[March, 
150 The Inconceivable as a Test of Truth. 
sometimes less than 10, and a product of 62 may be obtained 
indifferently from the factors 6 and 2, 8 and 11, or 29 and 3. 
Those who would limit our absolute knowledge to the one 
single proposition (expressed by Hamilton in two, under the 
sounding names of contradiction and excluded middle),* 
“ That which is, is” are bound to say that these last sug- 
gestions, to which many more might be added, can be true , 
that they involve no contradiction to their reason. Rational 
man, however, knows that they are absurd and self-destruc- 
tive ; that reason stamps them out of the nature of things, 
and consequently their contradictions are true if we had 
never existed ; nay more, that if the universe itself, with its 
Author, could cease to exist, they would remain potentially 
true for ever. They would not be knowledge while there 
was no mind to know them. But should, per impossible, a. 
mind come into being, it would find them true, and that time 
and space had been waiting during the interregnum for land- 
marks and apportionment. It maybe observed with regard 
to two of these propositions, that some maintain that our 
idea of merit and demerit is merely the result of a calcula- 
tion of expediency which has become in some inexplained 
way a part of our nature. This is immaterial ; it is sufficient 
that we have the ideas of duty and interest, as distinct from 
one another as that of either from that of a triangle. This is 
matter of universal conscience, and the theory has been so 
often rejected that no one is supposed really to believe it, 
but to repeat it only as harmonising with his system, or 
under the impression, strangely prevalent in these days, that 
by piling “ it may be” upon “ it may be,” we are approach- 
ing the proposition that “ it is.” 
With regard to the whole group of propositions which can 
be proved by the test of the inconceivable in this sense of 
the term, it would appear that the aCtual existence of but 
two beings can be so established, that of the thinking mind by 
consciousness, and that of God by causation. The number 
of general propositions which can be associated with this 
absolute certainty, and their bearing on other matters of 
belief, are topics on which of course I cannot enter here. I 
conclude by stating in a few words the position that I have 
meant to establish. If it be (as is admitted) absolutely true, 
independent of experience or any thinking mind, that of the 
propositions all A is B, and some A is not B, one must be 
* Mr. Mill endeavours to make it appear that there is a third alternative 
when the proposition is “unmeaning,” the predicate not being in itself predi- 
cable of the subjedt — as “ Constitutional Government is blue but if it be not 
predicable, the negative is obviously true, if theie be a meaning in the 
words at all. 
