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It used to seem self-evident that there could not be men at the Antipodes, because they would fall off, or at best grow giddy from standing on their heads. But New Zealanders find the falsehood of this proposition self-evident. Therefore, if self-evidence is a guarantee of truth, our ancestors must have been mistaken in thinking their beliefs about the Antipodes self-evident.
'the whole is equal to all its parts taken together? Many a one knows that one and two are equal to three, without having heard, or thought on, that or any other axiom by which it might be proved; and knows it as certainly as any other man knows, that 'the whole is equal to all its parts, or any other maxim; and all from the same reason of self-evidence: the equality of those ideas being as visible and certain to him without that or any other axiom as with it, it needing no proof to make it perceived.
"There appears to be no distinct principle, having any claim to self-evidence, upon which the question can be answered so as to command general assent."
His whole philosophy resolves itself ultimately into an intellectual intuition, whose object is Substance or Being, with its infinite attributes of extension and thought, an intuition which discerns its object directly and immediately, in the light of its own self-evidence, without the aid of any intermediate sign, and which is as superior, in a philosophical point of view, to the intimations of sense, as its objects are superior to the fleeting phenomena of Nature.
The thunder of denunciation fell on his passion-wrought nerves with all the force of self-evidence: his thought never went beyond it into questions he was possessed by it as the war-horse is possessed by the clash of sounds. No word that was not a threat touched his consciousness; he had no fibre to be thrilled by it.
I will take two criteria which have been suggested, namely, self-evidence, mutual coherence. If we can show that these are inadequate, we may feel fairly certain that no intrinsic criterion hitherto suggested will suffice to distinguish true from false beliefs. * The view that such a criterion exists is generally held by those whose views are in any degree derived from Hegel.
The second sort of self-evidence will be that which belongs to judgements in the first instance, and is not derived from direct perception of a fact as a single complex whole. This second kind of self-evidence will have degrees, from the very highest degree down to a bare inclination in favour of the belief. Take, for example, the case of a horse trotting away from us along a hard road.
For such reasons, no form of self-evidence seems to afford an absolute criterion of truth. Nevertheless, it is perhaps true that judgments having a high degree of subjective certainty are more apt to be true than other judgments. But if this be the case, it is a result to be demonstrated, not a premiss from which to start in defining truth and falsehood.
In this process, there is a continual gradation of self-evidence, from the highest degree to the least, not in the sense-data themselves, but in the judgements based on them. Or again: Suppose we are comparing two shades of colour, one blue and one green.
Self evidence not peculiar to received Axioms. This being so, in the next place, let us consider whether this self-evidence be peculiar only to those propositions which commonly pass under the name of maxims, and have the dignity of axioms allowed them. And here it is plain, that several other truths, not allowed to be axioms, partake equally with them in this self-evidence.
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