insane, and inquire to what he is committing himself in admitting the
truth of intuitions. He will demand, therefore, the publication of a
list of the intuitions which are absolutely true. But he will not get
it, and if he did, it may be predicted that he would not find a single
one which has not been disputed by some eminent philosopher.

5. Intuitions, therefore, are an embarrassment, rather than a help to
Intellectualism. It has to maintain both that intuitions are the
foundations of all truth and certitude, and also that not all are true.
But our natural curiosity as to how these sorts are to be known apart is
left unsatisfied. We must not ask which are true, and which not. No one
can say in advance about what matters intuitive certainty is possible;
what is, or is not, an intuition is revealed only to reflection after
the event. Only if an intuition _has_ played us false, we may be sure it
_was_ not infallible; it must either have been one of the fallible sort,
or else no intuition at all.

6. At this point universal scepticism begins to raise its hydra head,
and to grin at the dogmatist's discomfiture. For in point of fact the
history of thought reveals, not a steady accumulation of indubitable
truth, but a continuous strife of opinions, in which the most widely
accepted beliefs daily succumb to fresh criticism and fall into
disrepute as the 'errors of the past.' Nothing, it seems, can guarantee
a 'truth,' however firmly it may be believed for a time, from the
corrosive force of new speculation and changed opinion; to survey the
field of philosophic dispute, strewn with the remains of 'infallible'
systems and 'absolute' certainties, is to be led irresistibly to a
sceptical doubt as to the competence of human thought. If 'absolute
truth' is our ideal and acquaintance with 'absolute reality' our aim,
then, in view of the persistent illusions on both these points to which