Book 2 — NOTE TO CHAPTER X.

I have in the last ten chapters described Space, Time, and Number by various expressions, all intended to point out their office as exemplifying the Ideal Element of human knowledge. I have called them Fundamental Ideas; Forms of Perception; Forms of Intuition; and perhaps other names. I might add yet other phrases. I might say that the properties of Space, Time, and Number are Laws of the Mind’s Activity in apprehending what is. For the mind cannot apprehend any thing or event except conformably to the properties of space, time, and number. It is not only that it does not, but it can not: and this impossibility shows that the law is a law of the mind, and not of objects extraneous to the mind.

It is usual for some of those who reject the doctrines here presented to say that the axioms of geometry, and of other sciences, are obtained by Induction from facts constantly presented by experience. But I do not see how Induction can prove that a proposition must be true. The only intelligible usage of the word Induction appears to me to be, that in which it is applied to a proposition which, being separable from the facts in our apprehension, and being compared with them, is seen to agree with them. But in the cases now spoken of, the proposition is not separable from the facts. We cannot infer by induction that two straight lines cannot inclose a space, because we cannot contemplate special cases of two lines inclosing a space, in which it remains to be determined whether or not the proposition, that both are straight, is true.

I do not deny that the activity of the mind by which it perceives objects and events as related according to the laws of space, time, and number, is awakened and developed by being constantly exercised; and that we cannot imagine a stage of human existence in which the powers have not been awakened and developed by such exercise. In this way, experience and observation are necessary conditions and prerequisites of our apprehension of geometrical (and other) axioms. We cannot see the truth of these axioms without some experience, because we cannot see any thing, or be human beings, without some experience. This might be expressed by saying that such truths are acquired necessarily in the course of all experience; but I think it is very undesirable to apply, to such a case, the word Induction, of which it is so important to us to keep the scientific meaning free from confusion. Induction cannot give demonstrative proofs, as I have already stated in Book 1. C. i. sect. 3, and therefore cannot be the ground of necessary truths.

Another expression which may be used to describe the Fundamental Ideas here spoken of is suggested by the language of a very profound and acute Review of the former edition. The Reviewer holds that we pass from special experiences to universal truths in virtue of ‘the inductive propensity—the irresistible impulse of the mind to generalize ad infinitum.’ I have already given reasons why I cannot adopt the former expression; but I do not see why space, time, number, cause, and the rest, may not be termed different forms of the impulse of the mind to generalize. But if we put together all the Fundamental Ideas as results of the Generalizing Impulse, we must still separate them as different modes of action of that Impulse, showing themselves in various characteristic ways in the axioms and modes of reasoning which belong to different sciences. The Generalizing Impulse in one case proceeds according to the Idea of Space; in another, according to the Idea of Mechanical Cause; and so in other subjects.