there is in us a power of thought, or affirm that all knowledge is derived
from experience without implying that this first principle of knowledge is
prior to experience. The truth seems to be that we begin with the natural
use of the mind as of the body, and we seek to describe this as well as we
can. We eat before we know the nature of digestion; we think before we
know the nature of reflection. As our knowledge increases, our perception
of the mind enlarges also. We cannot indeed get beyond facts, but neither
can we draw any line which separates facts from ideas. And the mind is not
something separate from them but included in them, and they in the mind,
both having a distinctness and individuality of their own. To reduce our
conception of mind to a succession of feelings and sensations is like the
attempt to view a wide prospect by inches through a microscope, or to
calculate a period of chronology by minutes. The mind ceases to exist when
it loses its continuity, which though far from being its highest
determination, is yet necessary to any conception of it. Even an inanimate
nature cannot be adequately represented as an endless succession of states
or conditions.

Paragraph II. Another division of the subject has yet to be considered:
Why should the doctrine that knowledge is sensation, in ancient times, or
of sensationalism or materialism in modern times, be allied to the lower
rather than to the higher view of ethical philosophy? At first sight the
nature and origin of knowledge appear to be wholly disconnected from ethics
and religion, nor can we deny that the ancient Stoics were materialists, or
that the materialist doctrines prevalent in modern times have been
associated with great virtues, or that both religious and philosophical
idealism have not unfrequently parted company with practice. Still upon
the whole it must be admitted that the higher standard of duty has gone
hand in hand with the higher conception of knowledge. It is Protagoras who
is seeking to adapt himself to the opinions of the world; it is Plato who