THE HUMAN INTELLECT.* To read, digest, and reproduce in an
abridged form all the writings of all philosophers of note on every phase of the, intellect's activity ! What an undertaking ! It were superhuman not to have failed sometimes, not to have shirked a question here, or to have hurried the work there, or to have been content with a mis- apprehension when to set it right would have entailed more time and trouble than could be afforded. To say that these faults are but seldom to be found in Dr. Porter's work is the highest com- mendation he could wish for. With the necessary amount of erudition he has united considerable power of analysis, of extract- ing the kernel in every case. The most striking example of this is perhaps to be found in his chapter on " Causation and the Relation of Causality," where the key-note of the philosophizing of Hume, Brown, and John Stuart Mill on this subject is quite adequately struck in the short space of five pages. We do not mean that the opinions of these philosophers could be learnt, but they could certainly be recognized there. The criticism upon them opens with this telling paragraph :- "Its advocates overlook the real question at issue. The belief to be explained or accounted for is that every event has a cause. The belief which the advocates of this theory seek to account for, is the belief that to each particular event or class of events some definite cause has been or may be actually assigned. That this last only can be the product of experience is obvious. That this is the belief in support of which they adduce illustrations and arguments is evident from the passages we have quoted from Hume and Mill. That this is not the belief which is in question needs no illustration or argument."
The fact is, Dr. Porter has avoided much of the pettiness and want of analysis of the mere text-book, by making his book something more. It is intended also as a book " for the library," and additions have been made for the satisfaction of " a smaller and more select class of students and readers." To this design we are indebted for much of the more important matter in the text, which has been placed in smaller type, as also for the valuable historical summaries of philosophical theories on the more vexed questions appended to their respective chapters. It will be sufficient to mention that these special summaries deal with such questions as " Sense-Perception," " The Nature of the Concept," "Intuitive Knowledge," for the philosophical student to refer to them with eagerness, as dealing with what are emphatically the questions of the day.
Dr. Porter's own theory of intuitive knowledge is, we think, one of the least satisfactory of his theories. As it lies, however, pretty much at the root of all his philosophizing, and contains in itself many good illustrations of the defects incidental to such a work as he has undertaken, it will be worth while to consider it more particularly. The philosophical mind hates the very name of intuitions, and we could at times he content to have missed all the subtle speculation of the Kantian philosophy to have lost also the popularization of this word. Since Kant it has been been the resource of indolent minds, and of those which are devoid of the necessary analytical power, when they arrive at some question too abstruse or too laborious for them to grapple with, to save their philosophical reputation by calling it an innate idea. We do not ourselves acquit Kant of all blame in this matter. He, however, as is well known, started with the scepticism of Hume, which he made it his aim to answer. Hume had shown that experience
* The Human Intellect. With an Introduction upon Psychology and the BM. By Noah Porter, D.D. New York: Scribner and Co. 1868.
could never confer certainty, but that its fancied reliability existed in the mind of the recipient—a moral certainty—through associa- tion and habit. Hence if our knowledge was to be objectively reliable, it must contain an element distinct from, and therefore prior to, experience. Such an element is to be found in the Sense-Forms of Space and Time, and in the Categories of the Understanding, in other words, in the form of the mind itself. Dr. Porter quotes from Locke, " Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus." Whether in perception or in reflection we pre- suppose a something to perceive or reflect. This something is then necessarily prior to experience, it is this which we term mind, the true " a priori," the only " innate." Examine the constitution of this mind, analyze it into its component parts, and you obtain legitimate intuitions, innate ideas ; but no idea can be accepted as intuitive or a priori unless it be deductively derived from the constitution of the mind itself. It is from this point of view that we venture to criticize Dr. Porter's theory. Dr. Porter is uncon- scious of the necessity for a " Transcendental Deduction." He just takes up the principles of the mind's action as they are given in experience, and obtained by abstraction and generalization from it. Thus though he assumes a higher stand-point in his special examination of deductive and inductive reasoning, he has not really freed his mind from the superstition of syllogism, he is still essentially wrapt up in the scholastic pseudo- Aristotelianism, with its progress from the concrete to the abstract, from the more determinate to the less determinate, from the indi- vidual to the general, in which the highest knowledge consists in the knowledge of this indeterminate, this vague and general abstraction.
Intuitions here are divided into "the formal, the mathe- matical, and the real," but this division is based upon nothing more than that these have their place in different spheres of knowledge, and are just found there. The formal intuitions are the highest genera of things, Being and the rela- tions of Identity and Diversity ; the mathematical are just Time and Space and what is involved in them, the real are the two notions of Causation and of Adaptation. Just as there is no deductive proof of the division, so neither is it shown that there are just this number of intuitions and no more, or why there should be. And generally the justification, the Rechtmiiasigkeit, the quid juris, as Kant would call it, is absent. But according to Kant, this is essential to the objective validity of the intuitions them- selves. We shall know now what to think of such passages as the following :— "These [intuitive] truths, instead of being the first to be consciously possessed and assented to, axe the last which are reached, and by only a few of the race ever reached at all. To reach them, long courses of training are required to bring the intellect into a capacity for analysis and generalization [note this], which may enable it to understand and assent to them."
And still more forcibly further on :— " These intuitions are apprehended in a concrete, not an abstract form. They can only be known as related to objects of matter and spirit, and
never as independent of either The only form of language in which any act of primitive intuition is adequately expressed is the proposition. The subject of this proposition is the concrete object (of matter or spirit) which sense or consciousness apprehends. We do, as it, were, say, ' This is a being, cause, effect.' "
We call especial attention to this last statement. In the Kantian sense the exact contrary would be the truth, intuitions, as being equivalent to the mind itself, would be not the predicate, but, on the contrary, the universal subject to every proposition which can be formed. Yet it must not be thought that the passages quoted have not their own truth, but they are altogether beside the point in the connection in which they stand. Dr. Porter holds, as we do, that intuitions are not dependent on experience for their validity, though for their existence he derives them from it ; and this validity, so far as it does not depend on an internal feeling of necessity, he derives from the common consent of mankind. In this way Dr. Porter fancies he has reproduced Karat's two criteria. of necessity and universality. It is needless to point out that Kant's universality, at any rate, is not this at all, not the presence of the conception in every mind, but its presence in every act of thought of any mind. Our great complaint against Dr. Porter is that he has misunderstood Kant throughout. Thus in another place Kant is made to consider the sense-forms of time and space and the categories of the understanding as possessing a merely regulative force. Rather it is only as transcendent that ideas cam be denied a constitutive employment. However, the complete appreciation of Kant would require half a lifetime, and Dr. Porter has to pass on to the study of other philosophers, whose opinions are required for his manual. It was perhaps necessary that some writer should be less perfectly understood, but it is unfortunate for Dr. Porter's theory of intuitions that fate should
have singled out Kant to be the one.
Intuitions, according to Dr. Porter, lie at the root of all our knowledge, and render all our reasoning, whether deductive or inductive, alone possible. In particular, he very forcibly shows that the notion of causation is the guiding principle in experi- mental inductions, and the idea of final cause, or of design in the
Universe he considers as so necessary to inductive science, that all inductions assume it, being no other than the principle of the Uniformity of Nature which is so insisted on by John Stuart Mill. We have already alluded to the chapter on causation, and have but little to say beyond simple commendation of it. Nevertheless, from our present stand-point there will be some exception to make, as causation is one of the intuitions. For instance, this is a speci- men of the ground on which its validity is supposed to rest : -
"In these explanations and experiments the mind is impelled by a special emotion, called curiosity. Curiosity is more than an interest and desire to know an event as a fact ; it impels to the knowledge of its causes and laws, of its origin and growth. The existence of a strong and apparently original emotional capacity of this sort con- firms the view that the relation itself is original as a law of existence, and that the belief in it is a fundamental principle of the mind's knowledge."
However subtle and original this reasoning may be, there can be no question as to its utter inadequacy to prove the point at issue. There is a tendency besides to look upon causation as a relation of potency in the object, which we beg to submit the philosophical existence of Hume has once and for all rendered logically impossible. Yet at the same time this relation is based upon a feeling of necessity in our minds to conceive it so. We
may remark upon this as upon other employments of the spurious intuitional theory of knowledge, that in our view it is indistinguishable from pure scepticism. " This is not proveable by reason, but yet I believe it " has as its counter- statement, "This is not proveable by reason and therefore I cannot believe it," and the difference is only a difference of temperament in the subject. So faith or scepticism becomes a thing of chance, a gift, for which we are not responsible. Kant believed that the natural answer to Hume's sceptical conclusions on causality was to appreciate the whole question in its entirety. Is a priori knowledge at all possible? Hume's philosophical acumen, he thought, would have saved him from his mistake, if he had seen that the question involved the validity of mathematical reasoning itself. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the philosophical acumen of writers of our own day has not saved them. Mathematical necessity even is now made a question of association. The chapter on " Causation" Dr. Porter supp'iements by a chapter on "Design or Final Cause." This is very ably and boldly handled, and will be useful as correcting the very material notions of causation prevalent. Really, however, it is only a development of the principle of causality itself, and the tracing of designs in Nature is dangerous unless based on realism, when the end becomes identical with the actual effect. This is indeed quite recognized by Dr. Porter, where he says, "It is conceded that the explanation by efficient causes is not inconsistent with that by final causes, inasmuch as it is through effects actually produced that we infer they were intended and provided for." This is true philosophy.
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