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It fixes the starting-point of spiritual development just where the man of the present day stands, in whatever conditions of life he may be placed. From epoch to epoch, progressive evolution leads humanity, in respect to the path of higher cognition, to ever changing modes, just as outer life likewise changes its form.
Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one in which subject and object are identified; and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.
Intuition is popularly used in a sense different from the above. We are in need of a word which has the same meaning as the German word, Anschauung, for which there is no popular equivalent in English. Intuition, as defined by Webster, is nearly the same: "direct apprehension, or cognition; immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness."
But, when we do not notice a disagreement between these two modes of cognition, both alike give us the impression of reality. If I evoke a reminiscence and dwell attentively on the details, I have the impression that I am in face of the reality itself.
You will now perhaps set forth the following analogy. Hence there is no reason why Scripture although unreal in so far as based on Nescience should not likewise be the cause of the cognition of what is real, viz. Brahman. The two cases are not parallel, we reply.
These judgements, therefore, infinite in respect of their logical extent, are, in respect of the content of their cognition, merely limitative; and are consequently entitled to a place in our transcendental table of all the momenta of thought in judgements, because the function of the understanding exercised by them may perhaps be of importance in the field of its pure a priori cognition.
Take, for example, the proposition, "The world exists either through blind chance, or through internal necessity, or through an external cause." Each of these propositions embraces a part of the sphere of our possible cognition as to the existence of a world; all of them taken together, the whole sphere.
We look upon this connection, in the light of the above-mentioned idea, as if it drew its origin from the supposed being which corresponds to the idea. And yet all we aim at is the possession of this idea as a secure foundation for the systematic unity of experience a unity indispensable to reason, advantageous to the understanding, and promotive of the interests of empirical cognition.
Thus, as time contains the sensuous condition a priori of the possibility of a continuous progression of that which exists to that which follows it, the understanding, by virtue of the unity of apperception, contains the condition a priori of the possibility of a continuous determination of the position in time of all phenomena, and this by means of the series of causes and effects, the former of which necessitate the sequence of the latter, and thereby render universally and for all time, and by consequence, objectively, valid the empirical cognition of the relations of time.
For this reason its condition cannot be regarded as absolutely necessary, but merely as relatively necessary, or rather as needful; the condition is in itself and a priori a mere arbitrary presupposition in aid of the cognition, by reason, of the conditioned.
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