clusion is, that our intelligence is diametrically different, essentially dissimilar in all respects, from intelligences of a superior order, and that there are no common laws binding on intelligence considered simply as such. There is thus no legitimacy in the process by which any of the laws of our thinking are laid down as valid for all thinking.
What sort of an argument is that? Even admitting that human reason is perplexed between these contradictories, does it necessarily follow—does it follow as a fair inference from that admission—that there are no truths which can be predicated of reason universally—that there are no laws which are valid for all intellect, without considering whether it is this, or that, or the other intellect? Can we not admit that man's reason is imperfect, and, in reference to some questions, impotent, and yet stop short of the conclusion that in no respect whatever is it akin to a higher order of intelligence, supposing such to exist? Does our admission justify the inference that there are no conditions to which all knowledge and all thought are necessarily subject? Does it disprove the legitimacy of maintaining that there are such laws? To come nearer to the point: because human knowledge explodes, in some instances, in contradictions, is that any reason for denying the truth of the assertion, that "every intelligence must be cognizant of itself, when it is cognizant of any thing else?" (proposition first of the Institutes, and the principle from which the whole subsequent deductions proceed.) Surely there is no force in such reasoning. It is equivalent to this: because intelligences differ in degree and power of enlightenment, therefore they can have nothing whatsoever in common. Mr Fraser acted wisely in leaving such an argument as that—and it certainly is his implied argument—to the reader's imagination. Its statement is its refutation.
Mr Fraser may, perhaps, allege that the workings of human thought, as manifested in these contradictory propositions about space and time, indicate certain essential laws of human thinking, and that such laws, being essential, must be transferred, if any are to be transferred, to all thinking. I answer that these laws are not essential to human thinking, unless their opposites are
