmuch, however, as classifications of sciences have been given in the introduction, we need not dwell upon them longer in this place.

§ 5. The data of every science are the particular facts to be arranged; the process of systematisation is one of gathering together in groups and declaring the similarities. A scientific system, then, rests upon and concerns itself with various notions and with their expression in principles. Every science has its own proper notions, and its principles of all degrees of generality from principia minora to postulates. In order to complete a scientific system it is necessary, after making out the boundaries of the system in a provisional manner, and making whatever provisional assumptions are necessary, to collect all the particular facts possible which are within those limits, to generalise into principles the facts obtained, to ascertain and define the notions concerned. When all the particular facts have been collected and scrutinised, when the notions have been ascertained and defined, the limits of the system corrected and made clear, and when all the data have been generalised into principles in their various orders of generality, and those generalisations verified in the most complete manner possible-when all this has been accomplished, the highest degree of knowledge of which man has any conception has been reached in a particular department. And when all branches, departments, systems, and sciences have been similarly integrated into one general science of sciences, then, if ever, universal knowledge will have been reached and knowledge itself will be complete and perfect.

Mill, System of Logic, Bk. VI. Chap. XI.

VOL. II.

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CHAPTER LVII.

SOME THEORIES OF INTUITIONAL KNOWLEDGE.

§ 1. THE great controversies that have arisen over the subject of intuitional knowledge, and the wide differences that have existed among philosophers with respect to what constitutes intuition and to what knowledge the term ought to be applied, warrant a critical examination of some theories that have been advanced, in addition to our expository consideration of the subject (Chap. XXXVIII.).

§ 2. President Porter, of Yale College, in a work on The Human Intellect,' after giving what treatment he desires to presentative and representative knowledge, heads the fourth and crowning part of his treatise, Intuition, The Categories, First Principles; and proceeds to state what the cognitions or beliefs' of which he is speaking have been denominated. He follows Hamilton's enumeration, and in his smaller work (an abridgment of the other) mentions the ensuing: Intuitions, categories of thought, first principles, self-evident or intuitive truths, primitive notions, innate cognitions, metaphysical or transcendental truths, ultimate or elemental laws of thought, primary or fundamental laws of human belief, pure or transcendental or à priori conditions." This catalogue even (which is sufficient for our present purpose) is perplexing enough, but Sir William Hamilton's list in his 'Note A' in Reid exhibits a still greater and most astonishing variety of characteristic names synonymous with intuition, all indicating the same things, or what are supposed to be the same things, though he does not agree with President Porter in giving the place of honour to the name intuition." It would be impracticable in a review of this character to refer to all the applications of this much-abused word. In specifying two or three methods of its employment, I will cite cases, marking the chief positions taken by those who claim the right of using intuition to designate knowledge beyond the presentative.

§ 3. Dr. Campbell, in his celebrated work on the Philosophy

1 Intellectual Science, Part IV. Chap. I.

2 Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy; Wight's Ed. New York, 1857, p. 50 et seq