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which we have of ourselves as real persons. We allow no pre-eminence of one branch of knowledge over another; the perception and the inferences are equally decisive in reference to that which they disclose, and are inextricably blended.

From confusion at this point has arisen the affirmation that all our knowledge is relative. By this is meant, that there is ever present an unmeasured, subjective element which separates the convictions of each person from those of his neighbor, and so from absolute truth. This assertion has meaning and force in reference to sensations, less in reference to perceptions, and none in reference to intuitions, and the conclusions drawn from them. The sensation is more completely, the perception less completely, involved in a physical, organic state; and all we can say concerning this organic element is, that it, under given conditions, yields in the mind certain impressions. The identity of the action of organs in different persons we cannot affirm, nor what forces are aside from the organs they affect. This relative knowledge, however, is real, and sufficient for all its purposes. We have no occasion to know matter save as the fixed causes of certain effects, and that its effects in us are kindred to those in others. To inquire whether matter is like its effects, or what it is aside from its effects, are questions out of order under our organic intellectual law. The physical element makes the knowledge of the senses relative without affecting its value. But the intuitions with their inferences have no conditional, physical clement. The knowledge of relations is pure knowledge, identical knowledge, in all. This is obvious in mathematics, in logic, in all pure science. The mind is as capable of absolute as of relative knowledge, of a movement that goes out from itself in general principles, as of one that comes into it as specific facts. Its relative knowledge