PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS 229 



one age becoming the known and the predictable of the next. 

 This being so, it is a fair presumption that what we decide 

 to-day by intuition may, at a later day, be brought within 

 the ken of science. Thus the realm of the intuitive becomes 

 a lessening one. Its name is synonymous with the unknown 

 or incompletely known, not with the unknowable. We have 

 intuitions regarding what we do not as yet understand, 

 and intuitions fade wherever scientific analysis establishes 

 a foothold. 



The weakness of intuition is its individual bias. It is 

 the product of a single mind, not the collective agreement 

 of individuals who have examined the same data. As such, 

 it is always open to the suspicion of being influenced by 

 delusion or prejudice. Intuition works differently with 

 different persons, reflects to a large degree the personal 

 equation, and has the marks of a process which is not and 

 never can become reliable in the analysis of phenomena. 

 The scientist, therefore, believes the method of intuition 

 unsatisfactory as a source of knowledge. When he says he 

 knows subjectively, he means only that he is conscious of his 

 mental states and of their manner of operation ; when he says 

 he knows objectively, he means that any normal individual, 

 who puts himself under similar conditions, will experience 

 sense-impressions from which he may draw similar conclu- 

 sions. The scientist does not claim to know everything. 

 He does claim that such sources of knowledge as the intui- 

 tions of daily life, which are so frequently paraded as a 

 superior means of knowing, are not knowledge in any sense, 

 because they seem to represent either vagaries of the indi- 

 vidual mind or thought-processes too unorganized to be of 

 value in the determination of either external or internal 

 realities. 



