THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 139 



thought of apart from some notion of quantity — extensive, 

 protensive, or intensive. Further, definition is impossible 

 unless there enters into it the thought of difference; and 

 difference, besides being unthinkable without having two 

 things that differ, implies the existence of other differences 

 than the one recognized; since otherwise there can be no 

 general conception of difference. Nor is this all. As before 

 pointed out (§ 24) all thought involves the consciousness of 

 likeness: the one thing avowedly postulated cannot be 

 known absolutely as one thing, but can be known only as of 

 such or such kind — only as classed with other things in 

 virtue of some common attribute. Thus along with the 

 single avowed datum, we have surreptitiously brought in a 

 number of una vowed data — existence other than that alleged, 

 quantity, number, limit, difference, likeness, class, attribute. 

 Saying nothing of the many more which an exhaustive 

 analysis would disclose, we have in these unacknowledged 

 postulates, the outlines of a general theory ; and that theory 

 can be neither proved nor disproved by the metaphysician's 

 argument. Insist that his symbol shall be interpreted at 

 every step into its full meaning, with all the complementary 

 thoughts implied by that meaning, and you find already 

 taken for granted in the premises that which in the conclu- 

 sion is asserted or denied. 



In what way, then, must Philosophy set out? The 

 developed intelligence is framed upon certain organized 

 and consolidated conceptions of which it cannot divest 

 itself; and which it can no more stir without using than 

 the body can stir without help of its limbs. In what way, 

 then, is it possible for intelligence, striving after Philoso- 

 phy, to give any account of these conceptions, and to show 

 either their validity or their invalidity? There is but one 

 way. Those of them which are vital, or cannot be severed 

 from the rest without mental dissolution, must be assumed 

 as true provisionally. The fundamental intuitions that are 

 essential to the process of thinking, must be temporarily 



