sensations, which are of necessity particular. A man certainly learns nothing from being told that he cannot think without ideas, but he may learn something, or rather (to take the Socratic view of education) he may teach himself something from being told that he cannot think without passing from the particular to the universal. What was proved in the preceding paragraph was not merely that a man cannot think without having ideas, but that he cannot think without going beyond the particular and passing into the universal, a profound truth. The one of these statements is a mere truism, but the other, I venture to maintain, is one of the profoundest truths that ever addressed itself to the capacities of thinking men, and summoned them to put forth their utmost capacities to unravel it. Let us endeavour to get somewhat deeper into the purport of this truth-this truth which is expressed in the proposition, that to think is to pass from the singular or particular to the idea or the universal.
22. It is an accredited maxim in the Lockian or sensational schools of philosophy, that we can think only of that of which we have had experience. And this dogma seems to recommend itself at once to the common sense of mankind, for where, it may be asked, can we get the materials of our thinking except from experience, either external or internal? Now, irresistible as this dogma appears, I venture to set up in opposition to it this counter-proposition,
