COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



all directions," we are going through a process 

 of demonstration, — we are including a special 

 fact under a more general fact. If now we seek 

 the warrant for this more general fact, and find 

 it in that most general fact that force persists, 

 we are still going through a process of demon- 

 stration. But if lastly we inquire for the war- 

 rant of this most general fact, we shall get no 

 reply save that no alternative can be framed in 

 thought. That force persists we are compelled 

 to believe, since the proposition that force can 

 arise out of nothing or can lapse into nothing 

 is a verbal proposition which we can by no 

 amount of effort translate into thought. Thus 

 at the end of every demonstration we must 

 reach an axiom for the truth of which our only 

 test is the inconceivability of its negation. 



Secondly, from a different point of view, a 

 demonstration is a series of propositions, every 

 one of which is necessarily involved in the pre- 

 ceding one. How do we know it to be thus 

 necessarily involved ? How do we know that 

 the statement that action and reaction are equal 

 and opposite is necessarily involved in the state- 

 ment that force persists ? Simply because we 

 can conceive no alternative, since to do so would 

 be to perform the impossible task of formulat- 

 ing in consciousness an equation between some- 

 thing and nothing. Thus our only warrant for 

 each step of a demonstration is the fact that any 

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