The 'intuitions'represented the ultimate ground taken,especially in religious and ethical questions,by men who wished to be at once liberal philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes.'Intuitions'had in any case a negative value,as protests against the sufficiency of the empirical analysis.It might be quite true,for example,that Hume's analysis of certain primary mental phenomena --of our belief in the external world or of the relation of cause and effect --was radically insufficient.He had not given an adequate explanation of the facts.The recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important if only as a stimulus to inquiry.It was a warning to his and to Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the perplexity but only cut the knot.But when the insufficiency of the explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was impossible,and the 'intuition'an ultimate 'self-evident'truth,it became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted;a positive command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point;and a round assertion that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which he altogether declined to believe.
Naturally the empiricists refused to bow to an authority which was simply saying,'Don't inquire further,'without any ground for the prohibition except the 'ipse dixitism'which declared that inquiry must be fruitless.Stewart,in fact,really illustrated the equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.'If by that name he understood,as he professed to understand,ultimate 'laws of thought,'his position was justifiable as soon as he could specify the laws and prove that they were ultimate.But so far as he virtually took for granted that the average beliefs of intelligent people were such laws,and on that ground refund to examine the evidence of their validity,he was inconsistent,and his position only invited assault.As a fact,I believe that his 'intuitions'covered many most disputable propositions;and that the more clearly they were stated,the more they failed to justify his interpretations.He was not really answering the most vital and critical questions,but implicitly reserving them,and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations desirable on his own principles.
The Scottish philosophy was,however,accepted in England,and made a considerable impression in France,as affording a tenable barrier against scepticism.It was,as I have said,in philosophy what Whiggism was in politics.
Like political Whiggism it included a large element of enlightened and liberal rationalism;but like Whiggism it covered an aversion to thorough-going logic.
The English politician was suspicious of abstract principles,but could cover his acceptance of tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and toleration.The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional creed,sufficiently purified from cruder elements,and sheltered his doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.'In both positions there was really,I take it,a great deal of sound practical wisdom;but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too far,and a tacit agreement to be content with what the Utilitarians denounced as 'vague generalities'--phrases,that is,which might be used either to conceal an underlying scepticism,or really to stop short in the path which led to scepticism.
In philosophy as in politics,the Utilitarians boasted of being thorough-going Radicals,and hated compromises,which to them appeared to be simply obstructive.