142 Herbert Spencer 



or incredible, and (2) the inconceivable. He defines ^ the 

 former as a proposition ' which admits of being framed in 

 thought, but is so much at variance with experience ' ' that 

 its terms cannot be put in the alleged relation without 

 effort'; and he gives as an example — a cannon-ball fired 

 from England to America. An inconceivable proposition is 

 defined by him as ' one of which the terms cannot, by any 

 effort, be brought before consciousness in that relation which 

 the proposition asserts between them'; and he gives as 

 examples of inconceivability ' that one side of a triangle is 

 equal to the sum of the other two sides ' ; and a little before 2 

 the idea of resistance, disconnected from the idea of exten- 

 sion in the resisting object. 



Now, in the first place, it must be presumed that with 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer the term * framed in thought' is 

 equivalent to ' represented in imagination,' and the distinction 

 he draws is as true as obvious between propositions which 

 can be imagined but are not to be believed, and those 

 which cannot be imagined at all. He does not, however, as 

 we have said, distinguish sufficiently between propositions, 

 as a Httle introspection will convince any unprejudiced 

 experimenter. There are, in fact, not one, but two classes 

 of unimaginable propositions, and it is the second of these 

 (utterly neglected by him) which alone compels the mind to 

 absolute, unconditional, universal, and necessary assent to 

 their contradictories, because their contradictories are seen 

 to be absolutely, unconditionally, universally, and necessarily 

 true. 



There are altogether four kinds of propositions in con- 

 sciousness : — 



1. Those which can be both imagined and behoved. 



2. Those which can be imagined but cannot be beheved. 



3. Those which cannot be imagined but can be beheved. 



1 Psychology, vol. ii. p. 408. 2 Qp^ ciL, pp. 406, 407. 



