CHAPTER 2.
THOUGHT AND ITS OPERATION.
1. THE KNOWING MIND COMPARED WITH THE THINKING MIND.
In the preceding chapter we were told that the mind may know in two ways (1) by intuition and (2) by thinking. It is thus implied that the knowing mind includes the thinking mind plus intuition. Thinking always involves knowing, but knowing need not involve thinking, and when some logicians maintain that to know a thing one must think it, there is danger of being misled. They mean by this that in order to know anything in a permanent and highly serviceable way one must think it. All animals know, even such a stupid one as the oyster, and yet one would hardly give an oyster credit for thinking. Only the higher orders of animal life think. Some argue that the power is confined exclusively to the human family. This opinion is debatable. If the claimant means by thinking, reasoning then his ground is well taken. But if he is willing to give to thinking a broader content, then he has little defense for his stand. However, attach as broad a meaning to thinking as the derivation of the word will permit and even then it is a narrower term than knowing. Thinking plus intuition equals knowing, and in intuition there is probably no thinking.
2. KNOWING BY INTUITION.
It has been affirmed that intuition is the process involved when the mind knows instantly.[2]
ILLUSTRATIONS:
(1) As I raise my eyes a figure comes to view. My mind knows instantly that it is the figure three. (2) The ear catches immediately a tune which is being sung in the room below. Without deliberation the mind recognizes the tune as America. The mind may thus know by intuition through any one of the five senses. These are the wires of connection between the outer world and the mind within and transmission over these wires may be instantaneous or intuitive. This is not all. (3) My mind may center its attention on itself and may recognize there a mental picture or image of a pet dog. Since this activity is without any apparent deliberation the process must be intuitive. To define intuitive knowledge as that which comes to the mind through the senses only is incorrect, as it leaves out altogether the knowledge the mind may obtain of its own activity as in illustration “(3).”
Knowledge is anything known. Intuitive knowledge is knowledge which comes to the mind immediately by direct observation. The field for intuitive knowledge may be the external world or the internal world though, of course, the former is the more common ground. It is here that the mind by intuition secures the most of its raw material which, through the process of thinking, is worked over into a connected, unified system of lasting value.
The intuitions are the beginning and the basis of all knowledge, and knowledge gained by intuition is the basis of all thinking.