24 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



human beings. But those who find in these facts a 

 recommendation of intuition ought to return to running 

 wild in the woods, dyeing themselves with woad and 

 living on hips and haws. 



Let us next examine whether intuition possesses any 

 such infallibility as Bergson claims for it. The best 

 instance of it, according to him, is our acquaintance with 

 ourselves ; yet self-knowledge is proverbially rare and 

 difficult. Most men, for example, have in their nature 

 meannesses, vanities, and envies of which they are quite 

 unconscious, though even their best friends can perceive 

 them without any difficulty. It is true that intuition has 

 a convincingness which is lacking to intellect : while it is 

 present, it is almost impossible to doubt its truth. But 

 if it should appear, on examination, to be at least as 

 fallible as intellect, its greater subjective certainty becomes 

 a demerit, making it only the more irresistibly deceptive. 

 Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable 

 examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe them- 

 selves to possess of those with whom they are in love : 

 the wall between different personalities seems to become 

 transparent, and people think they see into another soul 

 as into their own. Yet deception in such cases is constantly 

 practised with success ; and even where there is no 

 intentional deception, experience gradually proves, as a 

 rule, that the supposed insight was illusory, and that the 

 slower, more groping methods of the intellect are in the 

 long run more reliable. 



Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with 

 things in so far as they resemble what has been experienced 

 in the past, while intuition has the power of apprehending 

 the uniqueness and novelty that always belong to each 

 fresh moment. That there is something unique and new 

 at every moment, is certainly true ; it is also true that 



