462 FALLACIES. 



and do act where they, in actual hodily presence, are not. To us it is 

 not more wonderful that bodies should act upon one another " without 

 mutual contact," than that they should do so when in contact : we are 

 familiar with both these facts, aitd we find them equally inexplicable, 

 but equally easy to believe. To Newton the one, because his imagi- 

 nation was familiar with it, appeared natural and a matter of course, 

 while the other, for the contrary reason, seemed too absurd to be cred- 

 ited. If a Newton could err thus gi'ossly in the use of such an argu- 

 ment, who else can trust himself with it ] 



It is strange that any one, after such a warning, should rely implicitly 

 upon the evidence, d priori, of such propositions as these, that matter 

 cannot think ; that space, or extension, is infinite ; that nothing can be 

 made out of nothing [ex nihilo nihil Jit). Whether these propositions 

 are true or no this is not the place to determine, nor even whether the 

 questions are soluble by the human faculties. But such doctrines are 

 no more self-evident truths, than the ancient maxim that a thing cannot 

 act where it is not, which probably is not now believed by any educated 

 person in Europe. Matter cannot think ; why 1 because we cannot 

 conceive thought to be annexed to any arrangement of material parti- 

 cles. Space is infinite, because having never known any part of it 

 which had not other parts beyond it, we cannot conceive an absolute 

 termination. Ex nihilo nihil Jit., because having never known any 

 physical product without a preexisting physical material, we cannot, or 

 think we cannot, imagine a creation out of nothing. But these things 

 may in themselves be as conceivable as gravitation without an inter- 

 vening medium, which Newton thought too great an absurdity fin- any 

 man of a competent faculty of philosophical thinking to admit : and 

 even supposing them not conceivable, this, for aught we know, may be 

 merely one of the limitations of our very limited minds, and not in 

 nature at all. 



t Coleridge has attempted, with his usual ingenuity, to establish a dis- 

 tinction which would save the credit of the common mode of thinking 

 on this subject, declaring that the ■unimaginable, indeed, may possibly 

 be true, but that the inconceivable cannot : and he would probably have 

 said that the three supposed impossibilities last spoken of are not cases 

 of mere unimaginableness, but of actual inconceivableness ; while the 

 action of the sun upon the earth without an intervening medium, was 

 merely unimaginable. I am not aware that Coleridge has anywhere 

 attempted to define the distinction between the two ; and I am per- 

 suaded that, if he had, it would have broken down under him. But if 

 by unimaginableness he meant, as seems likely, mere inability on our 

 part to represent the phenomenon, like a picture of sometliing visible, 

 to tlie internal eye, antipodes were not unimaginable. They were 

 capable of being imaged ; capable even of being drawn, or modeled 

 in plaster. They were, however, inconceivable : the imagination could 

 paint, but the intellect could not recognize them as a believable thing. 

 Things may be inconceivable, then, witnout being incredible : and 

 Coleridge's distinction, whether it' have any foundation or not, will in 

 no way help the maxim out. 



No philosopher has more directly identified himself with the fallacy 

 now under consideration, or has embodied it in more distinct terms, 

 than Leibnitz. In his view, unless a thing was not merely conceivable, 

 but even explainable, it could not exist in nature. All natural phe- 



