68 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. l 



tacle ; but it is only one instance, out of many, of the way 

 in which that theory has suffered from its association with 

 empiricism. When in a future chapter we come to treat of 

 the evolution of intelligence, we shall see that Mr. Spencer 

 was the first to penetrate to the very core of the experience- 

 philosophy when he perceived that the deepest warrant for 

 the perfect conformity of a given proposition with experience 

 is the unthinkableness of the counter-proposition. 1 



But now, what do we mean when we say that, after 

 eliminating all perturbing conditions, a proposition of which 

 the negation is unthinkable must be necessarily true ? By a 

 confusion of ideas very unusual with him, Mr. Mill seems to 

 think that we mean to accredit such propositions with express- 

 in some necessary relation among objective realities perse, 

 apart from their relation to our intelligence ; for he somewhere 

 charges Mr. Spencer with "erecting the incurable limitations 

 of the human conceptive faculty into laws of the outward 

 universe." When correctly interpreted, however, Mr. Spencer 

 will be found to have done no such thing. He simply erects 

 them, as Mr. Lewes expresses it, into " laws of the concep- 

 tions we form of the universe." Holding as we do, that all 

 our knowledge is derived from experience, that we have no 

 experience of the objective order of the relations among things, 

 and hence can never know whether it agrees or disagrees with 



i Since my final revision of this chapter, I find the case thus admirably put 

 into a nut-sh^ll by Mr. Lewes, in his now forthcoming work, Problems of 

 Life and Mind, vol. i. p. 396 : — "The arguments which support the a priori 

 view have been ingeniously thrown into this syllogism by Mr. Killick : The 

 necessary truth of a proposition is a mark of its not being derived from Ex- 

 perience. (Experience cannot inform us of what must be :) The inconceiv- 

 ability of the contradictory is the mark of the necessary truth of a proposi- 

 tion : Therefore the inconceivability of its contradictory is a mark of a propo- 

 sition not being derived from Experience. — This syllogism is perfect in form, 

 but has a radical defect in its terms. The inconceivability of a contradictory 

 results from the entire absence of experiences on which a contradiction could 

 be grounded. If there were any truths independent of Experience, contra- 

 dictions to them would be conceivable, . since there would be no positive 

 obstacle to the conception ; but a contradiction is inconceivable only when 

 all Experience opposes itself to the formation of the contradictory con- 

 ception. " 



