Willoughby. But do not let us forget how limited is the logical faculty.
Gower. So, for that matter, is the intuitional. Undeveloped by culture from without, its voice is incoherent, various, scarce audible oftentimes.
Willoughby. What logic can prove to me the Eternity of the Divine Nature? Is not that a transcendental truth?
Atherton. I grant it. But my understanding, observing and reasoning, has shown me convincingly that I must receive that truth on pain of believing an absurdity. In this way, the Understanding is satisfied (as Pascal observes it always should be), and acquiesces in a truth beyond itself. But if I have not thus used my Understanding as far as it will go, I am traversing the transcendental region without the passport it should give me,—I cannot render a reason—I only oracularly affirm—I am fast turning mystic.
Lowestoffe. But how this Intuition sees to work, or finds means to work, without contact with the other faculties of the mind, I cannot conceive. Has it a set of finer senses of its own? Has no one ever defined it?
Gower. Several definitions have been attempted. I think Mark Antony’s the best. He delivered it when he gave drunken Lepidus that hoaxing description of the crocodile. A mind with any depth of insight will understand at once the fine symbolism of Shakspeare, and see that he is depicting Intuition. ‘It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs; it lives by that which nourishes it; and, the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.’
Atherton. In fact, Intuition is not to be termed one among or above the faculties of the mind. It is rather, like consciousness, related to them as species to individuals. As the man is, so are his intuitions. Previous observation, training, judgment, all combine to bring the mind to that point from which Intuition takes its survey, more or less extended.
Lowestoffe. Good. Our inner and our outer world contradict that separatist theory every day, by their action and reaction on each other. The man who dreads the internal light as an illusive Will-o’-the-Wisp, has often consulted his own inward bent, far more than he supposes, in choosing what authority he shall receive. The man who professes to transcend the external altogether is still moulded by it in a thousand unimagined modes.
Willoughby. The imperfect character of our recollection should make us very cautious, I admit. So much that has been imported into the mind looks native and spontaneous after a lapse of time. Many an idea, promulged as the dictum of Intuition—as having its source in the immemorial depths of our being, has been subsequently traced, even by its own author, to the external world.
Gower. That gaberlunzie, Memory (whose wallet has so many holes), would step in oftener, if he did his duty, and say, like Edie Ochiltree, ‘I mind the biggin o’ it.’