296 REASONING. 



of truths whose negations are inconceivable. But occasional 

 failure, he says, is incident to all tests. If such failure viti- 

 ates " the test of inconceivableness," it " must similarly viti- 

 ate all tests whatever. We consider an inference logically 

 drawn from established premises to be true. Yet in millions of 

 cases men have been wrong in the inferences they have thought 

 thus drawn. Do we therefore argue that it is absurd to con- 

 sider an inference true on no other ground than that it is 

 logically drawn from established premises ? No : we say that 

 though men may have taken for logical inferences, inferences 

 that were not logical, there nevertheless are logical inferences, 

 and that we are justified in assuming the truth of what seem 

 to us such, until better instructed. Similarly, though men 

 may have thought some things inconceivable which were not 

 so, there may still be inconceivable things ; and the inability 

 to conceive the negation of a thing, may still be our best 

 warrant for believing it. ... Though occasionally it 

 may prove an imperfect test, yet, as our most certain beliefs 

 are capable of no better, to doubt any one belief because we 

 have no higher guarantee for it, is really to doubt all beliefs." 

 Mr. Spencer's doctrine, therefore, does not erect the curable, 

 but only the incurable limitations of the human conceptive 

 faculty, into laws of the outward universe. 



2. The doctrine, that " a belief which is proved by the 

 inconceivableness of its negation to invariably exist, is true," 

 Mr. Spencer enforces by two arguments, one of which may be 

 distinguished as positive, and the other as negative. 



The positive argument is, that every such belief represents 

 the aggregate of all past experience. " Conceding the entire 

 truth of" the "position, that during any phase of human pro- 

 gress, the ability or inability to form a specific conception 

 wholly depends on the experiences men have had ; and that, 

 by a widening of their experiences, they may, by and by, be 

 enabled to conceive things before inconceivable to them ; it 

 may still be argued that as, at any time, the best warrant 

 men can have for a belief is the perfect agreement of all pre- 

 existing experience in support of it, it follows that, at any 



