MR. BALFOUR'S DIALECTICS. 337 



things and processes named ; and nearly all incorrect thinking is 

 due to imperfect representation or to non-representation. This is 

 so with thoughts about concrete things, and still more with 

 thoughts about abstract things. If, to an inadequately instructed 

 person, I show a hyperbola and a parabola, and tell him that the 

 sides of the last will obviously meet sooner than the sides of the 

 first, he will not improbably believe my erroneous statement ; 

 and, if he does so, it will be because he fails to figure in thought 

 the characters of the two curves. Did he mentally represent 

 them distinctly, he would see that the sides of neither can ever 

 meet. Or if, to such a person I say that, linear dimensions being 

 the same, an eight-sided cube contains more matter than a six- 

 sided cube, he may vaguely think that I am right. If he accepts 

 my false statement, why does he do so ? Simply because he has 

 not formed true mental images of the things named. Did he im- 

 agine them, or try to imagine them, he would discover that there 

 exists no such thing as an eight-sided cube. Turning to state- 

 ments about physical phenomena, we have a vivid illustration of 

 sham thinking in the assertion, not unfrequently made concerning 

 some remarkable phenomenon " Oh, it is caused by electricity : " 

 an assertion which, in both speaker and hearers, leaves a con- 

 tented feeling that they understand the matter : the truth being 

 that none of them have the remotest idea what electricity is, and 

 none of them have the remotest idea how electricity, did they 

 know its nature, could produce the effect observed. What they 

 take to be their ideas are simply pseud-ideas. And if in the field 

 of sensible experience there is a prevalence of these pseud-ideas, 

 still more widely do they prevail in the fields of theology and 

 metaphysics. Examples are not far to seek. 



In Mr. Balfour's proposition that out of the " depths of un- 

 fathomable mystery/' there " emerge the certitudes of religion," 

 there are two essential elements that which emerges, and the 

 process of emergence. The primary religious certitude, as im- 

 plied by his argument, is the existence of "a rational Author" for 

 "the ordered system of phenomena" an existence which he 

 thinks more certain than the existence of an " independent ma- 

 terial world " (p. 237). If, now, the thought of " a rational Au- 

 thor " has emerged out of the " depths of unfathomable mystery," 

 it must, if it is distinguishable from the mere blank form of a 

 thought, have some definable characters ; and unless Mr. Balfour 

 considers himself, and men who have similar thoughts, to be 

 fundamentally different from men in general, we must say that 

 thoughts having like characters have emerged into human con- 

 sciousness at large. I will not ask what happens if we contem- 

 plate all the implications, and observe the multitudinous con- 

 ceptions of gods which the multitudinous races of men have 



