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The special force that belongs to the representative element in a percept, as compared with that of a pure "perceptional" image, is probably connected with the fact that, in the case of actual perception, the nervous process underlying the act of imaginative construction is organically united to the initial sensational process, of which indeed it may be regarded as a continuation.
He has in a given instance distinguished between right and wrong, although he has not raised the general problem of what constitutes right and wrong. He has exercised the prerogative of a moral being, though not of a very thoughtful one. We have seen above, that perceptional intuitionism tends to pass over into dogmatic intuitionism of some sort, even in the case of minds little developed.
He who must justify every act by reflection is condemned to the jerkiest and most hesitant of moral lives. Perceptional moral intuition must stand our friend, if there is to be a flow of conduct worthy of the name. There are, however, occasions for checking the flow by reflection.
If there were no apprehension of difference, all cognitions would have one and the same object, and therefore would give rise to one judgment only as takes place when one unbroken perceptional cognition is continued for some time. True. We therefore have to enquire in what way, in the judgment 'here is a jar, an assertion is made about being as well as some special form of being.
In all such cases the process of preperception connected with a given impression is effected more or less completely by the suggestions of other and related impressions. It follows from all that has been just said that our minds are never in exactly the same state of readiness with respect to a particular process of perceptional interpretation.
If a man reasons, if he falls back upon general considerations, if he looks into the future and weighs the consequences of his act, and, as a result, decides what he ought to do, he is no longer a perceptional intuitionist. The perceptional intuitionist, consistently and unreservedly such, is rather an ideal construction than an actually existing person.
All our difficulties of understanding the true meaning of these and other phenomena around us are, as I have already pointed out, caused by our inability to recognise that vibration or motion has no reality, it is a pseudo-conception arising from the fact that our senses are entirely dependent upon the two modes or limitations, Time and Space, for their very action, and that, as conceptional knowledge is based upon perceptional knowledge, our very consciousness of living is also dependent upon these same limitations.
The consistent perceptional intuitionist is, however, scarcely to be found, as has been said above; and we actually find those, some of whose utterances read as though the authors ought to be adherents of such a school, dwelling upon the desirability of the education of the conscience, i.e., upon the desirability of acquiring a capacity for having the right intuitions.
It is not easy to draw a sharp line between Perceptional Intuitionism and Dogmatic, just as it is not easy in other fields to distinguish sharply between knowledge given directly in perception, and knowledge in which more or less conscious processes of inference play a part. Do I perceive the man whom I see, when I look into a mirror, to be behind the mirror or in front of it?
While admitting that there is something in the objection, I retain the convenient terms, merely warning the reader to be on his guard. Perceptional Intuitionism falls back upon the analogy of perception in general. I seem to perceive by direct inspection that my blotter is green, and that my penholder is longer than my pencil.
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