178 



REASONING. 



I can : the word conceive, therefore, 

 is here used to express the recognition 

 of a matter of fact — the perception of 

 truth or falsehood ; which I apprehend 

 to be exactly the meaning of an act of 

 belief, as distinguished from simple 

 conception. Again, Mr. Spencer calls 

 the attempt to conceive something 

 which IS inconceivable "an abortive 

 effort to cause the non-existence " not 

 of a conception or mental representa- 

 tion, but of a belief. There is need, 

 therefore, to revise a considerable part 

 of Mr. Spencer's language, if it is to 

 be kept always consistent with his 

 definition of inconceivability. But in 

 truth the point is of little importance, 

 since inconceivability, in Mr. Spencer's 

 theory, is only a test of truth, inasmuch 

 as it is a test of believability. The 

 inconceivableness of a supposition is 

 the extreme case of its unbelievability. 

 This is the very foundation of Mr. 

 Spencer's doctrine. The invariability 

 of the belief is with him the real 

 guarantee. The attempt to conceive 

 the negative is made in order to test 

 the inevitableness of the belief. It 

 should be called, an attempt to believe 

 the negative. When Mr. Spencer says 

 that while looking at the sun a man 

 cannot conceive that he is looking into 

 darkness, he should have said that a 

 man cannot believe that he is doing so. 

 For it is surely possible, in broad day- 

 light, to imagine oneself looking into 

 darkness.* As Mr. Spencer himself 

 says, speaking of the belief of our own 

 existence : " That he might not exist, 

 he can conceive well enough : but 

 that he does not exist, he finds it im- 

 possible to conceive," i.e., to believe. 

 So that the statement resolves itself 

 into this : That I exist and that I 

 have sensations, I believe, because I 

 cannot believe otherwise. And in 



* Mr. Spencer makes a distinction be- 

 tween conceiving myself looking into dark- 

 ness, and conceiving that I am then and 

 there looking into darkness. To me it 

 seems that this change of the expression 

 to the form / am, just marks the transition 

 from conception to belief, and that the 

 phrase "to conceive that / am," or "that 

 anything is," is not consistent with using 

 th« word " concelvg " in its rigoroiis sense. 



this case every one will admit that 

 the impossibility is real. Any one's 

 present sensations, or other states of 

 subjective consciousness, that one per- 

 son inevitably believes. They are 

 facts known per se : it is impossible 

 to ascend beyond them. Their nega- 

 tive is really unbelievable, and there- 

 fore there is never any question about 

 believing it. Mr. Spencer's theory is 

 not needed for these truths. 



But according to Mr. Spencer there 

 are other beliefs, relating to other 

 things than our own subjective feel- 

 ings, for which we have the same 

 guarantee — which are in a similar 

 manner invariable and necessary. 

 With regard to these other beliefs, 

 they cannot be necessary, since they 

 do not always exist. There have been, 

 and are, many persons who do not be- 

 lieve the reality of an external world, 

 still less the reality of extension and 

 figure as the forms of that external 

 world ; who do not believe that space 

 and time have an existence indepen- 

 dent of the mind — nor any other of 

 Mr. Spencer's objective intuitions. 

 The negations of these alleged invari- 

 able beliefs are not unbelievable, for 

 they are believed. It may be main- 

 tained, without obvious error, that 

 we cannot imagine tangible objects as 

 mere states of our own and other 

 people's consciousness ; that the per- 

 ception of them irresistibly suggests 

 to us the idea of something external 

 to ourselves : and I am not in a con- 

 dition to say that this is not the fact 

 (though I do not think any one is en- 

 titled to affirm it of any person besides 

 himself). But many thinkers have 

 believed, whether they could conceive 

 it or not, that what we represent to 

 ourselves as material objects are mere 

 modifications of consciousness ; com- 

 plex feelings of touch and of muscu- 

 lar action. Mr. Spencer may think 

 the inference correct from the un- 

 imaginable to the unbelievable, be- 

 cause he holds that belief itself is but 

 the persistence of an idea, and that 

 what we can succeed in imagining we 

 cannot at the moment help apprehend- 



