THEORIES CONCERNING AXIOMS. 195 



conceivable things; and the inability to conceive the negation of a thing, 

 may still be our best warrant for believing it Though occasional- 

 ly it may prove an imperfect test, yet, as our most certain beliefs are capa- 

 ble of no better, to doubt any one belief because we have no higher guar- 

 antee for it, is really to doubt all beliefs." Mr. Spencer's doctrine, there- 

 fore, 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 inconceivable- 

 ness 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 progress, 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 en- 

 abled 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 per- 

 fect agreement of all pre-existing experience in support of it, it follows that, 

 at any time, the inconceivableness of its negation is the deepest test any 



belief admits of Objective facts are ever impressing themselves upon 



us; our experience is a register of these objective facts; and the incon- 

 ceivableness of a thing implies that it is wholly at variance with the regis- 

 ter. Even were this all, it is not clear how, if every truth is primarily in- 

 ductive, any better test of truth could exist. But it must be remembered 

 that while many of these facts, impressing themselves upon us, are occa- 

 sional ; while others again are very general ; some are universal and un- 

 changing. These universal and unchanging facts are, by the hypothesis, 

 certain to establish beliefs of which the negations are inconceivable ; while 

 the others are not certain to do this ; and if they do, subsequent facts will 

 reverse their action. Hence if, after an immense accumulation of experi- 

 ences, there remain beliefs of which the negations are still inconceivable, 

 most, if not all of them, must correspond to universal objective facts. If 

 there be .... certain absolute uniformities in nature ; if these uniform- 

 ities produce, as they must, absolute uniformities in our experience ; and 

 if .... these absolute uniformities in our experience disable us from con- 

 ceiving the negations of them ; then answering to each absolute uniformi- 

 ty in nature which we can cognize, there must exist in us a belief of which 

 the negation is inconceivable, and which is absolutely true. In this wide 

 range of cases subjective inconceivableness must correspond to objective 

 impossibility. Further experience will produce correspondence where it 

 may not yet exist ; and we may expect the correspondence to become ulti- 

 mately complete. In nearly all cases this test of inconceivableness must be 

 valid now" (I wish I could think we were so nearly arrived at omnis- 

 cience) ; " and where it is not, it still expresses the net result of our experi- 

 ence up to the present time ; which is the most that any test can do." 



To this I answer, first, that it is by no means true that the inconceivabili- 

 ty) ^y ws, of the negative of a proposition proves all, or even any, " pre-exist- 

 ing experience " to be in favor of the affirmative. There may have been 

 no such pre-existing experiences, but only a mistaken supposition of expe- 

 rience. How did the inconceivability of antipodes prove that experience 

 had given any testimony against their possibility ? How did the incapaci- 



I 



