150 Herbert Spencer 



enclose a space, and if a whole may be less than its part, 

 then we have no certainty but that the same thing cannot 

 both ' be ' and ' not be ' at the same time and in the same 

 sense, and we are landed in utter and complete scepticism. 

 But Mr. Spencer himself has imphcitly admitted this very 

 distinction which he explicitly ignores, and not only re- 

 cognises an active power of positively perceiving necessary 

 truths, but also the distinction between actual and possible 

 being. He says ^ — speaking of the inquiry after fundamental 

 truth — ' Hence he has no appeal from this ultiraate dictum ; 

 and seeing this, he sees that the only possible further 

 achievement is the reconciliation of the dicta of conscious- 

 ness with one another.' Any one, however, who should deny 

 that we have, as a fact, an intuition of ' objective, universal, 

 and absolute necessity,' may be confuted by bringing forward 

 the simple fact that some men assert that they have that 

 idea, and that the very opponents of such asserters must 

 themselves have it also, since they could not argue against 

 and controvert that of which they have no knowledge. Mr. 

 J. Martineau, in criticising Mr. Mill, observes : — ^ 



* When he ' [Mr. Mill] ' says outright that a priori beliefs really 

 inherent in the mind are totally unworthy of trust, however im- 

 periously they may compel submission ; and when he casts about for 

 some appeal against them — either from thought to " fact " or from 

 faculty to faculty — he seems to lose all his logical bearings, and 

 forget the base he had measured. What security can there be for 

 any truth — of ^^fact " or of thought — a j^osteriori or a priori — if the 

 positive and primary affirmations of our mental nature may be sus- 

 pected of making fools of us 1 The assumption of un veracity once 

 made cannot arbitrarily stop with the province which Mr. Mill 

 wishes to discredit. He himself also must, somewhere or other, 

 come to an end of his " evidence " and " proof," and be landed on 

 principles not derivative but primary: and then he must either accept 

 their coercion " because there is no tise in appealing from it," or 



1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 407. - Essays, p. 103. 



