Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 23:89 (Jan 1866)
Article: Intuitive Ideas, And Their Relation To Knowledge
Author: John Bascom

BSac 23:89 (Jan 1866) p. 1

Intuitive Ideas, And Their Relation To Knowledge

Rev. John Bascom

There has been a steady and increasing tendency in modern philosophy to recognize ideas in our mental furniture not arising from experience, but necessary to it. These, whether known as convictions of common sense, as regulative, or as intuitive ideas, must always play an exceedingly important part in mental and moral philosophy. Their acceptance or rejection at once defines the radical tendencies of any system of mental science, and enables us easily to predict its leading conclusions.

In the conflict which has attended their recognition and establishment little opportunity has been offered for the careful determination of these ideas, their number, their relation to each other, and their relation to science. It is to these points that we shall direct our efforts in this Article; and, as the task is both a difficult and a broad one, we shall be pardoned if we omit altogether, or pass hastily, much that might well be said; if we treat with little discussion or exposition those ideas more generally recognized as regulative; and do not repeat and apply to succeeding ideas proof of the same general character as that given

BSac 23:89 (Jan 1866) p. 2

under preceding ones. We shall also be pardoned if our success in enumerating and defining these intuitions of the reason is but partial.

It would certainly be simpler to refer all our knowledge to experience and reflection than to assign a portion of it to the intuitive power of the reason. But this cannot be done, as there are ideas, and those everywhere present, which find no explanation in perception, nor in the judgments which spring therefrom; ideas which are presupposed by all experience, and without one or other of which no single assertion can be made; ideas which are necessarily present, and bear with them, therefore, a sense of necessity totally different from the contingent notions given by experience. For these three reasons we are forced to the recognition of a distinct intuitive faculty: first, because there are present to the mind certain ideas which are not perceptions nor the generalizations of reflection; second, these ideas are necessarily prior to experience, since no one of its judgments can exist without them; and third, they come to the mind with an impression of immediate and inherent necessity not found in its other convictions.

As first among these ideas, we shall mention that of existence. There is no judgment more naked, simple, and fundamental than this of existence. All later judgments proceed upon and contain it. That something is, either as an object of sensation or apprehension, either in permanence or in transition, is the incipient, the anticipatory idea, w...