1881.] The Inconceivable as a Test of Truth. 147 
knowledge is not subjective but objective. Although in us, 
it is not of us, but belongs to the eternal nature of things. 
It is not the Ego nor a part of the Ego. It has come to it, 
and it has not come from experience. It is as objective to 
the human mind as anything could be supposed to be to any 
other thing. But are there any such truths ? And what is 
the inconceivable ? It appears to me that this term has been 
used with wonderful negligence, even by most distinguished 
writers. Mr. Mill says that “ inconceivableness has very 
little to do with the possibility or impossibility of anything 
in itself, but is a matter of accident and of the past history 
and habits of mind.” Even Whewell abandons his own de- 
finition, and speaks of the existence of Antipodes and the 
Copernican system having been at one time “ inconceivable.” 
Spencer connects it with the result of human experience, 
and that leads us to the detection of the abuse of the word 
which renders it now utterly useless in philosophy, viz., the 
confusion , as I venture to call it, between the “ conceivable” 
and the “ believable.” In like manner, Hamilton, in order 
to show that the “ inconceivable” may sometimes be true, 
adduces this dilemma — “ Either matter is infinitely divisible, 
or there is a limit to its divisibility, but we cannot conceive 
either.” We certainly cannot realise either, or picture it to 
ourselves, or make it a clear objeCI of contemplation. But 
this is not the sense of the word conceive , in which it can be 
of any use in philosophy, because in this sense, the conceiv- 
able is undoubtedly subject to accidental circumstances, and 
must be different in different men. But when the word is 
taken in its true sense, the case is quite different. Hamilton 
admits that there are two propositions absolutely true, quite 
independent of us, viz., that two contradictory propositions 
cannot at once be true, or at once be false. Although these 
certainly go but a little way toward enlightening us on the 
nature of things, yet they are of great value as supplying 
clear types of the impossible. That they are wholly inde- 
pendent of experience appears from this, that should a man 
be found to whom they were not self evident, the case would 
not for a moment be supposed an exception to a general 
consent, or a deviation from the “ net result of experience,” 
but simply as evidence sufficient of the absence of suspension 
of the reasoning power in that man. Such a man would of 
course be incapable of knowledge, and as to the conception 
of general ideas, would not differ from the brutes. Thus we 
obtain a very moderate test of the presence or absence of 
reason. This test will admit to the class of rational beings 
all men and women, educated or uneducated, civilized or 
