312 REASONING. 



of observations; and, however numerous these may 

 be, they can show nothing with regard to the infinite 

 number of cases in which the experiment has not been 

 made." Moreover, axioms are not only universal, they 

 are also necessary. Now " experience cannot offer 

 the smallest ground for the necessity of a proposition. 

 She can observe and record what has happened ; but 

 she cannot find, in any case, or in any accumulation 

 of cases, any reason for what must happen. She may 

 see objects side by side ; but she cannot see a reason 

 why they must ever be side by side. She finds certain 

 events to occur in succession ; but the succession 

 supplies, in its occurrence, no reason for its recur- 

 rence. She contemplates external objects ; but she 

 cannot detect any internal bond, which indissolubly 

 connects the future with the past, the possible with 

 the real. To learn a proposition by experience, and 

 to see it to be necessarily true, are two altogether 

 different processes of thought*." And Mr. Whewell 

 adds, (f If any one does not clearly comprehend this 

 distinction of necessary and contingent truths, he will 

 not be able to go along with us in our researches into 

 the foundations of human knowledge ; nor, indeed, to 

 pursue with success any speculation on the subjectf." 

 In order to learn what the distinction is, the non- 

 recognition of which incurs this denunciation, let us 

 refer again to Mr. Whewell. " Necessary truths are 

 those in which we not only learn that the proposition 

 is true, but see that it must be true ; in which the 

 negation of the truth is not only false, but impossible ; 

 in which we cannot, even by an effort of imagination, 

 or in a supposition, conceive the reverse of that which 



* WHEWELL'S Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, i., 59 61. 

 t Ibid., 57. 



