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ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 403 



^speaking or writing ; and hence is not always obvious to the hearer or 

 reader, though it is, or ought to be, so to the framer of the argument. 

 Let me exercise the ingenuity of the audience before me by throwing 

 out as a trial, the following well-known sentiment of Mr. Pope : 



Who governs freemen should himself be free. 



Here are two distinct propositions : and Dr. Johnson, not immediately 

 perceiving their agreement, nor immediately hitting upon any intervening 

 idea or proposition by which they might be united, declared the wliole to 

 be a riddle, and that the poet might just as well have written, . 



Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat. 



Had Johnson, however, lived in our own day, and turned his attention 

 to the Continent, it would have been a riddle to him no longer ; for he 

 would have called to mind, as I doubt not every one before me has done 

 already, the mischief that has happened to many a free people on the 

 Continent, from the unfortunate wai^t of freedom in the sovereign who is 

 placed over them, and his being under the detestable control of one of the 

 worst, and, unluckily, one of the most universal, tyrants, the world has 

 ever witnessed.* He would have been, as every one before me must be, 

 at once prepared to have connected the two ideas free men^ — and the 

 propriety of their being governed by a free sovereign^ by means of a 

 third or intervening idea to this effect, that otherwise the people themselves 

 might run no small risk of having their freedom destroyed by foreign 

 force ; the whole of which might assume the following appearance if 

 reduced to the form of a syllogism : 



Who governs free-men should be able to maintain their freedom : 

 ]3ut he who is not free himself is not able to maintain their freedom : 



Therefore, 



Who governs freemen should himself be free. 



Proper or real knowledge, then, is of two kinds or degrees. Intui- 

 tion and demonstration ; below which, all the information we possess 

 is imperfect knowledge or opinion. Mr. Locke, nevertheless, out of 

 courtesy^ to the Cartesian hypothesis, rather than from any other cause, 

 makes proper or real knowledge to consist of three degrees, placing sen- 

 sible knowledge, or that obtained by an exercise of the external senses, 

 below the two degrees of intuition and demonstration, though above 

 the authority of opinion. In most instances, however, the ideas we ob- 

 tain from the senses are as clear and as identic as those obtained from 

 any other source ; and in all such cases the knowledge they produce is^ 

 self-evident or intuitive. And although, at times, the idea excited by a 

 single sense may not be perfectly clear, yet, as we usually correct it, or 

 destroy the doubt which accompanies it by having recourse to another 

 sense, which furnishes us with the proof or intermediate idea, the know- 

 ledge obtained, even in these cases, though not amounting to intuition, is 

 of the nature of demonstration : whence all sensible knowledge (the 



+ Napoleon Buonaparte. This lecture was delivered in 1814. 



