It is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form,
this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so
easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man
with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature,
which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when
we imagine, with Aesop, that _arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae_. Some
even affirm that they have never observed in themselves this
"miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only one
of quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the energy
of the will. Others, certainly with greater reason, desire to unify
activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though admitting that
they are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the moment
from examining if such a unification be possible, and in what sense, but
admitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that to unify two
concepts in a third implies a difference between the two first. And here
it is this difference that is of importance and we set it in relief.

[Sidenote] _Intuition and association._

Intuition has often been confounded with simple sensation. But, since
this confusion is too shocking to good sense, it has more frequently
been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology which seems to wish to
confuse and to distinguish them at the same time. Thus, it has been
asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensation
as _association_ of sensations. The equivoque arises precisely from the
word "association." Association is understood, either as memory,
mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case is
evident the absurdity of wishing to join together in memory elements
which are not intuified, distinguished, possessed in some way by the
spirit and produced by consciousness: or it is understood as association