Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/126

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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

in the attempt of the senses to let us know of our existence. Sense cannot consciously sense anything without our first knowing that we exist in the very act of sensing. Does inference, the thought-process, tell us that we exist? Assuredly not. For the materials of thought must be sense-impressions, which, as we have just found, cannot tell us of our existence, as that feeling is already pre-supposed in them. Nor can the process of thought give us the consciousness of existence, for the latter is already implied in the former. When, by comparing ourselves with the outer world, we endeavor to think or infer that we exist therein, the consciousness of existence is already present in the very act of thinking and inferring. Then, if sense or thought fails, how do we know that we exist? It is only by Intuition that we can know this. This knowing is one form of Intuition. It is beyond sense and thought—they are made possible by it.