61 
away by the application of heat sufficiently great for a time 
sufficiently long. He would probably say that my mind had 
become familiarized to the idea by the apparent destruction 
undergone by matter in circumstances of this kind. But 
what circumstances could familiarize the mind to the negation 
of an axiom ? What circumstances could make any man 
believe that quantities equal to the same thing are unequal 
among themselves ? or that four and one added together could 
result in any other number than five ? Nothings in short, 
can familiarize the mind to the denial of an axiom. 
25. That there is something inconceivable about the anni- 
hilation of matter mav be conceded. But I think it will be 
found, on examination, that it is not annihilation itself that is 
inconceivable, but the manner of it. That the thing itself is 
not inconceivable seems sufficiently manifest from the fact 
that the scientific world in general (with but few exceptions) 
has always believed that God could both create and annihilate. 
I say “ but few exceptions,” because I believe that even now 
a very goodly portion of our men of science recognise a 
personal Creator of the universe, notwithstanding some very 
confident assertions to the contrary. Witness the many men 
of scientific renown who belong to this Society, if there were 
no others. To say, therefore, that the creation and anni- 
hilation of matter are in themselves unthinkable is to pay 
but a poor compliment to such men. But I believe it to be 
quite true that we cannot conceive how this could take place ; 
and I cannot help strongly suspecting that they who rely so 
much on the argument from inconceivability frequently con- 
found these two ideas. 
The action of gravitation through space is inconceivable, 
and yet it is an undoubted reality. Mr. Spencer has himself 
shown ( First Principles, p. 60) that the hypothesis of its acting 
by means of an sether which extends throughout space brings 
us no nearer to a conception of the mode of its action, 
because the aether itself must be supposed to consist of atoms 
infinitely small in comparison to the intervening spaces ; 
otherwise it would not be imponderable. “Instead then,” 
(he goes on to say,) “of a direct action by the sun upon the 
earth without anything intervening, we have to conceive the 
sun's action propagated through a medium whose molecules 
are probably as small, relatively to their interspaces, as are 
the sun and earth compared to the space between them ; we 
have to conceive these infinitesimal molecules acting on each 
other through absolutely vacant spaces which are immense in 
comparison with their own dimensions. How is this con- 
ception easier than the other ? We still have mentally to 
