THEORY OF KNOWING.
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PROP. XVII.————
speculation sees clearly, and traces through all its consequences, the element essential to its cognition; while common sense sees this element only confusedly, or almost entirely overlooks it; and thus, unless instructed by philosophy, remains blind to all the important results which an attention to this element brings to light.
What the ancient philosophers meant by this dogma.26. Such, then, is the whole meaning of the ancient injunction about the necessity of turning the mind away from the senses, if we would reach the truth. Doubtless we must do this, to the extent of perceiving that the truth does not come to us solely by the way of the senses, but that something else, which does not come to us through them, is necessary to make up the truth which the mind apprehends. Unless we turn away from the senses, and deny their sufficiency to this extent, they will inevitably mislead us—they will land us in a contradiction, as they always do in our ordinary moods; for, at such times, they make us fancy that what we apprehend is placed before us solely by their instrumentality; whereas the fact is, that they place before us only the inchoate or unintelligible part of the truth—only the contradictory element of known substance—the mind being the source which places before us the complemental part—the part (to wit itself, or rather ourselves) by which the contradiction is supplemented, and thereby removed.