THEORIES CONCERNING AXIOMS. 308 



always successful ; whether the other, and popular use of the 

 word does not sometimes creep in with its associations, and 

 prevent him from maintaining a clear separation between the 

 two. When, for example, he says, that when I feel cold, I 

 cannot conceive that I am not feeling cold, this expression 

 cannot be translated into, " I cannot conceive myself not feel- 

 ing cold," for it is evident that I can : the word conceive, there- 

 fore, is here used to express the recognition of a matter of fact 

 the perception of truth or falsehood ; which I apprehend to 

 be exactly the meaning of an act of belief, as distinguished 

 from simple conception. Again, Mr. Spencer calls the attempt 

 to conceive something which is inconceivable, " an abortive 

 effort to cause the non-existence" not of a conception or mental 

 representation, but of a belief. There is need, therefore, to 

 revise a considerable part of Mr. Spencer's language, if it is to 

 be kept always consistent with his definition of inconceivability. 

 But in truth the point is of little importance ; since inconceiva- 

 bility, in Mr. Spencer's theory, is only a test of truth, inasmuch 

 as it is a test of believability. The inconceivableness of a 

 supposition is the extreme case of its unbelievability. This is 

 the very foundation of Mr. Spencer's doctrine. The invaria- 

 bility of the belief is with him the real guarantee. The 

 attempt to conceive the negative, is made in order to test the 

 inevitableness of the belief. It should be called, an attempt 

 to believe the negative. When Mr. Spencer says that while 

 looking at the sun a man cannot conceive that he is looking 

 into darkness, he should have said that a man cannot believe 

 that he is doing so. For it is surely possible, in broad daylight, 

 to imagine oneself looking into darkness.* As Mr. Spencer 

 himself says, speaking of the belief of our own existence : 

 " That he might not exist, he can conceive well enough ; but 

 that he does not exist, he finds it impossible to conceive," i.e. 



* Mr. Spencer makes a distinction between conceiving myself looking into 

 darkness, and conceiving that I am then and there looking into darkness. To 

 me it seems that this change of the expression to the form I am, just marks 

 the transition from conception to belief, and that the phrase " to conceive that 

 /o?>i," or " that anything is," is not consistent with using the word conceive in 

 its rigorous sense. 



