Yet as far as three his
intuitions are the same as those of civilised people. Unquestionably
if there are intuitions at all, the primary truths of number are
such. There is a felt necessity in them if in anything, and it would
be pedantry to say that any proposition of morals was MORE certain
than that five and five make ten. The truths of arithmetic,
intuitive or not, certainly cannot be acquired independently of
experience nor can those of morals be so either. Unquestionably they
were aroused in life and by experience, though after that comes the
difficult and ancient controversy whether anything peculiar to them
and not to be found in the other facts of life is superadded to them
independently of experience out of the vigour of the mind itself. No
intuitionist, therefore, fears to speak of the conscience of his
pre-historic ancestor as imperfect, rudimentary, or hardly to be
discerned, for he has to admit much the same so as to square his
theory to plain modern facts, and that theory in the modern form may
consistently be held along with them. Of course if an intuitionist
can accept this conclusion as to pre-historic men, so assuredly may
Mr. Spencer, who traces all morality back to our inherited
experience of utility, or Mr.
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