FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 357 



between the facts of eternity and unchangeableness, 

 than a strong association between the two ideas. 



The other form of the fallacy; Things which we 

 cannot think of together cannot exist together, in- 

 cluding as one of its branches, that what we cannot 

 think of as existing, cannot exist at all, may be thus 

 briefly expressed: Whatever is inconceivable must be 

 false. 



Against this prevalent doctrine I have sufficiently 

 argued in a former Book *, and nothing is required, in 

 this place, but examples. It was long held that Anti- 

 podes were impossible, because of the difficulty which 

 men found in conceiving persons with their heads 

 in the same direction as our feet. And it was one of 

 the received arguments against the Copernican sys- 

 tem, that we cannot conceive so great a void space as 

 that system supposes to exist in the celestial regions. 

 When men's imaginations had always been used to 

 conceive the stars as firmly set in solid spheres, they 

 naturally found much difficulty in imagining them in 

 so different, and, as it doubtless appeared to them, so 

 unsafe a situation. But men had no right to mistake 

 the limitation (whether natural, or, as it in fact 

 proved, only artificial) of their own faculties, for an 

 inherent limitation of the possible modes of existence 

 in the universe. 



It may be said in objection, that the error in these 

 cases was in the minor premiss, not the major; an error 

 of fact, not of principle; that it did not consist in sup- 

 posing that what is inconceivable cannot be true, but 

 in supposing Antipodes to be inconceivable, when 

 present experience so fully proves that they can be 

 conceived. Even if this objection were allowed, and 



Supra, vol. i., pp. 313323. 



