Note 89 — Chapter I · 1619 to 1635.

We have elsewhere established that of the three sources of human knowledge, intuition, induction, and deduction, the first is much the most fertile and the most elevated. It is intuition, which, by its own spontaneous power, discovers directly and without the aid of reflection, all essential truths; it is the source of light to the human race; the voice that speaks to prophets and poets; the principle of all inspiration of enthusiasm, and of that unalterable and sure faith, that astonishes reasoning which is compelled to treat it as a folly, because it cannot account for it by its ordinary processes. See the Cours de Philosophie, particularly, First Series, vol. v., p. 301; and Second Series, vol. i., Lecture vi., pp. 131-141, etc.