Search -
Text-book in Intellectual Philosophy for Schools and Colleges
Textbook in Intellectual Philosophy for Schools and Colleges Author:J. T. Champlin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: through them.' This constitutes the first of Buffier's essential qualities of primary truths, which is, as he expresses it, — 'to be so clear, that if we attempt... more » to prove or disprove them, this can be done only by propositions which are manifestly neither more evident nor more certain? " SECTION IT. TRUSTWORTHINESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1. What the question here is. — The question here is, how much confidence should be placed in a simple,, primary fact or truth of consciousness; what degree of credit these original data of consciousness are entitled to. And it ie the more necessary to consider this question, as it has been fashionable to discredit these primary intuitions as mere beliefs ex feelings, furnishing no guaranty for their truth. That any thing should be relied upon as true, it has been thought necessary that it should be supported by proofs. 2. There must be first principles in knowledge. — But it is obvious, on the slightest reflection, that all proofs owe their validity entirely to their conformity to the laws of thought. All proofs start with simple, admitted principles of intelligence, and proceed only by its continued admissions. And what are these admissions but primary intuitions of consciousness ? It is obvious that every thing cannot be proved. If it could be, then every proof might in turn be proved, and there would be a continual retrogression of reasons for reasons, without end. There must be starting-points in knowledge, and these can be nothing else than theprimary intuitions or convictions of our conscious intelligence, either facts or truths of consciousness. . 3. The nature of these principles. — Some of these intuitions, as we have seen, are absolutely necessary forms of thought, we can neither annihilate them in thought, nor think their oppos...« less