Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/16

9 they have had as far back as they can remember in the same strength about axioms: and yet they will feel on the other hand the force of Mill's objection—'I must protest,' he says, 'against adducing, as evidence of the truth of a fact in external nature, the disposition, however strong or however general, of the human mind to believe it'

The evolutionist view seems to bring a welcome help and to shew how the desired correspondence between subjective belief and objective fact has been brought about by the operation of known causes.

No doubt then many may think, it would at least be a good thing if it were true. The evolutionist philosopher probably believes that it is a beneficent result of the great law of Evolution; and there may be scientific evolutionists who feel at least a prejudice in its favour.

But let us look a little nearer to see whether we should have cause to congratulate ourselves if the evolutionist philosopher were right.

The theory that the mind has become modified by its environment, and that its functions have become fixed, implies that at first it was not modified and its functions not thus fixed.

If 'Just as it has become impossible for the hand to grasp by bending the fingers outwards instead of inwards; so has it become impossible for those nervous actions by which we apprehend primary space-relations to be reversed so as to enable us to think of these relations otherwise than we do,' then it follows that once it was possible that these nervous actions should be reversed. And what does this mean? It means that the mind and its organs were so constituted that they were capable of thinking the contradictory of axioms, for instance of conceiving a chord equal to or greater than its arc, or two straight lines which enclosed a space, only that this capacity was never developed.