DEFINITION AND PROVINCE OF LOGIC. 7 



eye, which seems so like intuition, is thus, in reality, an infe- 

 rence grounded on experience ; an inference, too, which we 

 learn to make ; and which we make with more and more cor- 

 rectness as our experience increases ; though in familiar cases 

 it takes place so rapidly as to appear exactly on a par with 

 those perceptions of sight which are really intuitive, our per- 

 ceptions of colour.* 



Of the science, therefore, which expounds the operations of 

 the human understanding in the pursuit of truth, one essential 

 part is the inquiry : What are the facts which are the objects 

 of intuition or consciousness, and what are those which we 

 merely infer ? But this inquiry has never been considered a 

 portion of logic. Its place is in another and a perfectly distinct 

 department of science, to which the name metaphysics more 

 particularly belongs : that portion of mental philosophy which 

 attempts to determine what part of the furniture of the mind 

 belongs to it originally, and what part is constructed out of 

 materials furnished to it from without. To this science apper- 

 tain the great and much debated questions of the existence of 

 matter ; the existence of spirit, and of a distinction between it 

 and matter ; the reality of time and space, as things without 

 the mind, and distinguishable from the objects which are said 

 to exist in them. For in the present state of the discussion on 

 these topics, it is almost universally allowed that the existence 

 of matter or of spirit, of space or of time, is in its nature un- 

 susceptible of being proved ; and that if anything is known of 

 them, it must be by immediate intuition. To the same science 

 belong the inquiries into the nature of Conception, Perception, 

 Memory, and Belief; all of which are operations of the under- 

 standing in the pursuit of truth ; but with which, as phenomena 

 of the mind, or with the possibility which may or may not 

 exist of analysing any of them into simpler phenomena, the 



* This important theory has of late been called in question by a writer of 

 deserved reputation, Mr. Samuel Bailey ; but I do not conceive that the grounds 

 on which it has been admitted as an established doctrine for a century past, 

 have been at all shaken by that gentleman's objections. I have elsewhere said 

 what appeared to me necessary in reply to his arguments. ( Westminster Review 

 for October 1842 ; reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions, vol. ii.) 



