CHAP. II J FIRST TEUTIIS. 45 



between actual and possible being. He says * speaking of 

 the inquiry after fundamental truth &quot;Hence he has no 

 appeal from this ultimate dictum [i.e., inconceivability] ; and 

 seeino-this, he SEES that THE ONLY POSSIBLE further achieve- 



o * 



ment is the reconciliation of the dicta of consciousness with 

 one another.&quot; Any one, however, who should deny that we 

 have, as a fact, an intuition of &quot; objective, universal, and 

 absolute necessity,&quot; 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 assertors 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 : f 



&quot; When he &quot; [Mr. Mill] &quot; says outright that a priori beliefs really 

 inherent in the mind are totally unworthy of trust, however imperi 

 ously 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 posteriori or a priori if the positive and primary 

 affirmations of our mental nature may be suspected of making fools of 

 us ? The assumption of unveracity 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 use in 

 appealing from it, or unconditionally rely on them as the report of 

 truthful faculties ; and in either case is on the same footing as his 

 a priori neighbour. Be the proof what it may which authenticates 

 the belief, it is the faculty which, in the last resort, authenticates the 

 proof.&quot; 



In the controversy, therefore, between Mr. Spencer and 

 Mr. Mill it appears to us to be clear that both are right and 

 both are wrong. Mr. Mill is right in affirming that there 

 are inconceivabilities which may yet be believed, but wrong 

 in denying that our subjective judgments as to impossibility 

 and necessity are both objectively valid and supreme criteria 



* Essays, vol. ii. p. 407. t Ibid, p. 103. 



