CHAP. II. J FIRST TRUTHS. 49 



is indeed a constant theme, and the &quot; relativity of feelings &quot; 

 and &quot;of relations&quot; occupies, as before said, two chapters; 

 yet of our perceptions of relations as relations, we have not 

 one word. 



Mr. Lewes also shows a strange want of appreciation of 

 our intellectual faculties, and he and Mr. Spencer Asalsoby 

 are by no means the only instances of this. Indeed, Mr Lcwe8 

 the most remarkable circumstance connected with living 

 English writers on questions such as these, is the con 

 spicuous absence in them of any manifest comprehension 

 of those very powers which they so continually exercise, 

 and their apparent want of appreciation of that reason to 

 which they verbally appeal. &quot; Hamlet &quot; with &quot; the Prince of 

 Denmark &quot; omitted, may well serve as a symbol of the 

 curious psychology of the school to which reference is here 

 made, namely, that of the Agnostics. 



The next fact which reflection, combined with what we 

 at least take to be external observation, shows us, The validity 



,1 i -!., p of our reasou- 



lS the validity 01 our reasoning processes. When to ing faculty. 



the proposition, &quot; All equilateral triangles are equiangular,&quot; 

 we add, &quot;The triangle A B C is equilateral,&quot; we see that a 

 third truth is implicitly contained in the two propositions 

 which truth explicitly stated is the conclusion, &quot; The tri 

 angle A B C is equiangular.&quot; The nature of this process of 

 inference is expressed by the word &quot; therefore,&quot; and a little 

 introspection shows us that it is something widely different 

 from the association of different things together in the ima 

 gination, so that the recurrence of one induces the recurrence 

 of a group of others, as when the recurrence of a smell oc 

 casions the revival in imagination of places, persons, and 

 circumstances of various kinds. Moreover, in this conclusion 

 there is no freedom of choice. We are compelled to admit 

 any conclusion logically contained in admitted premises, just 

 as we are compelled to admit the truth of the self-evident 

 proposition, &quot; What thinks, exists.&quot; But it should be noted 

 that though our reason is necessitated, and acts fatally as 

 regards the explicit evolution of implicit truth, and as 



