PUNISHING A SENIOR WRANGLER. 



153 



taken the trouble to acquaint himself with this doctrine, he would have 

 learned that the intuitions of axiomatic truths are regarded by me as 

 latent in the inherited brain, just as bodily reflex actions are latent in 

 the inherited nervous centres of a lower order ; that such latent intui- 

 tions are made potentially more distinct by the greater definiteness of 

 structure due to individual action and culture ; and that thus, axio- 

 matic truths, having a warrant entirely a posteriori for the race, have 

 for the individual a warrant which, substantially a priori^ is made com- 

 plete a posteriori. And he would then have learned that, as, during 

 evolution. Thought has been moulded into increasing correspondence 

 with Things, and as such correspondence, tolerably complete in re- 

 spect of the simple, ever-present, and invariable relations, as those of 

 space, has made considerable advance in respect of the primary dy- 

 namical relations, the assertion that the resulting intuitions are au- 

 thoritative is the assertion that the simplest uniformities of Kature, 

 as experienced throughout an immeasurable past, are better known 

 than they are as experienced during an individual life. All which 

 conceptions, however, being, as it seems, unheard of by the reviewer, 

 he regards my trust in these primordial intuitions as like that of the 

 Ptolemists in their fancies about perfection ! 



Thus far my chief antagonists, passive, if not active, have been 

 Prof. Tait and, by implication. Sir William Thomson, his coadjutor in 

 the work quoted against me — men of standing, and the last of them 

 of world-wide reputation as a mathematician and physicist. Partly 

 because the opinions of such men demand attention, I have dealt with 

 the questions raised at some length; and partly, also, because the 

 origin and consequent warrant of physical axioms are questions of 

 general and permanent interest. The reviewer, who, by citing against 

 me these authorities, has gained for some of his criticisms considera- 

 tion they would otherwise not deserve, I must, in respect of his other 

 criticisms, deal with very briefly. Because, for reasons sufliciently in- 

 dicated, I did not assail sundry of his statements, he has reiterated 

 them as unassailable. I will here add no more than is needful to show 

 how groundless is his assumption. 



What the reviewer says on the metaphysical aspects of the prop- 

 ositions we distinguish as physical, need not detain us long. His 

 account of my exposition of " Ultimate Scientific Ideas," he closes by 

 saying of me tliat " he is not content with less than showing that all 

 our fundamental conceptions are inconceivable." Whether the re- 

 viewer knows what he means by an inconceivable conception, I cannot 

 tell. It will suffice to say that I have attempted no such remarkable 

 feat as that described. My attempt has been to show that objective 

 activities, together with their objective forms, are inconceivable by 

 us — that such symbolic conceptions of them as we frame, and are 

 obliged to use, are proved, by the alternative contradictions which a 



