274 REASONING. 



world in which all would be confusion and indefiniteness. 

 There would he no fixed kinds of bodies. Salts, and stones, 

 and ores, would approach to and graduate into each other by 

 insensible degrees. Instead of this, we know that the world 

 consists of bodies distinguishable from each other by definite 

 differences, capable of being classified and named, and of 

 having general propositions asserted concerning them. And 

 as we cannot conceive a world in which this should not be the 

 case, it would appear that we cannot conceive a state of things 

 in which the laws of the combination of elements should not 

 be of that definite and measured kind which we have above 

 asserted." 



That a philosopher of Dr. Whewell's eminence should 

 gravely assert that we cannot conceive a world in which the 

 simple elements should combine in other than definite pro- 

 portions ; that by dint of meditating on a scientific truth, the 

 original discoverer of which was still living, he should have 

 rendered the association in his own mind between the idea 

 of combination and that of constant proportions so familiar 

 and intimate as to be unable to conceive the one fact without 

 the other; is so signal an instance of the mental law for which 

 I am contending, that one word more in illustration must be 

 superfluous. 



In the latest and most complete elaboration of his meta- 

 physical system (the Philosophy of Discovery), as well as in 

 the earlier discourse on the Fundamental Antithesis of Philo- 

 sophy, reprinted as an appendix to that work, Dr. Whewell, 

 while very candidly admitting that his language was open to 

 misconception, disclaims having intended to say that mankind 

 in general can now perceive the law of definite proportions in 

 chemical combination to be a necessary truth. All he meant 

 was that philosophical chemists in a future generation may 

 possibly see this. " Some truths may be seen by intuition, 

 but yet the intuition of them may be a rare and a difficult at- 

 tainment."* And he explains that the inconceivableness 



* Phil, of Disc., p. 339. 



