322 REASONING. 



pendently of experience*." Can there be a more 

 striking exemplification than is here afforded, of the 

 effect of association which we have described ? Philo- 

 sophers, for generations, have the most extraordinary 

 difficulty in putting certain ideas together; they at 

 last succeed in doing so ; and after a sufficient repe- 

 tition of the process, they first fancy a natural bond 

 between the ideas, then experience a growing difficulty, 

 which at last, by the continuation of the same pro- 

 gress, becomes an impossibility, of severing them from 

 one another. If such be the progress of an experi- 

 mental conviction of which the date is of yesterday, 

 and which is in opposition to first appearances, how 

 must it fare with those which are conformable to 

 appearances familiar from the first dawn of intelli- 

 gence, and of the conclusiveness of which, from the 

 earliest records of human thought, no sceptic has 

 suggested even a momentary doubt? 



The other instance which we shall quote is a truly 

 astonishing one, and may be called the reductio ad 

 absurdum of the theory of inconceivableness. Speak- 

 ing of the laws of chemical composition, Mr. Whewell 

 saysj" : "That they could never have been clearly 

 understood, and therefore never firmly established, 

 without laborious and exact experiments, is certain ; 

 but yet we may venture to say, that being once known, 

 they possess an evidence beyond that of mere experi- 

 ment. For how, in fact, can we conceive combinations, 

 otherwise than as definite in kind and quantity ? If we 

 were to suppose each element ready to combine with 

 any other indifferently, and indifferently in any quan- 

 tity, we should have a world in which all would be 

 confusion and indefiniteness. There would be no 



Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, i., 213. t Ibid., 384, 385. 





