_Objection to this use._--This use of the term is, on some accounts, objectionable. It is certainly not the ordinary sense of the word, but a departure from established usage. It is an arbitrary limitation of a word to denote a part only instead of the whole of that which it properly signifies There is no reason, in the nature of the case, why the notion we form of an absent object of perception, or of a sensation, should be called a conception, rather than our notion of an abstract truth, a proposition in morals, or a mathematical problem. I am not aware that any special importance attaches to the former more than to the latter class of conceptions. Indeed, Sir W. Hamilton limits the term to the latter. But this again is not in accordance with established usage. INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES PART FIRST THE PRESENTATIVE POWER SENSE OR PERCEPTION BY THE SENSES. § I.--GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. _This Faculty the Foundation of our Knowledge._--Of the cognitive powers of the mind, the first to be noticed, according to the analysis and distribution already given, is the Presentative Power--the power of cognizing external objects through the senses. This claims our first attention, inasmuch as it lies, chronologically at least, at the foundation of all our cognitive powers, and in truth, of our entire mental activity. We can, perhaps, conceive of a being so constituted as to be independent of sense, and yet possess mental activity; and we can even conceive such a mind as taking cognizance, in some mysterious way, of objects external to itself. But not such a being is man--not such the nature of the human mind. Its activity is first awakened through sense; from sense it derives its knowledge of the external world, of whatever lies without and beyond the charmed circle of self; and whether _all_ our knowledge is, strictly speaking, derived from sense, or not--a question so much disputed, and which we will not here stay to discuss--there can be no doubt that the activity of sense, and the knowledge thus acquired, is at least the beginning and foundation of all our mental acquisitions. We are constantly receiving impressions from without through the senses. In this way the mind is first awakened to activity, and from this source we derive our knowledge of the external world. _General Character of this Faculty._--In its general character the faculty now under consideration, as the name indicates, is _presentative_ and _intuitive_. It presents rather than represents objects, and what the mind thus perceives it perceives intuitively, rather than as the result of reflection. The knowledge which it gives is _immediate_ knowledge, the knowledge of that which is now and here present, in time and space.