AN EXPOSITION ANP CRITICISM. 313 



Sixth Faculty — The Regulative. 



The acts and processes, by which the mind acquires, retains, re- 

 produces, represents and compares objects, are performed not at 

 random, but in accordance with certain laws ; and as these laws are 

 presupposed in order to the possibility of mental action, they cannot 

 be explained as the growth of such action, but must be viewed as 

 native to the mind- The existence of such principles has been recog- 

 nised by the most distinguished philosophers from the dawn of specu- 

 lation to the present day {Reid's Works, pp. 770 — 803), even by 

 some of those who profess to derive all our knowledge from experience 

 (Ibid., pp. 7*13, 785). Now the power, which the mind possesses, of 

 regulating its own activity by such laws, is that which I call the 

 Regulative faculty and which is variously designated Nous, Intellectus, 

 Reason, Common Sense, Sec, (II., pp. 347 — 350 ; Reid*s Works, pp. 

 755 — 770). The native cognitions of this faculty are distinguished 

 from derivative cognitions by the four essential characters, that they 

 are 1. incomprehensible, 2. simple, 3. necessary and therefore abso- 

 lutely universal, 4. evident and certain. Thfeir most distinctive 

 characteristic however is the third, inasmuch as they reveal themselves 

 as principles by which the mind cannot choose but be controlled 

 {Reid's Works, pp. 754—5 ; I., pp. 269— 2;0 ; II., pp. 350—363). 



In clasifying these necessary judgments we may, with Kant, 

 separate those that are analytic or explicative from those that are 

 synthetic or ampliative (IL, p. 526 ; Discussions, Appendix I. (A).). 



A. The former result from the requirements of the three logical 

 laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction and Excluded Middle. They do 

 not amplify our knowledge, enouncing merely what is not-impossible : 

 but they are not only necessary in thought ; they are the irresistible 

 assertions of a necessity in things. 



B. The latter result from the law of the relativity of all human 

 knowledge, with special reference to which, rather than to the con- 

 dition of Non-Contradiction, I use the expression, the Law of the 

 Conditioned {Discussions, p. 603). This condition, which requires 

 that all that is thought be thought as relative and even as relatively 

 or conditionally relative, is a law not of things, but merely of thought. 

 For under it are found several pairs of contradictory propositions, 

 while of the two contradictories composing each pair neither can be 

 conceived possible, though, by the Law of Excluded Middle, one 

 must be true. "We thus obtain a distinctive test of those necessities 



