FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION . 319 



are not. To us it is not more wonderful that bodies should 

 act upon one another &quot; without mutual contact,&quot; than that 

 they should do so when in contact; we are familiar with both 

 these facts, and we find them equally inexplicable, but equally 

 easy to believe. To Newton, the one, because his imagination 

 was familiar with it, appeared natural and a matter of course, 

 while the other, for the contrary reason, seemed too absurd to 

 be credited. 



It is strange that any one, after such a warning, should 

 rely implicitly on the evidence a priori of such propositions 

 as these, that matter cannot think; that space, or extension, 

 is infinite ; that nothing can be made out of nothing (ex nihilo 

 nihiljit). Whether these propositions are true or not this is 

 not the place to determine, nor even whether the questions 

 are soluble by the human faculties. But such doctrines are 

 no more self-evident truths, than the ancient maxim that a 

 thing cannot act where it is not, which probably is not now 

 believed by any educated person in Europe.* Matter cannot 

 think ; why ? because we cannot conceive thought to be an 

 nexed to any arrangement of material particles. Space is 

 infinite, because having never known any part of it which had 

 not other parts beyond it, we cannot conceive an absolute ter 

 mination. Ex nihilo nihilfit, because having never known any 

 physical product without a pre-existing physical material, we 

 cannot, or think we cannot, imagine a creation out of nothing. 

 But these things may in themselves be as conceivable as 

 gravitation without an intervening medium, which Newton 

 thought too great an absurdity for any person of a competent 

 faculty of philosophical thinking to admit : and even sup 

 posing them not conceivable, this, for aught we know, may be 

 merely one of the limitations of our very limited minds, and 

 not in nature at all. 



No writer has more directly identified himself with the 

 fallacy now under consideration, or has embodied it in more 

 distinct terms, than Leibnitz. In his view, unless a thing was 



* This statement I must now correct, as too unqualified. The maxim in 

 question was maintained with full conviction by no less an authority than Sir 

 William Hamilton. See my Examination, chap. xxiv. 



