324 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



In denying the existence, or at least the cognoscibility, of suprasensible reality 

 in any mode or form, it is making an unjustifiable application of the maxim : 

 Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitate. (231). At the opposite 

 extreme lies the philosophy of idealist or spiritualist monism, which regards 

 even the material universe as a mere manifestation or expression of the thought- 

 activity of One Immanent Spirit or Mind : a view which appears to accept as 

 axiomatic this other false and misleading assumption, that whatever is real is 

 intelligible in terms of abstract thought, and that whatever cannot be totally 

 included in this ideal domain is illusory and unreal. 



Prepossessions in favour of certain broad, general views or 

 theories about things, dispose us to exaggerate the evidence for 

 these views, or to set down as evidence what is really not evidence 

 at all. And, by dint of refusing to see things otherwise than in 

 the light of these theories, we may gradually persuade ourselves 

 that the latter are self-evident, axiomatic. Thus it is that 

 questionable postulates are wrongly allowed to assume the rank 

 of axioms in the minds of those who entertain them. It is not 

 so much because of formal fallacies in our conscious reasoning 

 processes that profound philosophical errors are so prevalent. 

 These are due rather to an unquestioning and uncritical ac 

 ceptance of doctrines, beliefs, and opinions, which happen to 

 appear plausible to us on account of our own individual mental 

 development, and of the special intellectual atmosphere in which 

 we have been trained from our earliest days : phantoms of the 

 cave, of the theatre, and of the market place. 



For the human mind, the domain of really self-evident axioms 

 is very limited ; and they are all abstract. But there is a larger 

 domain of what may be called concrete truths of&quot; common sense,&quot; 

 in reference to which all individual minds are not equally receptive. 

 Education ; intellectual, moral, and religious training ; mental 

 companionship with books and teachers ; character, habit, and 

 disposition ; likes and dislikes ; passions and prejudices ; all 

 these are agencies of enormous influence in moulding the individual 

 mind for the right or wrong discernment of evidence : for the 

 reception or rejection of important truths of the concrete order, 

 truths that have a direct bearing on life and conduct, and which, 

 though not strictly axiomatic in the sense of mathematical prin 

 ciples, nor on the other hand capable of strict and cogent demon 

 stration, are nevertheless such that the normal mind, unimpeded 

 by any one-sided bias, will unhesitatingly assent to them, and will 

 act with entire reasonableness in doing so. Against these sources 

 of deviation from the healthy, normal state of mind, logic has no 



